Fundraising

Weekly Key Metrics:

• Registrations (Goal: 2,500): 621 – up 17.2%
• Sponsorship Totals (Goal: $70,000): $71,000 – no change
• Volunteers (Goal: 243): 90 – no change
• New Members: 0
• Total Amount Raised (Goal: $120,000): $91623 vs. $116,411 (2016 Total)

Summary

April 7^th will be the press event for the Mayor’s Proclamation.  The team is now coordinating our effort to make this event happen in the most effective manner.  T-shirts are designed in the hands of the vendor.  New posters and flyers were delivered to the club.  We are starting to see engagement from outreach in registrations with a 17.2% bump this week, which is encouraging.  We have secured prizes for 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd place positions in the 5K and 10K from Kendra Scott.

Registrations (Howard’s Analysis)

We currently have 621 registered participants.  This compares with 1,176 registrants at this same time a year ago.  Our growth rate in registrations in this 2017 year is clearly behind the growth in registration from last year.  This past week saw an increase in 91 registrants.  The comparable increase in registrations for the same week last year was 103.

Fortunately, the dollars raised in the registration data base for the 2017 year is fairly comparable to that of the 2016 year.  Notice that the amount raised at this time in 2017 (exactly four weeks out) is $20,623.  This compares favorably with the $20,387 raised in 2016 at the same time.  The average price of the registrations sold on the website so far this year is $33.21.  This compares with an average price of only $17.34 a year ago.

We are now poised to make a significant push forward with registrations in these last four weeks.  If we can reach close to our current target of 2,500 registrations and keep our average sale price above $30, we should be able to significantly increase the dollars raised in this year’s event.

Sponsorship

We have engaged Kendra Scott as sponsors for our 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd place prizes for the runners from the 5K and 10K events this year.  We will be promoting Kendra Scott through our participant packages and via the announcements, so that participants can visit the store, where we will receive 20% from any purchases made.

Adam Mihlstin has successful persuaded the facilities people at T-Mobile to turn the lights to Blue for the month of April, which is brilliant.  Now Adam is working on securing someone from T-Mobile community team, so we can tie this back into promotional activities for our event with them being a sponsor.

We have confirmed that we will have six VIPs from Bellevue Collection for the April 7^th Proclamation event.  We will also be reaching out to other sponsors to see if we can invite them to attend our meeting as well.  The more the merrier.

Marketing

We have confirmed that the April 7^th meeting will be dedicated to the promotion of the All in for Autism run.  It will be open to the press and we will be focusing on raising the visibility of our beneficiaries’ causes, incorporating speeches from our celebrities (Zach Scott and Dennis Bounds) and sponsors, before launching into the Mayor’s proclamation.  At the end, it is our intent to award Mimi Siegel with the All in for Autism Award, which will also be the call for nominations for next year’s award.

To this end, we have a number of activities that we are coordinating around with making sure we have the Glendale meeting room setup correctly (press friendly), confirmation of guests and securing the details we need for the press in terms of B-roll and packages.  It will be a change up from prior meetings, but it is important for us to make sure we get the most from this event to drive up registrations in the last three weeks before the race.  More specific details will be coming out to the team next week.

In the meantime, here are other details from the ongoing outreach that has been underway this past week:

• Kindering Gala (3/25) had a promotion for our event in their auction brochure – we are seeing some increases in registrations as a result.
• Social media campaigns – we promoted an end of month 10% discount with $50 gift card from SHOES-n-FEET this week. The promotion ends this evening.  Pushed through our Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook channels.
• New posters and flyers have been delivered to the club for distribution. 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.
• I have a meeting confirmed with the Bellevue Reporter Ryan Murray for next week and will begin to lay the ground work for our event’s promotion through their newspaper and to have them attend our proclamation event.
• We have the new press release ready to go, once we have secured support from T-Mobile. Here is the current iteration for you to read: https://www.dropbox.com/s/270l5tz15u0vmhd/BBRC%20Press%20Release%20v2.docx?dl=0.  We need to run this by our beneficiaries and sponsors this week for their approval.  I do not envisage any issue.
• Joellen has worked with Eastside Pathways to have them promote our event through their channels with the result that they will be pushing our details out.
• We have created an email JPEG that can be used by our members to reach out to their network via email to drive up participation. This was sent out to all of our members last week.
• New Tech Northwest have promoted our race through their newsletter for a third time to their network of 28,000 registered email recipients this week.
• Zach Scott has passed on the community outreach person at the Sounders to me. I have reached out to them to seek their support in promoting our event via their mailing list.  We will also be taking up the opportunity to use the open booth from Orswell Events to promote our event at the Sounders Run on 9^th April – I will be looking for volunteers to help me hand out leaflets and posters on the day.
• Special Olympics Washington will be promoting our event via their community of 30,000 registered supporters on email.
• We have been seeing some uptake from our sponsors in pushing through their networks and we will continue to work with them to leverage this as an asset for registrations.
• Neil Bretvick has secured support from his firm, Hellam Varon & Co., to feature “All in for Autism” as their cause for April, 2017.  To that end, they will have their people choose the option of either a cash contribution or to volunteer in some capacity, or participate in the run. This is a great example of how our members can make a difference.
• Coach Akana from Sammamish high school football had a meeting with his coaching staff and booster club, and they are all on board to participate in the 10K run on April 23. They will have raise sponsor dollars, which they will donate to the club after the monies have been collected.
• I met with the Forest Ridge Interact club this past week and encouraged their participation in supporting the race with volunteers and participants. They will be leaning in and supporting us with both.  It was good to see them attend our club this week and reaffirm their commitment.
• John Uppendahl is working on the 7^th April PR plan and we will be sharing this with everyone to make sure we are all hands on deck to make this event successful. This is our big shout out to the entire community, so we need to make sure we are working hard over the next couple of weeks to pull this event together and make it successful.  This will help us really hit our goal of 2,500 participants.

