Bellevue Breakfast Rotary Club

Best Darn Club in the World

Kaj Pedersen

All in for Autism Run: Update Note – 16th February, 2017

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Weekly Key Metrics:

  • Registrations (Goal: 3000): 373 – up 16.2%
  • Sponsorship Totals (Goal: $70,000): $71,000 – up 9.2%
  • Volunteers (Goal: 243): 59 – up 28.3%
  • New Members: 0

Summary

We have achieved our first objective and hit our sponsorship target for the event – we now have $71,000 committed from external businesses.  This achievement allows us to now focus on driving up registrations for the race and we are embarking on a number of promotional efforts to make this happen.  We are making good progress on our volunteer goals and this is the most Rotarians we have seen sign up this early, which is marvelous.

City of Bellevue

Our banners for the race have been prepared and we will be working on handing them off in advance of the event.  We continue to work on securing the proclamation from the Mayor in preparation for the promotional activity we have planned for this event.  The next step will be to have our collaterals published so we can get the materials distributed throughout the Parks and Recreation’s facilities.

It is good to have most of this side of the race organization taken care of since it represented the biggest risk for us at the start of our project last year with the course challenges.

Sponsorship

It is great that we were able to get this goal accomplished this early into the process.  We were able to get closure from Symetra, Nintendo, Microsoft and Parallels, which carried us over the $70,000.  We have some outstanding requests and it is my hope that we will get closer to $75,000 when the dust settles.

My thanks to the sponsorship team for their help and for driving the sense of urgency around this aspect of the race.   We had some challenges with prior sponsors dropping out, so we did start behind from last year’s impressive sponsor commitment.  However, we were hustled and remained open to looking for new partners with a good result for the race overall and with new partners joining us.

George Searing from Orswell Events has pulled together the Sponsorship Agreements for our major sponsors who have made contributions that are $2,500 and above.  John will be working with us to coordinate the distribution of these agreements, so we can lock in the value they represent to us and our partners.  We will be able to have Howard and Jason send invoices to our sponsors for the start of the collection process.

We will need to make sure we do a good job of recognizing our sponsors after the event as this will be key to keeping them engaged with the event for the future.  Chris Boland has the suggested the idea that we have a club program to celebrate the sponsors and allow them to present to our membership as well.  I think this is a great way for us to build a relationship with our partners, raise the visibility of club within their businesses and, I hope, establish new channels for securing members.  We will need to make sure we do not lose sight of this opportunity once the race is over.

Marketing

We launched our past participants promotion this past week.  We were able to work with Orswell Events to incorporate a past list of runners with their current list of past participants with the result that we were able to send our $5 discount to 2,800 potential registrants.  This is the start of the renewed focus on driving up registrations over the next 9 weeks.  We have to pull in over 250 registrants per week, so we can meet our goal of 3000 participants and 219 volunteers.

We will kick start next week off with another press release that is planned to go out on Tuesday to our media channels.  We will then use this as an opportunity to promote our event through our various partners, social media channels and other outlets available to us.  To this end, here is what we have ahead of us:

  • We will need to work with our sponsorship partners to have them promote the race to their employees through their wellness programs and their community support groups. The media committee will work on making sure this outreach happens on the back of the sponsorship agreements being sent out.
  • We will be planning another 2-3 press releases before the event and these will tie into the following:
    • Release to go 2/25 that will announce our event celebrities (Zach Scott/Dennis Bounds), our major sponsors and quoting Kindering as our beneficiary
    • Release to go in March around the progress to date and other promotions that will focus on the goal of driving up registration
    • Release to go in April, when we have secured the Mayoral proclamation that will highlight Autism month, our event and family stories that will make this event real in the mind of registrants
  • We have now posted our event to the following community calendars:
    • Geekwire
    • Washington Technology Industry Association
    • Northwest New Tech Meetup
    • Bellevue Reporter
    • We will keep hunting these calendars down to make sure they are relevant to our demographic and locality
  • We continue to work with the ABA and other autism groups to get support from them in terms of participants and visibility for the event.
  • We will be sending an update out into the Rotarian District newsletter. I will also work on sending a note out to all members in the district to see if this will generate support for our event as well.
  • We continue to push stories out via our web outlets: Facebook, Website, Twitter and Linkedin. Please make sure you encourage members to like the updates.
  • I will be planning to promote the race during the distinguished speaker series hosted by Atlas Informatics to get more registrants – we will leverage our company’s social media and other contacts to make this happen. I am also planning on attending a number of Eastside technology meetups to promote the event.
  • We will be publishing our collaterals for the event, so we can hand out posters, cards and other materials to our contacts. This will include the Parks & Recreation’s support through their website and facilities.

