Friends, the club needs YOUR help in becoming stronger, more active, and more focused on creating a feeling of community with our members. Below is the 9Feb version of the 2012 club plan for action. This outlines what we will do in 2012. The focus area leaders are completing their plans and moving ahead. We want you involved! Take a look at the latest plan with dates. If you see something without an owner that you’d like to take on, or if you have questions, send email to Dave Cunningham at davemktg@gmail.com. We want you involved!
Mission and Goals
Build the foundation for a RMRR that is stronger, more active, and has a growing sense of community.
- Get more people to participate in club activities. By doing this we’ll build membership numbers, strengthen peoples’ sense of community, and build energy within the club.
- Use our 2012 activities to look for new people to engage in activity and leadership roles.
Objectives
- Achieve 20% participation growth in 2012 events over 2011.
- Establish at least 2 regular RMRR-sponsored activities apart from the Trophy Series.
- Establish a new member program that encourages new member participation and long-term involvement.
Focus Areas
New Members
Coordinator: Ken Shimada
Program to make new members feel welcome and get them quickly involved in club running events and activities.
- Buddy system to team new people at their first race with an experienced member.
- Web area for new members listing how they can get involved,
- Phone call and email to new members with their member info and an intro to what we do.
Community
Coordinator: Dave Cunningham
Create activities that help members feel a strong connection to the club .
- Revive the club newsletter or create a new “What’s Happening” area on the website.
- Group run/activity program to provide non-race opportunities to meet and do things together.
- Find hosts who will manage a run-included activity each week – Tuesday night? Would like to have a central location if we can; two locations might also be possible with alternating weeks.
- Runs need to have clear route, someone willing to go slow to bring up the rear.
- Hosts or someone at each location also willing to go somewhere for food/drink afterward. Perhaps a few potlucks?
- Include evenings at local running stores
- More active program to provide and promote membership benefit – tied to sponsors.
- Web page listing sponsor offers.
- Mention of sponsors in monthly newsletter
- Races include more food, more raffle prizes.
- Continue tradition of club managing a Denver RnR Marathon water stop.
- End of Year banquet with stronger welcome for everyone.
Trophy Series and MTS
Coordinator: David Rothenburger
Make sure our signature Trophy Series and MTS events are well-run, that we have plenty of people to run each race, and that people feel engaged and rewarded for running.
- Increase sense of community and fun around races – name each one, more raffle prizes, adding post-race food and activity to keep people around longer
- Make 5k more prominent and not seem like an afterthought.
- Start 5k at a time where people will finish with everyone else. Perhaps start after the last TS runner?
- Top 3 and fast man/woman get ribbons?
- More widely promote MTS and double our numbers from 2011.
- Connect Spring MTS with Colfax Marathon? Leslie driving this.
- Make it easier to direct races – build a race director guide that covers all the bases. Adam Feerst indicated interest in helping.
- Identify 3 new directors to pair with experienced ones
Fathers’ Day Mile
Coordinators: Deb Cunningham and Ray Sibley
Begin a special event that has appeal to many local runners, raises club visibility.
- Find visible sponsors early on to strengthen credibility and provide award funding.
- Provide cash prizes to increase interest from high-level runners.
- Use chip timing to insure quality results.
The board has approved this event for 2012 and Deb and Ray are running with planning.
Promotion
Coordinator: Dave Cunningham
Develop a simple promotion plan and execute throughout 2012.
- More consistent and broad promotion through running stores, local running magazines, other avenues.
- Promotion of Trophy Series as a race series for everyone – “race against yourself”
- Selecting 2-3 key local races and renting booth space, promoting club with handouts.
- Create simple handout piece that we can give out thousands of. Post card form factor? Stickers?
- Continued updates and improvement on our website and Facebook.
Sponsorship
Coordinator: where are you?
Actively engage existing and new sponsors to help members and build club interest.
- get more gift certs and merchandise for TS and MTS raffles
- provide and promote more discount benefits to members
- create sponsor page to promote sponsors strongly on RMRR web.
- Build a presentation that demonstrates the benefits sponsors will find with RMRR.
Plan Management
Dave C will manage the overall plan and keep people on track.!
9 responses so far ↓
1 Janet Fairs // Nov 22, 2011 at 3:54 pm
Hi Dave,
I think the idea of doing more with the 5k option is a good one. Right now it is just an option with no benefits. We could give a ribbon to the first three finishers. Some of us switch back and forth depending on our mood that day, but perhaps for those who consistently run 5k we could give an award at the banquet.