Logistics

Our team in Steve Roberts, Steve Luplow and Orswell Events are moving forward on the course planning and logistics.  Our biggest challenge remains the start and finish of the event, where we will need to manage the runners and traffic.  With new administrators from the City involved, we will need to go by the book until we have them “trained” for the future.

T-shirts are being produced – here is the artwork for you to view: https://www.dropbox.com/s/59v2n6med0lsuw9/V10929_BellevueBreakfastRotaryClub_Mens_E2_SS_RoyalBlue_Proof_edit_V2.pdf?dl=0.  They are going to look good and they have our club figured prominently on the front, so we can raise our profile.

Joellen indicated that this year we will not be required to notify all the property owners along the route if we have the run notification boards’ setup around the route.  This is great news and saves us time.

We do have an issue with the Eastside Prep school not being able to lend us their buses for the event this year.  Steve Luplow has alerted me to the issue.  I will be following up with the school directly to see what I can do to get them to reconsider.

This area of activity will start to ramp up and our need for volunteers will be high as this gets sorted out.

Finally

We have a lot of moving parts over the next two weeks as we focus on making sure our PR and related activities all come together.  It is going to be a huge driver for the registrations and, ultimately, for the amount of money we can raise to support Kindering, Special Olympics and our Rotary projects.  We will all need to do what we can to make this come together successfully and ensure that the momentum it generates helps us get the number of participants over the 2,500 level.

My thanks to you all for the contributions to date – you have all been brilliant in terms of ideas and getting things done.  I truly appreciate the support.

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!

Weekly Key Metrics:

• Registrations (Goal: 3000): 486 – up 10.2%
• Sponsorship Totals (Goal: $70,000): $71,000 – no change
• Volunteers (Goal: 243): 90 – 47.5
• New Members: 0
• Total Amount Raised (Goal: $120,000): $87,375 vs. $116,411 (2016 Total)

Summary

We have received the event permit from the City of Bellevue.  We have also secured support from MOVIN and 98.9 ROCK have agreed to support event with PSA and Booths, which will boost PR.  Preparations for promotional support (Mayor Proclamation/Company/Discounts) are underway.  Collaterals and T-shirts ordered.

Registrations (Howard’s Analysis)

Notice that the update this week is labeled as Week06 and this shows the status of registration numbers and dollars 6 weeks out from race day.  We now have 486 registered runners/walkers compared with 1,015 runners/walkers a year ago this same time of 6 weeks out.  The situation with respect to dollars is much better as we have $16,375 now compared with $16,284 a year ago.  While it is true that the advantage for this year basically goes away if we look at registration dollars alone and without donations.  This year’s registration dollars (without the donations) equals $15,780 compared with $16,044 a year ago.  In relation to dollars overall, one can say we are just about the same place we were a year ago.

The gain in actual “number of runners/walkers” over the past week shows that the weekly gain this year (from Week07 to Week06) was only 45 as compared with a gain of 58 a year ago.  If we hope to get to the earlier target of 3,000 runners/walkers this year, we obviously have to start increasing these weekly gains very soon.

It is encouraging to see that the average registration value has held up well, actually increasing from $32.15 a week ago to $32.47 last night at midnight.  Part of the reason for this consistently high average registration dollar value is the lack of KIDS signing up.