We have a lot of work to accomplish over the next few weeks, so please help where you can to promote amongst the club membership, your contacts and our business community.  It does not take much to bring this to the attention of people in your network and it will add so much to the overall success of the event.

Internal Promotions

I have asked Carmela to kick start a competition within the club, so we can get our members involved in a fun way to go after participants.  By keeping it simple in terms of the goal, it is my hope that people will engage more readily since we are not asking for the members to raise dollars.  We just want our club to generate interest, teams and runners for the event.  It would be great if we can add things like reaching out to their company wellness programs or community sites and be able to get credit for making it happen.

I will let Carmela and Wendi come up with the ideas for us to get behind.

Booths

We have Easter Seals committed to a booth – yay!  I know that we have a couple of other Autism related groups locked in.  I am still working with Pinkabella on a promotional idea and I suspect it will be launched from our Rotary Booth, so we can get some traffic there for membership recruitment.  We need more and now we have an opportunity to focus on reaching out to our networks for business support – let’s lean in and help Colleen with this effort.  I will commit to securing another two booths personally and I hope that others will join me in the personal challenge.

Volunteers

We have seen a healthy jump in volunteers – over 28%.  This is great momentum and we need to keep it going.

Dustin is also going to learn from Steve Luplow and course officials to provide the official count of course Volunteers needed.  ***Don’t be shocked when Dustin jack’s the “Total Target” number from 243 to 293 to account for the 20%+ no shows we typically see.

Dustin has contacted all BSD high schools. Actually got three to put the word out for us.  Next week, Dustin is going to reach out to the remaining BSD High schools to participate and he will also contact all LWSD high schools.

The high school kids are just beginning to show up.  It’s traditionally super slow until April.  Basically Dustin will advertise now, absolutely nothing happens, he will fret a lot, and then everything happens at the end.  Let’s do our bit to make sure Dustin does not fret…or wear his gym shorts!

Finally

Now that we have the course details locked in, the sponsors secured and our promotional activities being lined up it is time for us to think about the other tasks.  Kids Dash, booths, course logistics and other key activities are also necessary for us to get behind, so please find ways to cajole, engage and push our members into making this happen.

We have 9 weeks of the journey left and an ambitious goal in terms of getting 3000 runners.  Let’s make it happen as the more money we raise the more good we can do for the community.  In the end, this is what will make us important partners in the community and will lead to getting more members as they see the value of Rotary in making a difference.

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

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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.

Meeting Update – 3rd February, 2017

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Weekly Key Metrics:

  • Registrations (Goal: 3000): 312 – up 58%
  • Sponsorship Totals (Goal: $70,000): $52,500 – up 3%
  • Volunteers (Goal: 219): 46 – up 228%
  • New Members: 0

Summary

The big accomplishment is that we have locked down on the course with the City and secured their approval.  We have also been able to secure our Race Village, which allows us to overcome the challenge of the construction work underway in the park.  We continue to make good strides with our PR, outreach to the Autism organizations and volunteers.

