All in for Autism Run: Update Note – 11th February, 2017

Weekly Key Metrics:

• Registrations (Goal: 3000): 321 – up 2%
• Sponsorship Totals (Goal: $70,000): $65,000 – up 23.8%
• Volunteers (Goal: 219): 46 – no change to report
• New Members: 0

Summary

Our event has been approved by the City, so we are all systems go!  We have moved much closer to our goal of $70,000 in sponsorships with our total coming in at $65,000.  We have launched our promotions with the monthly discounts and the raffle prize from SHOES-N-FEET.  Our registrations have seen some slight increase and this will be the primary area of focus now.

City of Bellevue

We secured approval from the Special Events Committee this past week for our event.  Our permit will be prepared for signature once the Once the Routing/Location (R/L) Committee approves the conditions.

Sponsorship

Our fund raising has gained great momentum over this week.  My congratulation to John and team for making this happen.  We are now only $5,000 shy of our goal for this year and the good news is that we have some irons in the fire, which should help to take us over the finish line.

OfferUp and Acme came in as a major sponsors with $2,500 each.  We also heard back from Symetra who will make a donation to the event and provide volunteers – we are working on making this a booth sponsorship so we can excite them about the event for next year.  We have outstanding requests with Nintendo, Smartsheet, Alavara, Parallels and some others to secure the goal.

Marketing

We have been leveraging our social media channels to push the recent discount and raffle promotion from SHOES-n-FEET.  Please encourage the membership to Like these social posts, so we can spread the word.

We have completed the ad copy for use in the Kindering Auction Gala (3/25), so that our event will be promoted in their gala brochure.  We will also have some of our members attending the gala as part of our support for Kindering.

Some other updates:

• New press release has been created for the end of February/early March to promote the event and with acknowledgement of our sponsors/celebrities.
• Ad work has been created for the District Newsletter that Chris Boland will pass onto them.
• Published our run date in the following calendars: Bellevue Reporter and Rotary District.
• With our sponsors now secured, the next step will be to leverage them in promoting our race, so we will work with them in terms of messaging and tools to support them in pushing this through company websites and newsletters.
• Securing an updated media contact list for local press, so we can extend our reach with promoting the event.
• John Uppendahl has given us some great ideas that we can leverage once we have secured the Mayor’s Proclamation. The idea is to get some real stories from Kindering that we can share with the media on the day of the proclamation, so we can bring a human aspect to the Autism cause and our event.  I have already asked Alison Morton (courtesy of Wendi’s earlier idea) for the connections and we will see what we can pull together for the meeting in April.
• I have been able to leverage a push for the race in the promotion of my company’s distinguished speaker’s series, which will be part of an email campaign going out to the tech community and promoting the race at the distinguished speaker’s series events. I encourage all of you to find the same opportunities with the event – through your email, your company newsletter, etc.

This is going to be a key area of focus for the race now as this is what will raise our visibility to secure registrations and we are pushing for a high goal of 3000 runners.  Everyone support in this endeavor will be appreciated.

Internal Promotions

Paul Osborn’s internal promotion for Rotarian volunteers continue to provide us with success.  Dustin is very happy with the early engagementJ.

Booths

I have asked Symetra, Easter Seals and Pinkabella Cupcakes to consider being booth sponsors at the event.  We should also work with the membership to secure booths from the business community.  Please work Colleen to make introductions and find opportunities that will allow us to increase the business community’s involvement in the Race Village.

Volunteers

No update for this section, other than to say it seems we are tracking ahead of plan compared with other years.  Dustin has been working with school districts and others to make sure we are set for bringing in the volunteer support.  We also have Symetra promoting volunteers within their firm, so this will add to the total.  Like registrations, this is a critical area for us to make sure we have volunteers if we want to be successful in supporting an event of 3,000 participants.

Finally

My thanks to everyone for their support to date.  Our focus on securing registrations is going to intensify over the next 4-6 weeks until we see the momentum pick up, where it runs under its own steam.  I look forward to hearing your ideas and suggestions for making this happen.  Also, I encourage you to do what you need to do to help push for greater engagement amongst the club membership and your contacts.