What’s your number?

How does a walkathon come to decide what the event goal should be?

Do they play the coulda-shoulda-woulda game while sitting around a table?

Do they look at what they MUST raise financially to keep the organization afloat?

Do they just jack-up the numbers from last year by a small percentage?

Hopefully the answer is NO to all of the above.

An event goal should be determined by deciding on the number of walkers first.  If you bring the people and they bring a team, the money will follow.  People first.

A good, solid event goal should start by first looking around the table at all the decision-makers attending this meeting.  They are sitting there for a reason.  How many teams will they be able to bring to the event?  Whoa – What?  Yep, everyone must pitch-in by recruiting teams for the event.  Top-down.  Board members, three-letter executives, all the six-figure salaries, all the way down to the person answering the phones.  Everyone should have a team recruitment goal.

If you hire an event manager and think they will be the sole recruiter of teams, then you are missing out on the potential of a larger event.  One person has a finite amount of time that they can be on the phones or at a meeting cultivating relationships.  Adding more human resources to the team recruiting efforts exponentially increases the goal possibility.

It really does take a village to have a successful walkathon!