Course Update

Jeff Orswell, Steve Luplow and Joellen have all delivered on securing our course with the City and Bellevue Collection.  This has been the one big variable to our event this year and it is no small task in the level of collaboration, negotiation and followup that has been required to make this happen.  My thanks to all three for being engaged in making this happen for us.

The course will be a wee bit longer as a result of working around the challenges of the downtown park.  We also have some challenges we need to think about with respect to the timing of the race start to avoid the potential congestions of runners as we work around some of the lane constrictions.  Our Race Village will be in the car park, although we do have some optionality to move it into the park, should the construction not be in the way.  We will keep you informed of the progress in the logistics as they get worked out.

Sponsorship

We have secured another $1500 from Atlas Informatics, so we continue to see the tech companies coming in to participate with the race.  We are expecting to hear from Symetra this coming week with respect to their involvement.  We also have outstanding requests to hear back on from OfferUp, Parallels, Avalara and Smartsheet.

John is following up on the remaining members who supported us last year, so we can close out the commitments here as well.  I have also asked Steve Luplow to see if Brooks will be willing to come in at the $1500 level as well as offering us the shirts at $6.50 – this is one way we can keep them involved with us as partner for the future.

We are looking to close this all up in the next couple of weeks, so we can get started on the collaterals and the promotions for the major sponsors.

Marketing

We are continuing to build on our momentum for marketing.  The key updates are as follows:

  • Zach Scott has approved our next press release with him mentioned. He will also be a speaker at our club in February, so we can generate some buzz around his talk and the race.
  • Securing the proclamation from the City for Autism month is close to approval. We will have the Mayor come to a club meeting in April to make the announcement.  John Uppendahl has some great ideas for us to pursue in this area and we will be connecting him with the media team to support us.
  • New Tech Northwest has sent out their newsletter with our race promotion included, so I am excited to see if we pick up some support here.
  • We are preparing our next press release announcing the sponsors for the race to be sent out mid-February and we have our distribution sorted out.
  • We have ordered our banners for the two bridges in Bellevue to be printed, so we can get these out there in advance of the race.
  • We are going to kick off the SHOES-n-FEET promotion with Orswell Events support, so we can encourage runners to sign up for the race and participate in a $50 raffle.
  • We will also have the monthly discount promotion, which was also kicked off for February, to help drive urgency into the registration process.
  • We have agreed an approach for our social media site promotions within the club, so we can drive up visibility through these channels and have our club membership support us as well.

As we gain traction in all these areas it is our anticipation that we will continue to see an increase in the registrations for the race.

Internal Promotions

We presented an update to the club membership this past week with respect to the race committee and our activities.   Appreciate the cheerleading from Carmela to excite the club this past Friday and the plug Wendi gave for our race as well.  Our internal communications has begun!

Paul Osborn’s early promotion game for volunteers was great to see this past Friday and the fact that he has already secured a number of Rotarians to the effort is a big win for us this early in the game.  Expect to see more from Paul.

Booths

We took the opportunity to reach out to Easter Seals with respect to their request for a booth and I hope we are able to secure them into the event, as I think there are other partnership opportunities that we an piggyback off here.  Alex is also working with the Autism groups where we need to be flexible in the terms with respect to securing runners and volunteers due to their size – I think this is fair since we are raising the profile of the event in the long term and we want to become the long term strategic partner for the Autism cause.

Volunteers

Wow!  We already have 46 volunteers secured.  I think everyone saw Dustin’s note on this topic and it is really good to see that we are making progress on this early on the journey.  We will continue to push for volunteers early on, so we are able to take some of the pressure off before the event with respect to the support required for the course, etc.

Mr. Paul Hagen has shared our needs within EPS, both with the running team and with the service team.  We now need to reach out to the other schools and make sure we can get them involved.  I will be working with Laura to visit our Interact club and get them involved with the race, either as runners or in some other capacity with the project so they can be more engaged with our club.