Janet
2 Rich Friedmann // Nov 24, 2011 at 1:58 pm
Hi Dave,
Great set of plans. Emphasis on community should be expanded. i.e. Runners World used to put on monthly fun runs for people new to running. Each month go to a different town and hold runs and give out ribbons to 1st three finishers, distances should be short.
3 Bill Goosmann // Nov 26, 2011 at 6:37 am
A huge and excellent amount of work. Congratulations. Reading through it and the comments, I wonder who “we” is/are? (Is this the same as “community” used above?) More specifically, who will RMRR will be? I ask as someone 50+ who watches TV, listens to radio, and reads magazines and newspapers, and realizes few things outside of AARP membership are targeted at me. Apparently, since my life choices regarding products consumed and activities outside of work are largely set, there’s no reason for their money to chase me. I disagree, but you may want to consider who specifically RMRR should be targeting for membership. Based on the bulk of consumer product marketing, that should be young(er) people. This is obviously something that extends well beyond 2012, and frankly how to do it is beyond me. I have been running for over 40 years and couldn’t tell you why I started other than my siblings were involved in sports, as were my friends. The shorter distances is likely a place to start, but I remember when the prospects of running even 2 miles was beyond comprehension. Boy and girl scout merit badeges? Do high schools even have outdoor sports days anymore? Similar events are which RMRR could participate. People seem to like schwag, so maybe that’s worth considering, too. Perhaps if RMRR links up with a younger demographic, sponsors will be easier to attract.
4 Dave Cunningham // Nov 26, 2011 at 9:32 pm
Hey friends. Some nice comments. Janet, I agree about the 5k – we need to make it more significant and make sure those running are as engaged with as other runners. Perhaps we need to push the start time to the middle of the TS starts?
Thanks for the help!
5 Tara Jahn // Nov 28, 2011 at 7:28 am
I agree with the focus on promotion and community. I also wonder what type of communication there is to members because I got the family membership and was excited to do runs and training but then no emails, reminders or newsletters to keep me engaged and unfortunately as a new member it was “out of sight, out of mind”. If I decide to pay agaian and re-join I would be interested in being involved as some of these changes begin.
6 Dave Cunningham // Nov 30, 2011 at 7:08 am
Hi, Tara. I’m sorry to hear that your new membership experience was so poor. Normally new members are immediately added to our email newsletter, and we have the website and Facebook with regular updates. That said, we recognize that there is a lot more to be done. That will be part of the work the club will do in 2012. I’d love to have you be a part of that!
7 Robin Callarman // Dec 1, 2011 at 10:19 am
I’m brand new (hoping the weather clears for my fiance and I to come out for our first TS run this weekend.)
We joined hoping to find some community, not that running just the two of us isn’t exhilarating… I’m just not that fast yet and he’s getting to where we’d be better off on treadmills.
Anyway, looking forward to seeing what sorts of community building events there are, even looking forward to volunteering, as I’ve never seen that side of a race.
8 Anne Griffin // Dec 4, 2011 at 12:47 pm
I actually have a lot of thoughts about the “community” piece and would love to get involved in that area. We’ve invited a good number of friends to join RMRR, but very few have said yes. I’m going to poll the rest to see what is keeping them from joining. My age group tends to consist of young families, so that could be a part of it. For my husband and I to make this work, we have to get a sitter for each race or swap who gets to race. It would be nice to think about how to make races more accessible to families with young children. I do LOVE the summer activities (meals, kid’s races, etc). Anyhow, lots of thoughts. Let me know how I can help.
9 Jessie Stedman // Jan 7, 2012 at 8:37 pm
I am commenting as an individual new to RMRR. My husband and I had/have a goal of competing in a race every month, this adventure started in June 2010…we haven’t missed a month yet! As you can imagine this has been a costly adventure as we race multi-sport as well as running. We printed the application and are joining RMRR for the first time due to the low cost of racing. I think this should be considered when deciding how to market your club because for my husband and I the low cost was key so I believe that the racing “community” should be looked at again from another angle. We are not fast but we are competitive. I agree that first timers should be targeted but I also think there are runners who want to “race” but are sick of the prices. We are also drawn to RMRR’s option of longer race distances. If the club has more 5k races with less 5 mile plus races we would not be as interested. I speak for my husband and I and a few other racing friends that raffles are more fun than just getting swag with entry.
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