Wednesday, May 8, 2013

America SCORES National Poetry SLAM!

For a little over a year and a half, I've been eating, sleeping, and breathing America SCORES. I often wonder how many times per day I write the words "America SCORES" as I write grants or login to things with my email address. As I sit at home on Saturday night, my boyfriend Eddie is sporting the America SCORES National Poetry SLAM! t-shirt to sleep. Dax knows it's time for a walk when one of us grabs the America SCORES sweatshirt. The organization is always on my mind - and I wonder how many times I've written it in this blog thus far. This is all to preface what I really want to write about - the America SCORES National Poetry SLAM!. We're just about wrapping up feedback from the committee, the tasks force member, the chaperones, the executive directors - but none of that matters to me because I'd like to see any other combination of three people accomplish what we did that weekend - and not kill each other like I'm surprised we didn't. It was one hell of a weekend!

I spend about six months out of the year planning this extraordinary event - and it's the best part of my job. As a national organization, we only get three days out of the year to remotely perform direct-service and to really see the self-esteem and confidence shine as a result of this power of poetry - something we so often brag about but rarely actually experience. I mean, I've made many a visit to a classroom or soccer field - but it's simply not the same when the kids don't know who you are and you know so little about them. For three days, we get to know each child, their temperaments, their humor and watch the shy get comfortable and the distrustful attitudes melt away. The experience was similar to MYEEP's Counselor in Training retreat - but, elementary school students don't have that weird tendency to racially segregate the way high schoolers do. They are purely innocent, oddly obedient, and extremely grateful - and that just makes the entire experience even more fulfilling.



Being my second National Poetry SLAM!, I was excited to actually know what I was doing and to make very real and intentional improvements. I will admit that there is a lot I didn't know about the NYC charity benefit - but either way I knew I could plan one hell of an event! For example, I went to a workshop that was about what you should be doing the day after an event - which if you asked me April 17th, 2012 - I would have said SLEEP. It was here I learned one of our many 2012 mistakes - the honoree selection and cultivation should start 8-10 months before an event, not 4 months and I began to really understand the expectations of the role: to raise money (at least in the eyes of New York City-zens). In 2012, our honoree actually ended up costing us money - but that is a story for another time. Among the improvements to the honoree selection process was the timely gathering and effective management of an event committee and actual engagement of the honoree to our program. With the help of one of my favorite board members, we selected our guests of honors early. This gave me a few months to deepen their understanding of our program, take them out to see the program, and support them in fundraising efforts. This led to a new partnership with the NY Cosmos who made this awesome video and promoted the event.



What most people don't realize about the National Poetry SLAM! is that it is both a program event (to reward our best kids) and a fundraising event (to raise a pretty hefty chunk of our operating budget). That means, that we're not only spending 6 months designing marketing materials, selling sponsorships and tickets, writing press releases, and getting silent auction items - we are also buying plane tickets, ground transportation, reserving hotel rooms, training chaperones, getting parent RSVPs and planning meals. And by we, I mean our team of 3 with the help from a task force and committee. It also means that the weekend before the event, I could be (and was) sending last minute RSVPs to the venue or handling program printing disaster - or going door-to-door to kids rooms to participate in evening rehearsals, making sure there is enough orange juice or bagels in each room, and staying up til midnight making a slideshow of the weekend for the kids to watch before the show.



For the first five years, the youth experience was primarily managed by program staff in Chicago - experts in putting together a pretty seamless program with limited rehearsal time. The sixth year, I lent my services and by the seventh, we were on our own. It was Christmas week when I had a huge breakdown - I could not fathom doing everything. I needed to focus on fundraising because we were projecting a $30,000 deficit with the unfortunate loss of a pretty important board member. Being the only person present for all parts of the participant weekend experiences, I took an advisory role in supporting a task force of staff from around the country and directing an intern to manage logistics. This step back allowed me to continue working on other arms of development such as submitting grants, sending corporate proposals, and producing our annual report and national magazine.

Ticket sales and donations account for almost 20% of the fundraising revenue. In 2012, we introduced two social media campaigns which, though extremely time intensive, I love! One would count down the days to the event by featuring one of the select students each day. To sell tickets, this was was supplemented with weekly e-mail newsletters (like this one) and four press releases (1, 2, 3, and 4). The combination of these campaigns and honoree efforts increased ticket sales revenue and made up almost 25% of our anticipated fundraising deficit. The other campaign leverages the social network of our newly inspired audience and uses their photos from the evening for a weeklong fundraising challenge. Since I could anticipate these campaigns, I was able to streamline and schedule daily posts on Facebook and entered (and won) a contest for free photo booth service that would essentially operate the second campaign for me (LA Photo Party). An incredible event committee inspired a visual fundraising goal that quintupled night-of donations and doubled post-event donations overall. 