Finally

We are very close to pulling the trigger on the logistics side of the event with respect to collaterals, route planning and Race Village planning.  The need for others from the club to be involved is going to be an area of focus that we will shift to so we can bring in other members.   We have some six open slots on the race committee, so please reach out to others and have them step up.  It will allow for better execution and support, as well as setting us up with a succession plan for future leadership.

Again, my thanks to you all.  We are getting traction and it bodes well for our April 23rd event.

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

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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 – 3rd 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.

All in for Autism Run: Meeting Update – 22nd January 2017

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Key Metrics:

  • Registrations: 187 (Goal: 3000)
  • Sponsorship Totals: $51,000 (Goal: $70,000)
  • Volunteers: 14 (Goal: 219)
  • New Members: 0

Summary

A quick update from the run meeting at this past week’s BBRC gathering.  We are making progress in a number of areas that will feed into our key metrics above.  However, the overriding theme is that we need to get cracking on a number of efforts this month to help generate the momentum we need – – this is our call to action now we have just over three months to D-Day!

The key metrics show that we are slow on registrations compared to last year.  We are making good progress on sponsorships, in spite of some setbacks that include Childrens and Concur not renewing their commitments.  We do need to drum up volunteers and need to begin our outreach to the community.

New members will become more relevant as our event’s momentum gathers steam and we are able to raise our presence within the community.

Course Update

Jeff Orswell confirmed the update with respect to the City seeking to keep as much of the routes from the previous year as possible in place.  Jeff is going to work with Steve Luplow to move the Race Village to one of the parking structures on the north side of 4th between Bell Way and 100th.  Jeff is looking to close out with Steve Luplow on what the Bellevue Square will allow for those areas.

Summary of route: The Start/Finish moves to 4th.  It will make both races a little longer.  We’ll start running west on 4th, turn south on 100th, turn east on 2nd and from there the courses will be the same as last year.  We’ll then return the same route in reverse (Bell Way to 2nd to 100th to 4th).  Once Jeff hears back from Steve Luplow on Bellevue Square decision, then Jeff will schedule a follow-up meeting with the City and have Steve and Jeff represent us to finalize it all.

Sponsorship

We have had two wins in that Starbucks confirmed their commitment at $7,500 and Amazon has agreed to come in at $5,000 as a new sponsor – this makes up for the loss of Seattle’s and Concur this year.  We are working the reach out to the tech community and other business with a view that we can also secure other participants for supporting our event.

We have heard back from Symmetra who are considering the possibility of coming in as a sponsor and we will let you know when that decision comes through.  We have also found another way to approach Smartsheet (via Chris Boland) to come in after their internal people said no; we will keep you informed.  Other technology companies have been approached and we will keep you updated.  Our timeline is to have these all locked in before 2/15 to allow for the production of collaterals.

Please continue to rally around John and Jenny in securing support for sponsors for this year’s event.  We have an aggressive goal and we are making good progress with the $51,000 already secured and that leaves us only $19,000 short of the goal.

 Marketing

Our initial promotion of the event with respect to early registration has generated 187 registrations.  This is significantly behind from where we were last year.  It is clear we have to take a bolder and more aggressive approach with raising the visibility of the event over the crowded running event market.  To this end, there a couple of big ideas we will be pursuing to help us generate buzz:

  • Securing a personality for the Race: I will be speaking with Zach Scott (Mr. Sounder of the Sounders) next week – 1/24/17. The goal is to secure Zach to start our race and to leverage his name in promoting the event, especially in light of the Sounders MLS win.
  • Securing support from the City of Bellevue to declare April 23rd “All in for Autism” Day. Leverage this to promote the event through local media stations.
  • Raise our profile within the Technology Community. This will happen through outreach to technology community organizations like New Tech Northwest, Washington Technology Industry Association and others.
  • We will generate 1-2 press releases a month that raise the visibility of the event, our sponsors and the progress we are making to generate engagement. Our first release will go out next week: All in for Autism Announcement Press Release.