It is of interest that we have only one KID signed up this year at the Week06 point compared with 13 KID reservations a year ago at the same time.  Where are the KIDS?  A small part of the answer (though not a total explanation) is the fact that 7 of the current 73 registrants under the FAM/GROUP designation are under 14 years old and would likely have signed up as KIDS had they done the individual rather than group registration.  Many more folks are using the group registration process this year than was the case a year ago which makes a precise comparison in this area of KIDS registration (between the two years) a bit difficult.

Sponsorship

We have received major sponsorship agreements from Parallels, Acme Foods, OfferUp and chasing down the others.  Invoices sent out and Howard is chasing down the collections of the sponsorship dollars.

We have a coordinated effort to collect all the sponsor logos this week for inclusion on the website, t-shirts and collateral (major sponsors only).

There are two outstanding sponsors that I will be chasing down this week to ensure they are not left off the t-shirts and website inclusion before the event kicks off.

Steve Luplow will be working with Bellevue Collections to have them attend our club for the April 7^th Proclamation.  I am also working with outreach to Business Chamber and Bellevue Association to secure their support for our Bathe Bellevue in Blue campaign.

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.

• The big win for us this past week is thanks to Chris Boland who has secured the support of MOVIN and 98.9 ROCK radio stations support for our events with PSAs and being present with their booths. We will most certainly tie this into the bigger campaign around the Mayor’s Proclamation.
• Social media campaigns – we are seeing some impact in this area, where there has been pick up in the primary areas of focus (Linkedin, Facebook and @BestDarnClub). I think one of the drivers for donations, mentioned in Howard’s analysis, is coming from our focus in this area.  Paul Cunnington will be picking up this activity for us now that he has returned from his travels, so we can have a more dedicated resource on this area.  This will be done in combination with Orswell Events support through their social channels and it is my hope to leverage Zach Scott’s in the next campaign with them, as well as the promotions for our sponsors and discount promotions.
• Mayoral Proclamation (Bathe Bellevue in Blue): we are going to have our work cut out to make this the cornerstone event for our PR blitz. This weekend I will work on a plan, which will be based on the great input from John Uppendahl that we can then work on delegating out the tasks to the team for its execution.  We have four weeks in which to make this happen and it is very do-able.
• Our press releases are now available on the website, so please feel free to leverage them in posts across our social media channels. They are located at the bottom of this page: http://allinforautism.org/event-info/.
• We also started our reach out to company’s who are sponsoring the event to leverage them in promoting our event. I have meetings with Amazon, OfferUp and Nintendo planned for this coming week to get the ball rolling.  We will need all other sponsor companies to be approached to do the same.  Furthermore, I am working with Zach Scott to get the support from the Sounders organization to raise the profile of our event through their community.
• Collaterals ordered. Orswell events will be creating the new posters and flyers for us with the view that we will have them within the week.  We will want to develop a distribution plan for the new collateral to help raise the visibility of the event across the community.  These will be delivered at the next club meeting, so we can pass them out to the membership.

Internal Promotions

Continuing to push on the theme for member engagement around securing two volunteers and twenty-two participants for the race.  I will be sending out another call-to-action email to the membership for their support (already sent out an update to Linkedin group).

Paul Osborn has been working on the internal club poster for the All in for Autism event, which will include our sponsor logos, etc.  This will be a motivating tool that we can leverage in our internal promotion…perhaps another skit.

Rotary Club outreach – it will be a good time for us to visit clubs in the area to promote our event.   Plan for making this happen will be beneficial and again we will want to engage members, once the new collateral have been delivered, to make this happen.

Logistics

T-shirts have been ordered now that that the volumes and varieties have been worked out.  We will be ordering 2,500 t-shirts in the navy blue and the artwork will be provide by Orswell events.

I have asked Orswell Events to get the posters and new cards published, so they can be distributed out through our channels in advance of the event.  I will find out when the delivery date is due and communicate to the club.

Colleen has been busy on the outreach for booth sponsors.  She has sent out the call to action for booths sponsors with a view that we can secure support from local business in participating in the Race Village with their booths.

Finally

If there is anything that any of you want to get involved with, please let me know.  There is plenty of work to go around and there is no need to be shy if you are interested in making a contribution.

Onwards and forwards – let’s get our registrations in and the preparations for the race going.  It is only six more weeks to the big day!

