Meeting Update – 3rd February, 2017

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.