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Organizer resources...

5K views 17 replies 9 participants last post by  nickleone 
#1 ·
So, where are the financial impact statements?
Five year plans?
Etc.
Or even assumptions you make in creating this kind of stuff. How much does each competitor contribute to a community. How much does each volunteer.
You know, all the business/sales side stuff to organizing a rally and getting a local community behind you and your event. If your willing to share, but don't want to make it public, you can email me anything you are willing to share to dydxhughes at gmail dot com.
 
#2 ·
Grant....get ahold of Ananda....he's got stats from last year's 100AW and I think they were polling the masses at Sno*Drift. It's possible 100AW's crack PR team, Mark and John Huebbe may have some of that data....it's good stuff.....helping us find roads in another county for a regional Summer event.
 
#3 ·
For small events, the easiest thing to track is hotel room nights. Rallye de Paris gets almost 100 for less than 15 cars.

In addition, each event needs to have a "precense" in the community. RdP helps with the Tour de Paris bicycle rally, tries to do a road cleanup day and puts on an SCCA rally that corresponds to the Festival of Pumpkins. In the PNW, the rally people there turned out to help when there was wide spread flooding.

By the way organizers, we need to document this and let Ananda know about it.
Richard
 
#4 ·
It seems like about once a year I ask some questions on here about organizing. So far the most info I've ever gotten was when Anders was on my sofa and I was like, hey, let's talk organizing.
Okay, so I'm going to try a new approach. Direct questions:

Question 1:
What is the first thing to do when organizing a new rally?

Question 2:
What is the primary items to include in a proposal to a community?

Here's the basic plan. We're first going to scope out roads in the area and see if there are county, non-forest service roads, that would be acceptable. If so, I will start preparing a proposal. This is in my idea more of a sales pitch. Hotel nights, five year growth plan, economic impact, etc. Once I have this I will contact the local Chamber of Commerce and get their support.
 
#5 ·
Answer 1: Find roads. Sounds simple, but it's not. Going out and looking for them is fun, but doesn't usually yield a lot of productive results (maybe 30% of the roads you look at will be useable in the end, if you're lucky). I'd suggest starting with a County DOT, and seeing if they have a county Right of Way map. You may also want to talk to their special event permit coordinator, and explain what you want to do. You're going to get one of two initial reactions: (1) that sounds like fun, we'll need to think about whether we can allow that or (2) we don't allow that kind of thing around here. I've gotten both responses from counties that are adjacent to each other. If you get the latter, you've got your work cut out for you, and it's probably not worth your trouble (though I've personally got a plan to overcome that particular response, but it will take a few years). If you get the former, you need to be prepared to convince them that we are not just a bunch of irresponsible yahoos looking to tear up their roads. If you get that far, PM me and I'll send you a powerpoint presentation that you can tailor to your needs.

You might want to take a look at www.geocommunicator.gov. Some of the map views will show you roads that have documented rights of way. I am not sure if they show these for roads in national forests, but they do show them for lots of BLM roads. Keep in mind that just because a road isn't shown as having a ROW doesn't mean that it's not a legal road, it can just be a little messy. If there's a documented right-of-way, you're in good shape if you can get a county permit. If not, it really depends on the particular situation between the county, the feds, private land owners, and perhaps the state. A friendly warning that you may become lost in bureaucratic hell, but don't let that dissuade you.

After you've got your list of legal roads, then you can pare it down by going and taking a look. Keep a lookout for places where you are going to block somebody in. That doesn't usually go over well. It's best to grease the skids with any affected landowners in person before doing all the permit paperwork. Sometimes, they will be friendly and willing to strike a deal. Sometimes they will, umm... not be.

There's a lot of variability here. The original road that we used for Desert Storm was a trivial to get permission for initially. However, it then got somewhat difficult (or impossible) for a few years, and is now back to a reasonable level. The roads I am working on for the Black Mountain Rally are insanely messy, but things are slowly starting to fall into place.

Answer 2: If you get response (1) above, you may not need to do this. Just find a place for your HQ, service area(s), etc, coordinate with the local emergency services, HAM clubs, and other organizations that need to know what you are doing. If you can run a viable event without promising anybody anything, you're better off in the long run, because there isn't any room for misinterpretation of those promises (i.e. they said there would be X number of hotel rooms sold, and there were only half that many). If the event doesn't annoy anyone in the community too much, and people see a benefit to the event (usually economic, but maybe just something to do on a particular weekend), you'll build goodwill in the local community, which can help you build the event in future years.