Weekly Key Metrics:

• Registrations (Goal: 3000): 441 – up 7.5%
• Sponsorship Totals (Goal: $70,000): $71,000 – no change
• Volunteers (Goal: 243): 61 – no change
• New Members: 0
• Total Amount Raised (Goal: $120,000): $85,280 vs. $116,411 (2016 Total)

Summary

Internal skit kicked off to motivate our membership into actively promoting registrations (each member is being asked to find 2 volunteers and 22 runners).  Zach Scott spoke to our club as part of his involvement with us and he confirmed that he will actively promote our race.  We have made some decisions related to the logistics for the event that relate to the Race Village and our start/finish on the route.

Registrations

We currently have 441 registered runners/walkers this year compared to 957 a year ago.  Again, the dollar comparison fares much better with a registration dollar total of $14,280 this year compared with $14,838 a year ago.  In other words, our dollars in registration this year are only $558 less than they were a year ago at this same time.  We still of course have some catchup to do.

We should also observe that during this coming week (Week07 to Week06) a year ago we picked up an additional 58 registrants with a total additional dollar amount of $1,446.  This means a stepped-up rate of registration and dollars must occur now.  Let’s hope the challenge that Wendy and Carmella gave at the meeting this past week (22 registrants per member) starts to hit home with the troops.

Sponsorship

We have update the website with the logos for many of our sponsors.  We are in process of securing the last few that we did not have logos for, so that they can be put onto the sponsorship page.

We are working on locking down the major sponsor agreements, so we can begin the process of invoicing for payment and to also engage our sponsors to promote the event through their own internal channels.  This will help support our own efforts in driving up participation in the event.

We are also locking down on a couple of sponsors to hopefully close out this effort.

Marketing

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

• Established campaign on Linkedin (using their $50 credit) and seeing some success in terms of reach.  This is in combination with a regular schedule of publishing content to the group site:

As can be seen in the chart, the campaign has been having the desired effect in terms of  engagement and traffic.  In the meantime, we need to continue with the Facebook, Website, Linkedin and Twitter promotions – to this end, I will be working with a colleague of mine in the office who will help to push this through a broader set of channels.

• Zach Scott spoke at the club this week and through anecdotal feedback it was well received. Zach has confirmed that he will be willing to work with us in terms of promotion on press releases, social media and connecting us with the Sounders organization to get the word out.  I will work with the media team to get this done.
• Kindering have confirmed their support for the Mayoral Proclamation on 7^th April by having some families in attendance to provide the human interest component to the press who will be present. We now need to craft the press release and organize the logistics to make this event successful.  One big part of this will be working with the Bellevue Collections to see if we can get the blue lights turned on for the weekend in the buildings (Alex and Steve to work on this one).
• Our press releases will be published to the All in for Autism website, so we can leverage them from here in our promotions, since the local media has not picked anything up yet.
• We have two discount promotions left for the event:
  • One before the end of March, which we will combine with the SHOES-n-FEET voucher. This will be for the $5 discount and it will be tied to the Stride into Spring Theme
  • We do one last promotion for the Mayoral Proclamation on the 7th April and it will end at midnight on 9th April. This will be a $5 discount in the support of Autism Month
• New Tech Northwest promoted our event once more through their newsletter (which goes to 28,000 email aliases) and I am hoping for a bump in registrations as a result.  Here is the promotion itself:

Internal Promotions

My thanks to Wendi, Carmela and Chris for their internal skit – “It’s All about the Numbers” – this past Friday.  It was both fun and a great call to action for the club membership to find 2 volunteers and 22 runners.  The good news is that this is far easier to motivate people to do rather than asking for funds, so it is our hope that the club responds.  I sent a follow up email to all the membership on Friday evening to further underscore the value of the skit’s message and to call them into action.

Logistics

T-shirts price is good and includes landed costs.  I just need to work out the volume and variety needed across participants.  We will go with blue t-shirts and working on the artwork and logos for the back of the shirt.  My intent is to have this order placed next week.

I have asked Orswell Events to get the posters and new cards published, so they can be distributed out through our channels in advance of the event.  I will find out when the delivery date is due and communicate to the club.

We made the decision to have the Race Village in the carpark area, rather than try to plan for the availability of the park space.  There is too much risk to the organization of the event to consider alternatives at this juncture.  We also have a challenging start/finish with this course that will require additional coordination on the day to make sure we can manage the flow of traffic and participants during the event.  Steve Roberts and Steve Luplow, in conjunction with Orswell Events, will work out details to make this work.

Finally

If there is anything that any of you want to get involved with, please let me know.  There is plenty of work to go around and there is no need to be shy if you are interested in making a contribution.

Onward and forwards – let’s get our registrations in and the preparations for the race going.  It is only seven more weeks to the big day!

