Partnerships with a Host City and Sporting Events

Much has been said about the importance of community support when bidding on events. Listen and watch as Gary Alexander of the Nashville Sports Council describes just how they work with the city and other organizations to support their events, both big and small.

A Super Host City: Indianapolis

By Jackie Reau, Game Day Communications
NASC Member

On Friday, I traveled over to Indianapolis to visit Super Bowl Village in downtown Indianapolis. I had no intention of going to the game but did want to see first-hand how the Super Bowl 2012 Committee was coordinating the fan fest opportunities. I had been keeping tabs on the planning and festivities through the Committee’s terrific website and regular email reports.

In a word to describe Indy’s Super Bowl efforts: Wow!

Sure the game was great (congratulations to the New York Giants) and the commercials were fun to watch, but the true winner in Super Bowl 46 was the city and people of Indianapolis.

Here are a few observations from Indianapolis that we can all think about when planning our next event—big or small.

Engage and Empower Volunteers

Who knew what the power of a blue and white scarf would be? More than 13,000 volunteers helped orchestrate the activities in and around Super Bowl Village and they were recognizable by their blue and white scarves—all knitted by volunteers.

Everywhere you turned, you saw a friendly smiling volunteer ready to help. They were at Monument Circle taking free photos on their iPads, greeting fans at The Huddle, the indoor merchandise shop and working the lines for fans to get their photo with the Lombardi trophy (a 25-minute wait which moved fast).

But the best part of the volunteers who embodied the spirit of “Hoosier Hospitality” was how they would finish a sentence: Have a Super Day! It was evident that the volunteers have been properly trained in customer service and had been positioned in areas that best suited their experience and interest.

Make It Fun

Free concerts, an 800-foot zip line, corn hole and stadium food. The Super Bowl Village in Indianapolis was fun! It was the state fair for football fans, and fans from around the world traveled to see it. As you walked the blocks of Georgia Street from the Stadium to the Convention Center, you would see fans in jerseys from many NFL teams, including those not even playing in the Super Bowl as well as soccer jerseys from the UK and Mexico.

The NFL Experience, with its $25 ticket (very reasonable), featured interactive exhibits from NFL Draft Day to photos with the Lombardi trophy and the live set for the NFL Network.

The pros from Wilson were making footballs just as they would at the factory. XBox and the Cartoon Network entertained the youth fans while the merchandise area offered everything a football fan could imagine.

It Takes a “Compact” Village

The best part of the Super Bowl Village was the proximity to the stadium and the convention center. The six-block, Block Party was filled with food, beverages, two live music stages, games for adults and kids and sponsor exhibits.

<Map link of Super Bowl Village: http://www.indianapolissuperbowl.com/files/SuperBowlVillage_Map_FINAL.pdf>

Fans could park once at their hotel or garage and easily walk up and down Georgia Street to the various activities.

Indianapolis has set the bar for future Super Bowl celebrations! While New Orleans, a seasoned party throwing city, knows how to manage such celebrations, I am sure their planners were taking notes on some new improvements.

Congratulations, Indianapolis! Job well done.

Recycled Soap From 2011 NASC Sports Event Symposium Will Save Lives

The National Association of Sports Commissions (NASC) and the SportsEvents Media Group teamed up with the non-profit organization Clean the World to recycle soap and hotel ammenities at the 2011NASC Sports Event Symposium.

During the conference, which took place April 12-14, 2011 at the Sheraton Greensboro Four Seasons in
Greensboro, North Carolina, 150 lbs of soap was collected which will provide soap to 170 children for one month. Clean the World has put over four million soap bars and 200,000 pounds of shampoo and conditioner back into human use, simultaneously eliminati ng over 380 tons of waste.