--
John
 
#6 ·
Incidentally, once place where you might be able to have good success is roads that are closed during the winter. If you can find one that can reasonably be plowed, but is just not used enough to normally justify it, a government agency might be willing to plow it for you if you pay for it.

--
John
 
#7 ·
Another thing to think about is date planning. Besides putting your rally someplace on the calendar when competitors will be more likely to enter, you have to coordinate with the local area. If the weekend you pick is busy already, you'll only cause a lot of congestion. Or maybe you'd be a good addition to a local celebration...no way to know unless you investigate.

An organizer once proposed an October rally and was turned down because of hunting season. As it turned out, they considered Memorial Day weekend ideal. Since it was normally a tourist area, he never thought of a holiday. Go figure.

Bruce
 
#8 ·
Actually it was at a state demographers meeting back in 2005 where they were talking about how the winter is so hard on this one particular community that first got me thinking. High elevation and guaranteed snow plus a huge frozen lake. Just need to get up there and scope out non-forest service roads in the area and make sure the ones that look good on Google Earth aren't littered with homes.
 
#10 ·
You might also want to consider starting small. The first year at my event we used one 5 miles stage and ran it once in each direction. The main goal of that event was to introduce the landowner to what rally is, and the next year we had more roads and were able to expand the event. Then in following years we were able to get roads from another landowner somewhat based on the input the first landowner gave to the second. Then things changed and we lost most of the roads with the first landowner, but where able to expand roads with the second landowner.

Of course some of the challenges of a small event is not loosing money and getting entrants when its not alot of miles. A small event obviously won't create as much presence in a community, but that might not be a bad thing.

It really comes down to meeting the needs of a whole bunch of different folks. One of my landowners would probably prefer if we did our thing out in the woods and no one knew about it. Of course sponsors seem to prefer lots of exposure.

Best of luck with your event.
 
#11 ·
Simon has a good point. Starting out with a small, low key event can help introduce the sport to the powers that be. In some cases, perhaps the vision of hordes of spectators and a full field of fire-breathing cars is not what you want to start with. It's going to vary greatly from place to place, and depends largely on who owns the roads and what their goals are. Figuring this out is probably the hardest part of starting a rally - especially because most of us don't live where the rally will be. Once you get this part going, the rest is easy.

Bruce
 
#12 · (Edited)
Thanks for feedback everyone. I was thinking small to start for sure. Appropriately timed here in Colorado should be able to get 15-20 entrants easily. Going to go scope roads next weekend. Get up early, go snowboard in morning, scope out roads in afternoon. :) If i can work this out this will be a snow event in west and definitely highest elevation. Most of the roads are around 10,000 feet or so.
 
#14 ·
Grant,

I appreciate the desire, why not take over the old Rally CO roads to cut your teeth on?

Established routes.
Familiar community.
Local government support.
Existing volunteers.
Available roads.
Pre-existing logistics.

Just saying. It took a lot of time to do Tumbleweed 2009. Starting from scratch will take a ton of time. Picking up an event that has a lot of things already in place would be so much easier. I have other time and life commitments for 2010 but why make it harder than it needs to be first time out?
 
#15 ·
That's easy Kevin, because I don't want to. Half of the people involved wanted to keep the event going, half didn't. Hopefully some people from that half that did will revive it.
Wasn't Tumbleweed supposed to be practice for the CRC in organizing? Why doesn't the CRC get Rally CO restarted.
 
#16 ·
I will only speak for myself.

After two years of screwing around in a go nowhere job I have decided it is time to get on a real career path so I can pursue some goals in life and get my student loan debt back in line.

Every free moment I have is being put into those efforts. The last 19 months worth of free time went to the CRC and caring for my grandparents before they passed away. 2010 is time to get "the rest of my life" started.

I think a winter rally would be awesome and when circumstances permit, I will do everything in my power to help make it a reality. I just sit here from the having actually helped organize something resembling a rally view point and appreciate the task involved. Something with a lot less to figure out seems to be a great way to cut your teeth as well as gain credibility as an organizer when starting a new venture.
 
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