Walk2003 National Efforts Feedback Meeting Minutes: Agenda: 1. Communication (Conf. calls etc.) 2. Budget collation, and approval 3. Sponsorships o National Sponsorships o Templates for local sponsorships 4. Publicity Materials o Registration Kits o Posters o Fliers 5. T-Shirts 6. Mementoes 7. Souvenir Brochures 8. Logistics 9. Web page Front End design (Static Pages) 10. National Pledge WebSite 11. Local Registrations WebSite 12. Receipting process 13. Closure of WALK accounts for all Aciton Centers 14. Matching Donations The Feedback session was divided into two sessions (Dec 21st and Jan 11th). Session #1 Attendess: vinod , ganesh , mukesh , raja , vijay , devishree , vishal , seshu 1. Communication: - did all action centers feel that communication was good? - vijay felt it was good enuf - was the frequency good enuf? - started off as once in 2 weeks.. towards the end it was once a month. there was more email comm. there was some confusion due to this. once a week should be better is such situations. (seshu) - initially twice a month is good enuf . but twice a month or more thru out is a good idea. - initially ppl were out of sync abt the website. - web-site issues : action centers were out of sync abt this. - Raja: rajesh was in control for most issues. But rajesh and IT team were out of sync sometimes. - what was rajesh's role in IT.. was he bay area contact or was he the national team POC for IT team? - was there a regular calender set up for schedule of conf calls. - there was an initially a schedule , but it fell apart towards the end. - was the charter of the national walk team clearly defined.? - central message , consistency . should happen early in the year. as soon as leads are assigned.. - seshu : dallas came on board in june. deadline for action centers to join in?? cut off date?? - bayarea , austin , dallas , atlanta mostly signed on for next years walk. - communication between saleem and vishal.. pretty good early on.. discussions before and after the calls. sharing of responsibilities existed. - use the national conf call as a status meeting as well... doesnot purely have to be purely issue based or status update . have a combination of both. - closing points : definitely have a frequency of once in 2 weeks. 2. Budget collation and approval : - happened in a timely fashion : ganu - Atlanta ., bayarea .. seed check came later than expected. This happened due to confusion at office. - dallas : dallas did not get a seed check ?? maybe becoz they joined late. National team was asking ACs for seed money requirements.. dallas and austin did not ask for seed money. Bayarea asked for only 2000 which was less and Bayarea ran out of money. - bayarea: BA did not want to take a huge check since expenses are spread out. threy want 2-3 smaller checks, this should be easy to do. national lead needs to do this. 3. spomsorships: - Local ACs go out for local sponsorships - national team to provide templates for docs to ACs for this. - National sponsorships should be driven by national team.. - How did we do on the above 2 responsibilities last year. - National sponsorships ..no vol dedicated to national sponsorships.Zeetv happened due to keyurs influence. It would be good to have dedicated vols for this. - dallas : purely local.. did not even look at national spons. - atlanta : only local spons effort .. have been successful in the past for national spons.but this year was mostly local. - have 2 dedicated vols on national spons... have a short list of 50 companies and have them go at this. - bayarea : there might be a BA AC level sponsorships. so this might have to tie in with walk? - National effort usually starts late by june or so.. by which time its already late - all you need for the national effort is locations and approx dates . start as early by march. - catch a company which is into advertising .. and you can contact multiple companies thru this company. - have all info from companies by end of april. maybe may15 .. so that publicity material should be ready by june or so.. - how abt local sponsorship template. - do we need to do it .. or are we all set .. - dallas: dallas has their own templates. they are good in that aspect. - atlanta : they are ok too.. - austin : they are ok too. - BA : ok (devi) . Raja : generic point.. a solid doc containing info abt projects supported ., numbers etc. common data points/ information needed. - maybe its a good idea to have a basic template out there. so in case a new AC joins in it would be convinient for them maybe provide the templates of one of the ACs. - maybe have a sponsorship kit as well as press kit. Press kit would need to be created and published to all ACs. ( 8-9 ) pages. - do we have this already .. we did for cry , but not for vibha .. look for CRY press kit. create something similar for vibha. 