I met with Brett Green (one of the leaders of New Tech Northwest) to secure his support for promoting our event through his community – there are regularly over 300 people attending each of their monthly events in Bellevue and Seattle.  Brett agreed to promote our event via his newsletter and we are welcome to promote it at the event themselves.  We will also be promoting our event through his volunteer calendar.  This will help with our intent to reach out to the Tech Community.

We also want to kick off the internal club promotion to generate excitement within our membership for this event, so Carmela and Wendi are on point for helping us organize around this for the next 2-3 months.  Look out for opportunities to volunteer in the skits.

Finally, we will need to increase our promotion of the event through our social media outlets.  This will need to be organized and there are some opportunities for us to have club members involved, while also using Meetup to generate enthusiasm with the large running groups in the area.

City of Bellevue

A huge thank to you Joellen Monson who has completed the work of getting our documentation in place with the City of Bellevue.  It really has been a challenge this year with respect to the details around the running courses not being locked down.  Joellen has worked closely to make sure the City remains supportive and responsive to our needs.  I will be dropping off the completed agreement and insurance with the City next week, so we can move forward on securing their permission.

Volunteers

I will be meeting with Alison Morton from Kindering this coming Wednesday to discuss how Kindering can support our needs for the race with respect to volunteers, runners and buzz.  I will update you all once this meeting has taken place.

The next step will be to reach out to those schools and Rotary youth organizations that we are involved with to make sure we can secure support from them for volunteering and promotion of the event.  Sooner is better, now is best J.

Event Day Activities

We are looking at alternatives for t-shirt production in light of Brooks not being able to support us this year.  Brooks did offer to produce our t-shirts at $6.50 and although generous, we think we can get a better price, so Jeff will be providing us with options to make a decision on.

We have also asked Orswell events to move forward on the production of the Race Banners, once the City has confirmed our permission of the event.

Team Update – 8th January 2017

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Team,

A Happy New Year to you all!  I hope that you were all able to enjoy the seasonal festivities with your families – it certainly seemed to fly by this year.

Well, we have a lot to update you on with respect to the Run.  It is fair to say that our work is now going to start as we begin the process of building momentum for the race in April.  So, without further ado, here are the updates.

Course Update

This continues to be an open item.  The latest update is that Jeff Orswell met with Titus (Bellevue Dept. of Transportation) and Lt Sanabria (Bellevue PD) just before Christmas.  In short, the City is wanting us to keep as much of the routes from the previous year as possible in place.  We’re discussing simply moving  Race Village to one of the parking structures on the north side of 4th between Bell Way and 100th.  Steve Luplow is talking to the Bellevue Square people about the use of one of those areas.

The idea being that we’d then move the Start/Finish to 4th.  It’s going to add a little distance to both races, but we think it’s our best option.  We’ll start running west on 4th, turn south on 100th, turn east on 2nd and from there the courses will be the same as last year.  We’ll then return the same route in reverse (Bell Way to 2nd to 100th to 4th).  Jeff is waiting to hear back from Steve Luplow on what Bellevue Square says, then will schedule a follow-up meeting with the City and have Steve and Jeff represent us to finalize it all.

We’ll also address the pending construction coming on 112th for the installation of light rail, the utilities construction on 116th at SE 8th and the construction at 2nd and 102nd to make sure we’ll be clear in April.

Sponsorship

We have updated our brochure to remove Seattle Childrens from the sponsorship.  We have not been able to schedule a follow up meeting with them at this time, so I think we move on.  I have been able to connect with Kindering’s business development manager (Alison Morton) and we will be meeting in the next couple of weeks to discuss ways that we can leverage their partnership.  More to follow.

We did receive some disappointing news from Brooks with respect to the race shirts, which they will not be able to donate to us as on previous occasions.  They did offer to sell us the shirts at  $6.50 (a lower cost per unit).  The good news is that we were able to rally around the issue with some other ideas.  Steve Luplow was able to connect with Katherine DeStephano and explain the situation.  Katherine generously stepped forward and reached out to her contacts in Marketing at The North Face who have allowed her to use her co-op dollars for the Bellevue 10k.  Furthermore, Katherine agreed to have Escape Outdoors to be the 10k sponsor-at the $7500 – we will discuss if you prefer it in T-shirts or in cash.