“We’re really pleased to sponsor the Clean the World recycling program during the 2011 NASC Symposium,” said J. Talty O’Connor, founder and president of SportsEvents Media Group. “In conversations with our readers, it is clear that sports event organizers are more interested than ever in planning ‘green’ sports competitions. We all need to make every effort possible to reduce the environmental impact of our activities and events. This is one small way of fulfilling our ongoing commitment toward corporate social responsibility.”

The NASC Sports Event Symposium brings together serious minded professionals in the sports event industry for three days of educati on, the NASC Sports Marketplace where potential host cities and sports event planners meet in one-on-one pre-scheduled appointments, and unique networking opportunities. Future conference dates are April 17– 19, 2012 in Hartf ord, CT and April 23-25, 2013 in Louisville, KY.

ABOUT THE NASC
The Nati onal Association of Sports Commissions (NASC) is the sports event industry’s leading networking organization. Founded in 1992, the NASC represents over 500 organizations across the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. The NASC provides educati on, networking, and professional development to the sports event industry. For more informati on visit www.SportsCommissions.org.

ABOUT CLEAN THE WORLD
Clean the World is committ ed to reducing the waste created by discarded soap and shampoo products and collects these items from hotels to be recycled and distributed to domestic homeless shelters and impoverished people worldwide, helping to prevent deaths caused by hygiene- related illnesses. Clean the World Foundation,Inc. is a non- -profi t, 501(c) (3) tax- -exempt charitable organizati on. For more information visit www.CleanTheWorld.org.

 

Kind Regards

Don

VOLUNTEERS: A Key Ingredient for a Successful Event

By Bill Hanson, Associate Executive Director, San Antonio Sports

Volunteers are the foundation of nearly every successful nonprofit organization and competition organizing committee. This article will define the factors involved in organizing a volunteer program that will support a large-sized activity or competition, and for maintaining it as a fulltime program to support future events and activities.

But be forewarned–building and maintaining an effective and successful volunteer program is hard work and, like fundraising and public relations, requires a talented and committed person to accomplish it.

We’ll look at the process in three operational time periods: pre-event planning, event conduct and post-event communications with its lead-in to the next event or to an ongoing program

The PRE-EVENT PLANNING phase starts with the hiring or recruitment of a Volunteer Coordinator. This person needs to possess a variety of skills and personality traits and to settle for less will eventually result in an ineffective program or a coordinator who quits. Your selected person should have excellent organizational skills and be attentive to detail. Past experience tells me that your coordinator should be all of the following: self-motivated, even tempered, a good mediator/have good people skills, patient, able to see the big picture, able to handle multiple projects simultaneously, able to function with little sleep, and able to prioritize, maintain focus and delegate. Is it impossible to find someone fitting all these? Perhaps, but don’t venture far from the total list or you’ll be back to square one.

Once the Volunteer Coordinator has been identified, work can begin to create the Volunteer Services Plan. There are a number of items that must be included in the Plan, such as:

1.    What committees need volunteers and how many are needed?
2.    What will they be doing and are written job descriptions available?
3.    Where will they need to be and how do they get there?
4.    When do you need them and for how long?
5.    What services/benefits/parking/uniforms are available?
6.    Fully define the Recruiting Process, to include:
a.    A Volunteer Registration Form
b.    An established information bank/database
c.    Target markets for recruiting, i.e., people, groups, businesses, etc.
d.    Processing and screening of applicants and, finally
e.    Contacting and Verifying the selected volunteers

This plan should be in place before any public announcement is made of an event or activity because, as with ticket sales, interested volunteers will assuredly start inquiring immediately.

The organization that takes the time to format a detailed Volunteer Services Plan will find the second phase, EVENT CONDUCT, that much easier and most certainly more efficient. We’ll discuss event logistics in future articles but be assured that many last-minute challenges (we never say “problems”) are avoided by having such a plan.

