Run Committee Meeting Notes: 2016-12-02

Team,

Thank you to those who attended the meeting this past Friday and to those who provided apologies with their updates.  I really appreciate the engagement from all, in spite of our busy lives.

Now, onto business with the latest updates from the meeting and others.  I will go by each area as usual and please feel free to comment or add any other information to the details below, especially where I have missed anything.

Autism Partners

The biggest news on this front is with the news that Seattle Childrens will not be sponsoring the Kids Dash for the event.  I have asked Mike to work on getting a meeting with Seattle Childrens through his contact, so we can see what support we can secure from them for the event.  I do not hold out much in terms of support as past experience has taught us that we are not really big enough for their attention.

Out of disappointment there is always opportunity and I think we can explore the ideas from the committee around other autism groups we can partner with and see if we are able to secure another partner.  We can also expand on the ideas for making this event more accessible to smaller autism groups with the intent of expanding our marketing reach for the run.  Please let me know if you have any ideas and keep John and Jenny copied into the exchanges, so we can keep the sponsorship channel engaged with the conversations.

BBRC Internal Promotion

Paul Osborn is going to work on a whiteboard idea that allows us to radiate updates to the membership on our key metrics for the run.  We will use this to gamify engagement with the club in the same way that he has successfully accomplished with the Foundation drive in November.  The plan is to have key metrics around sponsorships secured, registrations, dollars raised and other useful numbers to help us manage our event against our goals.

A couple of other areas will be the development of collaterals and skits for the event as well and to tie these into the external PR plan, so we can have something every month starting in the New Year to help keep the visibility of the event high amongst the membership.  This will include encouraging our membership to promote actively through our and their social media channels.

Course Planning

Steve Luplow is looking for support to stage the event in the south parking garage of Bellevue Square.  He will be requesting this through the Bellevue Collection.  Jeff will also be reaching out to Titus and Lt Sanabria on Monday to see if they have any updated info or if they would like to sit down to discuss options.  I will let you know as soon as we have news, so the collaterals for the event can be printed and made available for distribution.

PR-Marcom

Alex and Michel have pulled together the PR plan for the event.  I have asked them to start to execute on the plan as it is a good plan and I thank them for making this happen.  Here is the latest iteration for you to review: https://www.dropbox.com/s/irfy61zfqix2v0s/BBRC%20PR%20Plan%2011-18-16.doc?dl=0.  Please take the opportunity to read this and see where you can leverage it or support it with Alex and Michel.

I know that there has also been a request for the latest version of the logo from some of you so that it can be used in your work.  The logo is located here in DropBox: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/9aj80oh44bmw9td/AADuuEaRAQKlRVV3BpNz_jkHa?dl=0.

We do need to start leveraging the social media channels for the promotion of the run.  This is an easy thing to do and I encourage all of you with Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter accounts to start the kick off on your own using the registration page: http://allinforautism.org/registration/.  We can all take the initiative here to make this happen.

I also want to see if we could also come up with some ideas for guerilla marketing campaigns that allows us to go out into the community and promote the event.  This will allow us to raise the visibility of the event and it will allow us to do something creative.  Big ideas welcome.

Registrations

We are definitely behind on our registrations compared with last year, so we need to get cracking on the promotions.  To this point there are a couple of things that will be happening:

• We will be offering a $5 promotional discount to drive up registrations and this will be coming out next week.  It will be for a short period of time, so we can create a sense of urgency.  To my point above, please start to promote through your social media channels.
• I will be sending out a note to all the membership to engage them in the promotional activities of the event and have them also drive traffic to the site through their respective networks.

I will be looking to each of us to help push this effort to make sure we can secure early registration and allow us to take some of the risk out of the event itself as a result.

Sponsorship

John let me know that the team are starting to gear up for reaching out and securing sponsors for the event.  Please lend John and Jenny all the support that they need in finding sponsors for the event.  We do want to find sponsors who can provide the trifecta of support, which is money, runners and volunteers.  Let’s make sure that we seek sponsors with this in mind.

Also, guerilla activities in this area will be much appreciated, where we can secure information or opportunities to promote the event:

• Last year Carmela went onto the Google Campus to register runners and secure matching funds from the company – this was an awesome approach and we can expand on this idea by reaching out to other companies in the area and see if they will allow us to do something similar
• Please find out if your company supports volunteer programs and see what it takes for us to register our event on the website.  For example, Bellevue City will allow us to leverage their website and facilities to promote the run.  I know that there are others like Microsoft, etc. who offer the same.
• There are youth groups we are connected with like Rotaract, Student of the Month schools and DECA that we can engage with, so any of you who have connections there please let me know and we can start to plan our activities around them sooner.  For example, I have found out that Eastside Prep now has a services committee which is looking for projects and will approach them for support – I will be approaching them next week.

Volunteers

Dustin has made available the planning information around volunteers and it is available on DropBox as well: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/crouq6ytoy6nius/AACy7aBPXDQO6Z5ToDPhHe2Ia?dl=0.  Please review as it gives a great view into the scale of the challenge that Dustin takes on for the run each year.  We do not want to lose the emphasis on getting volunteers as well as runners for this event, so per the comments above keep this at the forefront of thinking as well.

Conclusion

As I mentioned in my closing comments last Friday, it is important for us to proactively engage with each other where you see opportunities to support the run.  Please make sure you keep Chris Boland and me copied into those activities/engagements, so we can make it visible to the whole group.  Our goal is to keep the communication around the event at a high level to ensure we leverage the collective capability of this team in making this a successful event.  So, if you see something where you can make a difference, do not hesitate to do something and make it happen.