4. Publicity material : - is publicity a local or a national activity? - reg kits: - BA used a fancy trifold.. was it used by any one else.. is this needed to be a national effort. - reg kits : dallas : used their own 8 by 11 signup sheet. did not use bayarea like trifold etc. this was due to the fact that they joined late and did not want to spend extra money on this as well. They want to continue with this format. - Atlanta : used local version. 8 by 11 version initially. after sponsors are figured out , they went for trifold , but black and white. Main reason is cost cutting. They want to stick with this since they see the national effort as bottle neck ... since their local sponsors come in late in the game. - how abt national spons : logo on all AC reg kits.. should be possible to commit to that. - Austin : local effort. - BA : BA might scale down too. might go for a simpler kit , maybe save some money too. - BA depends on pledges .. so keep that in mind. - So national coordination for printing Reg - kits might not be required. - posters: - have images early on in the year for posters / publicity material. Good photos of children etc. - no other co-ordination required for posters. - Zee-tv ad: - devi to get the info abt this from her sister and gove info to mukesh. - should we continue to have zee tv ads this year? - very positive response / outreach. - other than BA , other ACs did not see much impact in registrations due to this. - start early on this effort. - Dallas : venue and date were displayed for like 2 seconds... this should be more clearly communicated .. more duration in AD needed. - Austin : chenaged venue after the ad was sent out. 5. T-shirt: - coordinated by gautam , executed by atlanta. - BA : Reco would be that we should do it locally. Shipping cost us 70 cents / t-shirt. - Austin : Did it locally , worked out cheaper. - for new ACs .. maybe they might want ot piggy back with a bigger AC. But lets not force a national effort. this will give more control to ACs. - Dallas and austin : these 2 ACs might want to do it together and save on cost due to proximity. - Any suggestions to do a competition for T-shirt design as in past ? - vijay : what are we getting out of this... maybe a better design and some excitement.. but maybe we can postpone this untill next year. - should products team handle the design of T-shirts for the walk. ? - This is timing sensitive .. so if this makes sense and can be deliverd in a timely fashion , go for it.. ( seshu to get in touch with me after checking with gautam ) 6. memento : - car stickers : - austin : they did not get anything... They ordered it but then they changed their mind and cancelled the order. for now they would be in this year . - vijay: ordered them ... it was probably the weakest of all the mementos that we have had for the walk. - raja : agreed with vijay. - fridge magnet worked out well. - we should spend some time thinking abt this .. what will be low cost and high impact.??? - maybe we should have mementos much before the walk .. and use it as a publicity material hand it out at booth etc. this might be a good idea. - can we ping national/ local sponsors for momento.. this would be zero cost for us. - seshu : will we be having a local goody bag with national memento... - central monento .. - contact local sponsors for giveaway stuff. 7. sovinier brochures: - austin : they did this last year - atlanta : 20 pages. will do it again. pays fpor itself. 50 % ads rest is vibha content , projects , wheat we do as vols, 1 page from local charities , 1 page from president of vibha. - Austin and atlanta will make this available to mukesh. - might not need a national effort for this. content can be syncronised and made available centrally. - dont do this as a last minute thing , plan for it well. - dallas : they did it too... got the printing sponsored. - Open to BA to think abt it next year. 8 : Logistics : - no national co-ordination was done.. - suggestions and best practices can be shared.was there a forum to do this last year.? - maybe invite the logistics lead to attend conf calls and share best practices.. we have a forum to do this use the national conf call for this. - why is BA so expensive as far as logistics goes ? ( raja) ..some ACs ( austin) do it in as lil as 3700!! .. So review BA costs and line items and focus on expense reduction. Compare Expenditure across ACs. Session #2 Attendees: vinod , Mukesh , ganu , seshu , Rajesh , raja , vijay 9. Web page Front End design (Static Pages) 10. National Pledge WebSite 11. Local Registrations WebSite - IT role was uploading the pages .. Walk team was coming up with static pages. - design done by kanchan . - how was the template design , was it timely? - Atlanta :Design was delayed a lot.. so atlanta went ahead with their own.. Design needs to be more bright use brighter colors .. and more timely.Bring it to a stage where it becomes repetitive every year/.. should not be started from scratch. Upload was quite smooth. No problems with that. - Dallas : happy with design. started with some skeletal website of their own , but then adopted the bay area