Steve Luplow is also in contact with Bellevue Square team about engaging them at the $10,000 sponsorship level.  So, we hope to secure their support for the run once again.  John Martinka was also able to secure the Overlake Medical Center at $5,000 sponsorship level.  I know there are more updates to come, but I did want to let you know that we have traction with this side of the race.  It also looks like Concur is interested in continuing at the $2,500 sponsorship level, which John is looking to close.  Also, John is working with Jeff Cashman on the Uwajimaya sponsorship as well.

This brings me on the final point that I want to make with respect to sponsorships and that is for you to rally around John and Jenny in making sure we get the word out for sponsors.  Each of you please reach out to your networks and members of the club to put out the call to action.  I am in the process of reaching out to my network and waiting for some responses and Alex Chehab has generated a wonderful list of groups involved with Autism work that we hope to leverage for outreach and support in our efforts.  We can all make a difference.

Marketing

We were able to launch our early registration program in December with the assistance of Orswell Event’s support.  We updated our website, sent out Facebook and emails encouraging runners to register early to secure the discount during the holiday season.  Finally, we have produced our first batch of brochures to be distributed around the area.

Alex has been working been working with Adam Stuhlfaut (Director with SHOES-n-FEET – Running!), who approached Mike Ralph about supporting our efforts this year.   Adam and Alex are working on a plan to leverage his organizations capabilities to support our race via social media and his contacts, with content like videos, etc.  The PR team will provide him with a schedule.  We are also looking to setup a raffle to generate interest and we are working on the details with respect to what this will look like.

This is also when we will want to begin the process of promoting our race, both internally and externally, so I will be looking to the PR and Club Promotion teams to kick start their plans, so we can generate excitement amongst the community and the membership for our run.  I will be approaching the two teams to engage on the process to support our success in this area.  We can never be too early for this effort and to this point I ask all of you to leverage your social media to like and promote our event, when the opportunity presents itself.  Here is the link for you to use: https://secure.getmeregistered.com/get_information.php?event_id=125588.

Website

You will notice that I have been updating the Team section on the website with the updates, so that we can keep a record of all the efforts for this event.  Please do the same for your areas, so we have one source of truth for the race and a record that others can learn from.  Dropbox will also continue to be an archive for us.

One big update was the update that Alex and Michel made to the wording for the summary of the event.  I think you will find the language more appropriate for communicating our event:

“The All In For Autism 10K & 5K Run/Walk is a family event brought to you by the Bellevue Breakfast Rotary Club (BBRC) to raise awareness for Autism and other related disorders. The All In for Autism event is put on to show support for families and/or caregivers, affected by this growing neurological condition, and to thank those in our community who work to provide support and success to these individuals, in the hopes of expanding the circle of care. 1 in 68 individuals are affected by autism, and show impairment in the following areas: communication, repetitive patterns of behavior and social skills. Funds raised from this event go to: Kindering, as well as other identified agencies, plus Rotary projects that benefit children and families locally and internationally. Together, let’s make a difference! If you are a runner, volunteer, and/or sponsor, sign up today  and show your commitment!”

Please note the increase in profile of Rotary, so we can make sure we are telling our story.

 City of Bellevue

Joellen Monson has been doing sterling work in making sure our paperwork is handled with the City.  This is an unseen body of work that is very involved and Joellen has been instrumental in our success with the City and the good relationship we have with them.  Joellen is continuing to shepherd this process to submit appropriate paperwork from the City and is working with Jon and Ted for the race as needed and while keeping us updated.  Once the course has been determined, Joellen will be able to bring this work to a conclusion with the City.

