Fundraising

Weekly Key Metrics:

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

Summary

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

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

Course Update

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

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

Sponsorship

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

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

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

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

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

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

Marketing

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

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

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

Website

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

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

Booths

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

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

Volunteers

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

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

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

Finally

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

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

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 23^rd “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,

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.