All in for Autism Run: Weekly Update - 28th Jan 2017

Weekly Key Metrics:

• Registrations (Goal: 3000): 198 – up 6%
• Sponsorship Totals (Goal: $70,000): $51,000 – no change
• Volunteers (Goal: 219): 14 – up 14%
• New Members: 0

Summary

We have had some good wins this week in terms of partnership engagement, media outreach and sponsor discussions.  We also suffered a setback with our website, which was quickly addressed through heroic efforts.  We have also stayed on top of our City discussions while we lock down on the details for the course.

Overall, it has been great to see the response from the team to our call to action to happily push our boulder up the mountain in the pursuit of our goals.  It has been wonderful to see this individual effort take shape as a team.

Course Update

Jeff Orswell continues to negotiate on our behalf to lock in the final details with the course, particularly in terms of the Race Village and its location.  He is coordinating with Steve Luplow (who is representing our case to Bellevue Collections) and Steve Roberts on the logistics.  We have a meeting coming up in early February, where it is hoped that we will have these details locked in to secure support from the City for the new route this year.

Joellen continues to undertake the challenging task of making sure we are in alignment with the obligations that we need to meet with the City.  She has been brilliant at remaining nibble to the requests for documentation from the City, while keeping the rest of us on point with the tasks we need to complete.  It is not an easy task to herd the cats that we represent and she does so with tack and a directness that I appreciate.

Sponsorship

We have had some responses from the cold calls to new sponsors this past week.  We are now engaged in conversations with PSE (who I think will probably be present in the form of a booth sponsor), OfferUp and Kindering.

I am hoping that we will be able to engage OfferUp as one of bigger sponsors, so the conversations are ongoing.  My conversations with PSE were useful in that we will work to engage them as a booth sponsor and use this to demonstrate the value for hopefully upselling them into a bigger role next year.

Kindering has agreed to support us in all the following ways:

1. Social media promotion:  they will promote registrations in the month of February and again in April (bookending the Kindering auction).  All FB posts will be linked to Rotary and the run
2. Volunteers: they’ll get the word out on volunteering and have already connected with Dustin
3. Runners Village: Kindering will host a table at the runners’ village
4. Partner Promotion: Kindering will send race details to WAA and FEAT to ensure that as many families know about the run as possible.  They will send materials when we send it onto them.
5. Emcee:  They will connect BBRC to Dennis Bounds again as needed. He worked with Michel Carter last year to Emcee our event.
6. Gala ad for the run:  We will be to send them a pre-designed ad for the Kindering gala booklet on 3/25.  Perfect timing and a reminder to help drive more engagement for our event.

We are working on the details for Bellevue Collections level of sponsorship support to ensure they are seeing a good return on the investment and getting the reach that aligns with their goals.  We hope to have this resolved next week.  Orswell events, John and Steve Luplow have been working with me on the details.

We are looking to lock in the key sponsors before 2/15, so we can make sure our collaterals are ready in time for more promotional activities.  For all those of you who know people in the community that are interested in sponsoring, then get them introduced to John or Jenny.  Do not be daunted by the potential for getting a No as an answer – as they say: “you have to kiss a lot of frogs before finding a prince,” and asking as many people as possible means we maximize our chances of finding more than one prince.

Marketing

This has been a good week for media outreach.  We were able to:

• Secure support from Zach Scott to promote our event and start the race. We are working on the details of how to engage him.  Zach is excited to be a part of this journey.
• Joellen has been leading the charge to secure the Declaration from the Mayor of the City. She has submitted our application and now we wait for the decision.
• New Tech Northwest has agreed to carry our race promotion in their next newsletter and will also allow us to promote it on their calendar of community events.
• Washington Technology Industry Association has included the event on their Community calendar, so we will see some traction from here as well.
• Michel has sent out our first press release (one of many) to the local media outlets. We hope to continue to generate buzz through this medium.
• Alex has been successful in her outreach to Autism support groups and we look forward to seeing the momentum develop from this as they engage.

I also want us to start the monthly discount program to drive up momentum on registrations through this promotion.  I will be speaking with Jeff Orswell next week to kick this off as it worked well for us last year and created the right sense of urgency we want to create in the participants mind for not missing out on the deal.  It also heightens the likelihood of participation from the registrants because they have now paid for being in the event – which is great for sponsorship visibility.

Website

Our website was hacked earlier in the week.  This made it unusable for securing registrations and also impacted us a little with sponsors who were looking for information.  I want to highlight the efforts of Paul Osborn, who chased down our ISP to get this resolved.  When Go Daddy were unable to make it happen, Paul rolled up his sleeves and recovered the site for us, which was not an easy task.  George Searing stepped in and quickly QA’d the site with the result that the minor issues were resolved.

We had the site back up and available by Friday – a full three days ahead of what Go Daddy were committing to.  My thanks to the heroic efforts to ensure that we have our web presence in tact.

Booths

Colleen has updated our Booth Sponsorship forms and loaded them up to DropBox.  We can now go out and start securing the booth sponsors – I want to make sure we get these out and secure booth sponsors early.  They bring in revenue and they make the race day exciting for the participants, so please put the word out and make sure we get a good crop of participants this year.

Colleen has also been working on a form for the Autism groups, which she will share with Alex.  The commitment we want from the groups is that they will provide up to 15 runners/volunteers for the event and in return we will provide them with a spot in the Race Village.

Volunteers

I am planning on engaging our youth leaders within Rotary to get their early engagement in the event.  I think it is important for us to bring the Interact’s and Rotaract’s into the fold early.  They will benefit from the experience and we will be able to engage them to the Rotary cause.  I will be reaching out Laura to begin this process.

I also connected with Mr. Paul Hagen at the meeting this Friday and he is prepared for my email next week to engage Eastside Preparatory School.  I will be reaching out to our liaisons with schools within the club to get started on early engagement as well.

I am hoping that we will have both runners and volunteers from our youngsters.  It will energize the event and I hope bind them to the cause of Rotary.

Finally

I plan to have a race committee meeting after next week’s club meeting at Glendale – 3^rd February.  I hope you will all be able to make it.

My thanks to you all for the contributions you have made to date.  Please keep me informed of your updates, so that they can be represented in this regular updates.