Blessing of the Bikes2000
We just finished our second "Blessing of the Bikes." Not a smashing success like some fund raising events, but a good turnout and a fun event. The school needed supplies for their math department this year so we dedicated the money from the blessing of the bikes to that. We raised about eleven hundred dollars after expenses.
How do you decided to put on an event like "The Blessing of the Bikes?" It was pretty much my wife's idea to start with. We are sending our kids to St Francis School. Part of the parent agreement when they accept your kids is that you have to spend a minimum of 16 hours helping the school with things like fund raisers, chaperones for field trips, etc. etc. Well neither she nor I are the typical. We both own our own businesses, and we are always busy. Taking off during the normal work day to put in that time isn't very easy. Patti came up with the idea of doing a bike blessing to fill our service time. It works out pretty good. We were able to network with other motorcyclists and businesses to coordinate the event during the normal course of our respective days.
This article is not going to be a complete nuts and bolts article. I just wanted to go over some of the problems we had, and offer some advice based on my experiences.
We had great press. The event was published in several regional magazines and event calendars very early on. One of the parents of other kids at the school jumped in to help with PR and got us PSAs on local radio and television. Unfortunately, the local paper picked the day before to publish a negative article about a former teacher at the school who had been terminated by the school for impropriety. It wasn't something that had just happened. It was something that was almost a year old and had been published before. Several groups decided to boycott the event because of it. Its a shame. They didn't punish the offender by their being judgemental. They just punished the kids who benefit from the event. Gee... I just realized I still don't have any solutions or answers to this problem. Maybe somebody reading this article can offer some advice.
During planning and preperation we seemed to have a lack of helpers. Lots of people said they would help, but when asked to actually do something they were always busy. We nailed down part of this by sending out a volunteer request form from the school with all the kids. We gots lots of volunteers, but couldn't seem to get them into the event planning. Then when the day of the event came I found myself behind the table for sign up with 50 people standing around saying, "What do I do?" It was a pain. I would have been able to handle sign up easier if I had been by myself. Then the tracking of signups was a nightmare.
I did come up with some ideas to alleviate some of the problems in the future. First is to modify the volunteer form. Seperate it out into duties, and define dates for planning meetings for each set of duties. Maybe something like this would help.
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Would you be willing to volunteer to help with "The Blessing of the Bikes?"
If so please return this note to the school with your child.
Please Print Your Name____________________________________________
Phone Number_________________________E-Mail_____________________
These are the areas were we could use help. Please check those where you think you can help.
___ Solicit Raffle Prizes
___ Help with Public Relations.
___ Plan events like the Poker Run
___ Help with Sign in
___ Serve Food
___ Acquire food and cook
___ Be a gopher ( ___ at the event ___ before the event )
___ Cleanup
___ Sell raffle tickets
___ Put together sign in packages
___ Setup Tables chairs and awnings
___ If you know some other way that you can be helpful please list it here and let us know. ________________________________________________________________________
For more information please contact (planner's name) at (phone) or (e-mail) or (website).
There will be a planning meeting for the event on ___/___/___ and training meetings
for sign in volunteers on ___/___/___, Food servers on ___/___/___.
If you are a volunteer please come to the planning and trainings meetings.
****
Yes the misuse of volunteers definitely hurt the event. I imagine we would have sold twice as many Run Pins and T-shirts as we did if we had been more organized and our volunteers would have had a heads up on what they were doing instead of slowing down the people who did have a clue about what to do. It was entirely our own fault. I figure a couple of planning meetings and an orientation and training session a few days before the event would have helped tremendously.
Another problem we had also related to organization. People would buy a package that include lunch and the poker run. Others would buy a package that included that and a t-shirt and run pin. Others would buy just a run pin and sign in for the poker run. It was shear pandemonium. I saw people who were trying to sign in get frustrated and walk away. I was thinking if we planned our packages out and then put together a coupon book for each package or a sheet of paper that listed the items included with each package purchased we could hand that over to people when they signed in. Then seperate out Run Pins, raffle tickets, t-shirts, etc. After the sign in they could walk over to the t-shirt table and hand over their coupon for the t-shirt or have it checked off on their item list when they pick up their shirt. Same with included raffle tickets, run pins, and lunch.
Yes, all of the above would require us to a more work on planning, but I am certain it would make the day of the event run more smoothly.
We had a small problem with the fact that several people left really early to go on the poker run part of the event. If the poker run route slip had been given out at a seperate table starting at a specific time instead of whenever they signed up at the main table we probably could have handled the next problem a little better. Lots of people got to the final destination hours before the official time of "last hand." They were bored. Some left. We had planned to handle part of that problem by starting to give away raffle prizes a half an hour before the official last hand, but we still had people at the final destination a long time before anything was going on. If we had made people pick up their poker run slips at a specific time that fitted into the schedule it would have help a little with this problem. Another thing we should have done was to have a couple of our properly oriented volunteers at our final destination running a poker darts game or other entertainement. It would have helped a little with the boredom factor and may have helped to raise a little more money as well.
Again. More and better planning would have helped.
The first year we did the Blessing of the Bikes we had a lot of "putting a price on God," type comments, and at least one person accused us of trying to cash in on the fear of the coming millenium. We averted that particular accusation / problem this year by making it quite clear in all of our promotional materials and listings that "TO HAVE YOUR BIKE BLESSED IS FREE." The charges are for going on the poker run, getting a run pin, buying a t-shirt, eating lunch at the event, etc. But if you just want to have your bike blessed it is FREE. So we did learn something from the first time we did it, and we applied it.
Now I know from reading all about all the problems we had it may sound like the event was a fiasco, but it was actually a success. We had money left over after expenses to donate to the school's math department and we had a great time. So did a lot of the people who attended. We also learned a lot from our mistakes and will be able to make changes and do more work at the right times to reduce our problems next year.
I guess my lesson in this article (if there is one) is that we needed to take an honest look at our shortcomings and figure out where we could improve. We are happy that the event was a success, but we need to remember our problems as well.
Back to this year's Blessing Page