We will also be able to leverage the relationship with Ted at the City (he is a huge fan of the race) and use their channels across the area to promote our run.  So, I will be looking to have our PR team engage with Joellen and Ted to take advantage of this opportunity.

Volunteers

We must not overlook supporting Dustin in his significant task of securing volunteers.  To this end, please make sure you leverage your networks and other contacts you have to make sure we do not leave this as a last ditch effort.  Volunteers are an important element to the success of the race and, more importantly, they can be future Rotarians as well since they will be exposed to our work.  I have already made contact with Eastside Preparatory School to secure support from their newly formed Community Services group and I will also be looking to ways that we can secure support from our Rotary youth groups this year.

Event Day Activities

I’m pleased to say that we have agreed to a proposal from Rogue Multi-sport for the timing tags.  My thanks to Howard and Steve Roberts for their engagement in reviewing this proposal.  We have kept the price the same as last year and built in some mitigations regarding the risk with securing the course. We have one very significant change in scope, Rogue will be providing disposable timings tags attached to the backs of the race bibs in lieu of the reusable shoe tags as done in the past. This is a big upgrade and eliminates the need for chip collection and return and avoids any cost associated with shoe tags not being returned.

Team Meeting

I wanted to notify the team that it is my intent to hold a meeting when we are back in our regular location at Glendale.  This will allow us to all get caught up in person and start to work on the key tasks to drive momentum and engagement with the event.  I will speak with some of you at next week’s meeting in person, so we can start some of these activities sooner.

My thanks to you all for your continued support of this event.  We are well positioned to make this a wonderful event this year, even with some of the challenges ahead of us, and this makes it all the more worthwhile.  Onwards and forwards.

Run Committee Meeting Notes: 2016-12-02

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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.

All in for Autism Run: Pre-Thanksgiving Update

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Team,

May I take this opportunity to wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving and that you are able to enjoy the time with your friends and families.

I do have a couple of quick updates for the team.  My intent is keep these emails coming so we can all be on the same page during the ramp up to the actual event itself.

Sponsorship

We have heard back from Seattle Childrens and they have confirmed that they are unable to be the sponsor for the Kids Dash ($2500).  We have made the decision to keep them as a beneficiary, but this news may warrant another conversation.  I welcome thoughts on this in terms of alternative sponsors.  In the meantime, we have left them off the website until we make a decision about the partnership and we will work on speaking with them to see how they can assist us in spite of this decision.

In the meantime please continue to work with your network and others to secure other sponsors for the run.  Pass the information onto John and Jenny, so they can work with you.  Also, please make sure you are able to ask questions around how potential sponsorship partners can support the race beyond financial considerations, i.e. volunteers, race teams and marketing.  This will help increase our reach.

I have attached the first draft of the sponsorship brochure that we will use to promote and hopefully secure sponsors.  Please provide me with your feedback and then we can work on the next steps of producing it.

Marketing

Alex and Michel have pulled together the first draft of the marketing plan for the race.  I will be finalizing my review of the document with the intent of then sharing amongst the team to make sure we have a couple of things resolved: (1) an understanding how we can leverage this event to support the general themes behind the race – run, give, volunteer and BBRC membership and (2) to make sure we are telling the story of Rotary within our local community.  This will make it easier for us to build momentum and engagement with the event itself as others see the overall benefit.

Website

Good news – our registration page has gone live!  Please take advantage of promoting this to your friends and others within Rotary to make sure we get traction around the event itself.  Here is the link: https://secure.getmeregistered.com/get_information.php?event_id=125588.  My thanks to Orswell events and Paul Osborn for the effort in getting this up, to help us secure registrations.  Now we need to promote it!

Course Update

We have no update at this juncture.  You will see we have positioned the website to secure engagement without necessarily detailing the course.  We will make sure to get this sorted out once we have details.

I will call another committee meeting after next week’s club meeting, so we can address any questions or issues in person.  Until then, enjoy the long weekend.