10K run

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.