website. communicate bettr with late action centers.. so that they do not waste time in their own skeletal design. - bay area : static pages developed at the last moment. nned more pictures . need to add more life to the pages. back end infrastructure needs to be strengthened. dallas felt that it would be good to have a standard template .. and Acs should just need to fill in the blanks.. Rajesh feels that it can be very AC specific due to the requirements of each AC. So it would be good to have the requirements finalized. Final interface that would connect to the back end should be finalized. - common feedback .. timely delivery , bright creative design .. more pics. Start on this early .. so we can finish on this by april. - IT team was suppoed to deliver on these pages .. and Walk team found out at the last moment that this would not be delivered.. Vinod feels that IT team was responsible for back end and it was the walk team's responsibility to design the static pages. But according to rajesh , It was the IT teams responsibility. Obviously communication was broken here.Also we need to clearly identify who is responsible for delievering what..these division of responsibility breakup shoul dbe clearly communincated to all ACs. If there is any change in these deliverable responsibilities , it should be clearly communicated to all ACs. - unformity would be needed in terms of look and feel. Details can be modified as per AC requirements. Not all ACs would need all those features. - national IT team should be responsible for the basic template.. All requiremental details shhould be collected from all ACs, so that all requirements can be worked in from the beginning. - It was never very clear that the work that rajesh was doing with vinnie was bay area effort or a national effort. Work on a clear model to have a POC for each AC with the National IT team. - quality assuarance of the web page. Need to have a plan for this.. which OS , which browser etc etc. negative values in feilds. - mukesh to get a list of all testing issues with webpages in terms of testing from Rajesh , raja , vinod etc. 12. Receipting process - Vijay : the work was distribued. It is certain amount of to follow up on pledges.. This will have to be AC related. Atlanta did its own reciepting this year with pledges and sponsors. - Dallas : central office did reciepting for dallas .. There was some basic confusion as to whose responsibility this is.. Dallas is open to doing this themselves this year. - next year , decide early on what the model for reciepting will be. Whether office will do it or AC will do it. If AC decides to do it , the excel sheets should be sent from ACs to office for duplicate reciept copies etc. - mukesh to follow up with Som asha folks abt e-reciepts. This will save a lot of time and effort. - bay area: BA did reciepting themselves. Raja feels that reciepting should be done by office to prevent any mistakes by vols in the process. Office should be responsible for electronic part of the process .. vols can do the stuffing envelopes. - Maybe its a good idea to add the date of the reciept in the database.. But date of donations should be good enough. Raja feels that the merged document ( used in reciepts ) shoudl be stored off somewhere. - is reciepting required for registration? BA does this .. but other ACs do not,, Need to decide this early on. 13. Closure of WALK accounts for all Aciton Centers - how easy was it for ACs to close accounts with the new bank account etc.. Has this actually been finished.. Atlanta: It is not very difficult . but atlanta is yet to close on the accounts.. They have been worked on .. but they have not been settled with the office yet dallas: Ganu/devi sent an email abt how to do this .. and it was pretty easy to follow. final closure with office has been done.. Spreadsheet has been sent and money has been deposited. - Will Atlanta get a confirmation from the office .. No.. due to the details of access to the bank accounts. - Bay area .. has closed out on this. Raja feels that there should be a firm drop dead date on follow up with patrons for recoverables. - who should do the follow up with patrons abt recoverable.. office or ACs? clarify the process this year. 14. Matching Donations - Bayarea : need to facilitate the patrons to do that somehow. Maybe have a list of companies who have matching donations. Check with Asha for this list of companies which match.? - atlanta : the number of pledges in small , so its easier to follow up for matching donations. - Dallas : have not concentrated on this at all. - make a flier which demonstrates the importance of matcing donations and give it to all the walkers.. also work on the list of companies that have this. May be send one or 2 follow up emails to patrons who have not followed up on the matching donations. Ganu and mukesh to look at the entire fedback and put together a plan of action for what should be done nationally and what should be done at the AC level.