Historically, almost 80% of the funds raised from the event are sponsorships. Knowing we were losing some, finding new ones was extremely important. Over the summer, we had done a ton of research on companies who's current charities are similar to ours - and also learned that funding applications need to be done at least 6 months prior to the event. I spent a great chunk of October, filling out applications and submitting them to the black hole of rejection. I know that the application process is extremely ineffective - so I PDF'd all my proposals, checked the company list to my linked in network, and worked with board members to get these proposal seen and supported by someone within those companies. The process yielded no new sponsorships - but certainly got us in the door with several companies that we'll continue to build relationships with throughout the year. I'm pretty excited that my strategy worked - and hopeful that if not SLAM! related, we'll find some way to work with these companies that suits their needs and benefits our sites nationwide!


The night of the event was actually less stressful (perhaps coming from the crazy weekend of babysitting 30 kids!) It is wholly complicated - comprising of a VIP cocktail hour for sponsors with a silent auction, 1 hour poetry slam show, and a dessert reception "after party" (which took place on the NYSE Trade Floor.) I implemented a few learnings from the past year. 
  1. I made a huge effort to make the sponsors feel like VIPs. The cocktail hour was just for them. They had reserved seating with special gift bags. There was a minor hiccup of nonVIP guests sneaking in before their admission time - resulting in a shortage of cocktails and some discomfort with low-income parents feeling like charity amid a primarily white corporate mixer. As guests of corporate sponsors, they didn't pay to be there so I wanted to make sure they walked away feeling so great that they'd make a gift. 
  2. The Silent Auction is, for whatever reason, a hot topic. Previously, it hadn't made that much money for how much time spent planning it. This year, I decided not to spend any time planning it. Our committee did an amazing job bringing in the items - and they raised more than we thought. I did make a very intentional decision to provide a Silent Auction brochure such that, if a guest was bored at any point during that one hour (between 6pm-7pm) it was the only thing they would have in their hand. They would receive program books at 7pm.
  3. The feedback from last year was that the fact that this was a fundraiser was not clear enough. After attending CFY's charity benefit as a guest of Southwest Airlines, I saw how they really hit the emotions in the ask. (They honored a parent - but the award was given by the child of the parent, who was introduced by the child's teacher, who was introduced by the principal. Each expressing gratitude and sharing the impact of CFY from a every level.) The program wreaked of desperate pleas for donations - I'm not sure how I feel about it. The numbers were strong, but I don't know. I would have liked to weave in more tear-jerking and less asking - letting the emotional appeal speak for itself more.

A huge part of the post-event must-do was the follow up. I remember, April 16, 2012, when the doors opened at 6pm sharp - a mass influx of people bum-rushed the door - sweeping past the registration table and photo booth. For the 6-7pm cocktail hour, I was all over the place dealing with late volunteers and  technical difficulties with the photo booth. This was the first time I would meet our affiliate leadership from the 14 cities so among meeting them and sponsors, I didn't catch anyone's names or learn anything about anyone. At the end of the night, we walked away with no way to know who attended and no way to contact these new fans of our program. Months later, I volunteered at World Cares Center benefit - I was assigned a special guest and my only jobs were to make sure their attendance was announced to the Executive Director and take care of them the rest of the night. Of course, 1 hour is not enough time for one Executive Director to meet and get to know everyone - so I adapted this process and assigned our volunteers to do the announcing to affiliate Executive Directors. They, in turn, would do that care-taking and introductions to our National Executive Director. This allowed for extremely personalized follow ups and introductions - as well as accountability. For example, I could ask "Who is this in this picture" and someone would know.

Ultimately, and to my surprise, we met our fundraising goal!


If I learned anything about development over the past year and a half - it really is about relationships. Someone I met on twitter, The World Cup Project, who was interested in our September event volunteered to help us with video needs - saving us $3,000 in videographer expenses! My past interns were my key volunteers for the evening. Our current intern, applied for an internship in August of last year, got a job elsewhere, was a key volunteer for our September event, came back to volunteer - in addition to his incredible leadership and support throughout the weekend, he also got us $12,500 in PR Newswire press release distribution services that helped our releases reach almost 300 million views!

I also do a ton of learning at charity events - so you can imagine my excitement for Make A Wish's upcoming benefit at their NJ Castle. I don't go to NJ (ever) but this is soooo going to be worth it!


To be clear, this is my personal reflection of the event from the trenches. It is truly an amazing event for an organization that is doing really great work. The official event information and full video can be found at www.americascores.org/nps2013. 

Also, you can support me by making a gift here: www.americascores.org/donate

Saturday, March 30, 2013

An art project for a snowy saturday mornin'