All in for Autism Run: Update Note – 19th March, 2017

Weekly Key Metrics:

• Registrations (Goal: 3000): 530 – up 9.1%
• Sponsorship Totals (Goal: $70,000): $71,000 – no change
• Volunteers (Goal: 243): 90 – no change
• New Members: 0
• Total Amount Raised (Goal: $120,000): $89,066 vs. $116,411 (2016 Total)

Summary

We have started to plan for the PR event on 7^th April.  There is a lot to do to make this happen successfully.  This is also going to be critical as we need to drive up registrations.  In terms of logistics, our collateral will be delivered next week.  We will then want to have members pass this out to the community.  Revenues are actually tracking with last year and volunteers are tracking ahead in comparison to last year.

Registrations (Howard’s Analysis)

We now have a total of 530 completed registrations.  This represents an increase of 44 over the previous week and an increase of 120 registrations (31 + 45 + 44) over the past three weeks.  This registration rate lags a bit behind the comparable 3-week increase of 129 registrations (13 + 58 + 58) in 2016.

The 530 registrations as shown for this 2017 year compares with a registration total of 1,073 in the 2016 year.  Hence, we are exactly 543 registrations (1,073 less 530) behind at the “5-week out” point in 2016 and not catching up very fast.  Since our goal for this 2017 year is now set at 2,500 and this 2,500 is exactly 355 more than the 2,145 we had a year ago in 2016, we must step up the registration pace significantly in the weeks ahead.  In summary, we must close a gap between the current level of 530 registrations and the target of 2,500 in just five weeks.  That is an average of 1,970/5 = 394 per week.

The fortunate part (and perhaps our light at the end of the tunnel) is that, in terms of “dollars raised” in registrations, we are not nearly as far behind as we are in “number of registrants”.  The attached sheet shows our total dollars raised so far in the registrations (not counting donations made through the registration process) for the 2017 event is $17,316.  This is almost on track with the $17,737 raised a year ago at this same time.  If we can just kick up the number of registrations to something close to that target of 2,500 for the 2017 event, we can easily exceed the dollars raised in registration from the prior year.  Hence, the target should be “register, register, and register” in the next few weeks and right up to race day.

Sponsorship

We secured Special Olympics Washington as a Race beneficiary this week and they will be engaging in an outreach for our event.  They have a database of 30,000 people and are committed to promoting our race with at least two newsletters to their community, amongst other activities.

We have also connected with some of our sponsors this week to engage them in promoting the event.  A good win will be from Nintendo and OfferUp who are actively promoting within their companies.  OfferUp is going to block purchase 25 registrations after my call with them this week, which they moved on when I indicated the pricing increase coming up in April – this is a good technique for creating urgency with our sponsors.

Steve Luplow confirmed that Bellevue Collections will attend our club for the April 7^th Proclamation.  I was able to connect with the Bellevue Association to secure their support for our Bathe Bellevue in Blue campaign.  Bellevue Chamber has not responded to my outreach.

The next step is for the Sponsorship team to reach out to other sponsors to see how we can engage them in the process to drive up registrations.

Marketing

Marketing is the core area that will be the primary focus for our team.  It is critical that we push much more aggressively here to have a direct impact on our registrations.

• MOVIN is also interested in connecting with Kindering to involve them in the PSA activity that we have going with the radio station outreach and this will be a nice touch for our PR.
• Social media campaigns – our donations for the event are tracking ahead of last year and this I think comes down to the social media campaign through Linkedin and Twitter. We need to push this more aggressively and so I will be ramping this up personally.  It will be good if all of you can do the same.
• Mayoral Proclamation (Bathe Bellevue in Blue): the planning for this event is underway. We have to coordinate the meeting on 7^th April with the press, VIPs, sponsors and the mayor’s proclamation.  The plan will be distributed this week to those who have volunteered to be a part of this effort.  A shout out to Michel Carter who has confirmed that Dennis Bounds will be attending our meeting on 7^th April for the proclamation.
• New posters and flyers are printed and will be made available next week to the club. I have also confirmed with the City of Bellevue that they will distribute these to their Parks & Recreation facilities.  We will also want to get them to the Boys & Girls clubs, Rotary Clubs and other venues to increase visibility – all of you can volunteer to help here, please get back to me.  Tom Miller has already reached out and will be distributing flyers through the Easter Seals community/facilities to raise awareness.
• I need to coordinate some additional updates to the website this week. We also need to do another SHOES-n-FEET promotion for the end of the month, before the price increases.  George is also working on a call-to-action email graphic that we can share amongst the membership for outreach to our members and others – this will be available this week.
• I will be working on a new press release for this week to start some of the promotional activities we need for the final five weeks before the run itself.
• I will be sharing the PR plan latter today to everyone who is a part of this team. Again, any help that can be lent to our efforts here will be appreciated.

Internal Promotions

Made a presentation to the club this week on the progress to date and put out a call to action for the 2 volunteers and 22 participants from each our members.  I am kind of stumped on what else can be done here to engage the wider membership to support the club’s biggest fund raiser, so any ideas from the team will be most welcome.

On a bright side, Paul Osborn’s campaign to help Dustin with volunteers has been doing well.  The engagement with the board and roles has been fun to watch.

Rotary Club outreach – next week, I would like to have a skit or outreach to our members to engage our local Rotary clubs for support of the event.

Logistics

We have received the Special Events Permit from the City, so we are a go.  Thanks to Joellen for staying on top of this area.

Our course logistics and planning are the next big effort after we solve the registration flow.  My thanks to Steve Roberts and Steve Luplow for getting started on the conversations.  There are a ton of moving parts that need to be coordinated between the club, City, Orswell events and volunteers.  Let’s remain close to any support that needs to be provided here.

T-shirts are being produced – we have changed the artwork a little to minimize the price as a result of the colors that we have, so this will come a little bit more expensive than planned, but still less than what we were originally quoted by Brooks.

Finally

In the end, this event can only be as successful as the engagement we can secure form our members, the community and our sponsors.  So, to Howard’s point, lets focus everything we do on driving up registrations by doing everything we can possibly can to increase the visibility and support for the Race to hit our goal of 2,500.  We have five weeks left and we need to hustle to get our registrations moving!