Weekly Key Metrics:

• Registrations (Goal: 3000): 410 – up 10%
• Sponsorship Totals (Goal: $70,000): $71,000 – no change
• Volunteers (Goal: 243): 61 – up 3.3%
• New Members: 0
• Total Amount Raised (Goal: $120,000): $84,410 vs. $116,411 (2016 Total)

Summary

We have received word that the Mayor has agreed to make the proclamation for Autism Month at our club on 7^th April.  This will be used to leverage more visibility for our event and the timing is perfect.  We also published our latest press release and we are looking for pickup.  We are in process of securing our major sponsor agreements, and the work around collateral/cards will be started so we can have them ready for distribution.  Reaching out to booth sponsors has also begun.  We are now focused on getting started with race logistics, while pushing aggressively on registrations as we are lagging here.

Registrations

This is the area that we all need to get behind and to work our magic in rallying the club to push hard on this front.  The internal PR machine is already in motion to get the membership motivated, which I think will be easier since we are asking them to lean in to find runners/volunteers rather than sponsors.  Experience tells me that club members find this an easier ask versus requesting money.

Howard has done a tremendous job on the analysis, which I have reproduced here: our “registration numbers fall 534 short of last year’s total.  This is simply the difference between the 944 registrants at this time last year (2016) less the 410 for this year (2017).  The average payment per registrant in 2017 at the 8-week out point is slightly more than double what it was a year ago ($31.80 to $15.08).  This is good news in that the dollar differential between the two years is not all that great, namely, $13,140 in 2017 to $14,473 in 2016.  In other words, in the all-important variable of $ generated by registrations, we are only $1,333 behind the 8-week out point of last year.  With a good push over the next few weeks, we should be able to close that gap and hopefully extend beyond it.”

We have some PR events that will help and more detail will be provided below.  We will also start to engage our members through skits, especially as I think this is an easier ask from our members in terms of supporting the event.  We will continue to push promotions, where appropriate to get more registrations.

In short the next eight weeks are critical and we need to get 323 registrations per week to make our number and this is only possible if we all lean in to make a difference.

Sponsorship

We are in the process of sending out the sponsorship agreements for those sponsors who have donated more than $2,500 to the race.  Others who have made $1,500 donation will have a booth and appear on the t-shirts.  Logistical activities to bring it all together is underway now.

We do need to reach out to all our sponsors and make sure we are helping them to push and promote our event to their own employees.  This will be a major source of support for our race, so we will want to make sure we do not lose the opportunity for engaging our partners’ reach in securing volunteers and participants for our event.

Marketing

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

• Zach Scott will be speaking at our club this coming Friday (https://bbrc.net/speaker/finding-success-and-overcoming-adversity/) and it is my hope that we can tweet and push through the social media channels comments about his talk, while promoting our event.
• We have secured the Mayoral Proclamation for Autism month – thanks to Joellen for getting this locked down. We will have the Mayor come to a club meeting on 7^th April to make the announcement.  We have plans around this event to make sure we can bring the media in to cover the announcement, meet with families impacted by Autism and learn about our event.
• Our press release has been pushed out to our local media, website, Facebook account and social media sites.
• The next reach out will be to our partners/sponsors, so we can use their channels as a way to reach a wider audience for sourcing participants and volunteers.
• We will also be in the Kindering Brochure at their upcoming auction next month and we hope that we can leverage their network for driving up participation in our event.

Internal Promotions

Wendi and Carmela will be working on an internal skit to drive up engagement with our membership, so we can get their support in tracking down runners and volunteers for our race.  It is important we do secure our membership’s involvement since this is the easiest way for us to increase participation in the event.

Booths

Colleen has started the process of reaching out to potential booth sponsors.  This is also an easy opportunity for us to secure additional funds with small businesses who want to be a part of the event.  Let’s find ways to promote this with our members and see if we can get other supporters via our network.

Volunteers

A small increase in volunteers this week – two.  Dustin will be back in the fray this coming week as he continues with his reach out to the schools and brings in volunteers from this community.  Paul Osborn is managing the process with our members and working to get support from our club.

Logistics

We are now at a stage where some of the logistics for the event have to be kicked off.  There is work to be done with getting our t-shirts produced and I have kicked off the process with the negotiations.  We also need to get our new collateral published and I have reached out Orwell Events to inquire about the next steps around this activity.  We will also need to get ready for the preparations with respect to the course, organization of the event, race village and other related activities that are necessary for us to bring this event to a conclusion.

Finally

If there is anything that any of you want to get involved with, please let me know.  There is plenty of work to go around and there is no need to be shy if you are interested in making a contribution.

Onward and forwards – let’s get our registrations in and the preparations for the race going.  It is only eight more weeks to the big day!

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.

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.

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 23^rd event.