Your organizing committee must have a clearly defined staff structure and lines of communication. Volunteers must know to whom they report, especially in an emergency situation. If you’re organizing a large event that requires many volunteers over a period of days, then a volunteer handbook becomes almost a necessity. It would include information about the event itself, venue information with a diagram showing key locations, a venue evacuation plan, event schedules, transportation schedules and key contact phone numbers.  One very useful list would be Important Names to Know, so that a volunteer who came into contact with a VIP could be extra friendly. A list of Volunteer Policies and Procedures is essential and should emphasize dress code, conduct and shift information. Local information should also be a section in the handbook, to include restaurants, entertainment and shopping areas, and local modes of transportation and especially a taxi phone number.

Participants with questions will approach the first recognizable volunteer. The golden rule for a volunteer is this: “If you don’t know the answer, find it or send them to someone who has it”. This leads to the primary source of information, your own staff. There is nothing worse than an organizing committee staff member who is unable to answer simple questions about the event. With months of preparation and committee meetings, all staff members should have a basic knowledge of every other area of operation. Just as important, your staff needs to be instructed to constantly acknowledge and show appreciation to volunteers, both individually and as a group. Public mention of volunteer support will shows them that they are appreciated and it results in good work performance.

Volunteer Training is most helpful when provided in advance of the event, especially a few days prior. An orientation not only provides important information to them but it gives the organizing committee leadership the opportunity to motivate them and to explain the importance of their support. All of the basic information, uniforms, parking passes and job descriptions can be distributed this orientation.

With all of the aforementioned accomplished, the event itself is a snap. Volunteers show up, report to their work stations, do their jobs properly, and leave. Staff members must do their jobs by providing excellent supervision and, most important, giving the volunteers the support items needed to do their jobs. While realizing that large events are often challenged to fill all volunteer positions, creating a contingency pool is recommended. Our organization has called these reserves the Fifth Wheel or the Rapid Response Team, and they can be sent quickly to a trouble spot. A final helpful item is a critique by the volunteers, using a form at their check-out table. Getting input from them has been extremely valuable to conducting future events.

It’s important to remember that whatever you provide in the way of volunteer services, it will always be far less than what you’d pay for comparable labor. Items such as t-shirts, caps, vests, pins, parking, a lounge area, meals, snacks and beverages, and event tickets will all appeal to volunteers and make them feel appreciated.

Finally!!! It’s over!!! The participants have departed, the venue has been vacated, the event has been declared a success, and you’ve got hundreds, maybe thousands, of volunteers totally excited about staying involved. Whatever POST-EVENT COMMUNICATIONS projects you do or don’t do will affect both your organization’s future and theirs.

Before thinking about the future, however, finish up this event. Your volunteers need closure in the way of an appreciation letter, certificate or gift, and possibly a party. A party or pep rally immediately upon completion of an event is nice, but often not feasible due to event tear-down, but staging something soon after is a way to express your appreciation as well as announce future events.

Establishing an effective communications system should be a priority if you plan to utilize this group of volunteers again. Using emails is certainly the most economical means nowadays, but a direct mailed newsletter is just as effective. Maintaining the list be it email or direct mail, now becomes very important. If your organization maintains the ability to do some quick-recruiting of volunteers, then you have an efficient volunteer program. A word of warning about recruiting volunteers for outside events or organizations. Not everyone treats volunteers the same, and your volunteers will notice the difference, especially if they don’t receive proper treatment from others. When sending recruitment notices for outside events we make it very
clear that we are not involved in that event.

As for ongoing projects, our organization utilizes volunteer receptionists with each one working a specific half-day each week, and we naturally have a group of key volunteers who do various office projects. A Volunteer of the Year program is a great way to show appreciation and generate interest in the organization.

Lastly, the best method of maintaining an efficient volunteer program is to include volunteers in an assessment process and provide them with a channel for their suggestions. We have found a Volunteer Action Council to be very effective and most helpful for developing policies and procedures.

If this whole process sounds complicated to you, it should. There is nothing easy about managing an effective volunteer program and it requires a special person as you can see. We’re happy to provide whatever assistance we can to get your program established.