CHAIRMAN’S PLANNING GUIDE



The Alexandria Jaycees

CHAIRMAN’S PLANNING GUIDE |[pic] | |

|Alexandria | 2 |Virginia | 45 |

|Chapter Name | Chapter # |State Name | State # |

|Bill I. |Letters from Santa |

|Chairperson’s Name |Project Name |

|(address deleted) |Financial Development |

| |CPG Category |

|Chairperson’s Mailing Address | |

| |(# deleted) |Daniel C. |

|Business Phone |Home Phone |Supervising Chapter Officer |

PLANNING

1. Primary purpose (what is the one reason you want to successfully run this project?)

The purpose of this project is to raise funds for the Ways & Means expenses of this chapter.

2. Give a brief description of the proposed project and background information. Follow this with a listing of the specific and measurable goals to be accomplished by this project.

We will advertise and produce a letter from Santa Clause to children. The letter will be personalized based on information forms that parents will fill out in advance. December 5, 2003, will be the deadline that parents must submit their information forms and payment. To get the forms out to the parents, we will use a variety of advertising techniques, including stands and flyer holders at local malls and grocery stores, press releases to the local newspapers, flyers handed out at local events, and articles on our list serve, eventline and newsletter.

When the information forms arrive, we will separate them by address. If two letters come from the same address (for example: a brother and a younger sister), we put the older child into one pile and the younger child into a second pile. (We will know their ages because this is one of the questions on the information form.) This is an important step because past experience shows that most siblings compare their letters and will not believe the letters are “authentic” if the wording is exactly the same. The slight variations in the letters are enough to convince most kids that Santa is truly writing to them, personally.

We have pre-written two different Santa letters: one geared toward very young kids (0-5) and the second geared toward older kids (6+). The addresses are entered into two separate data fields and merged via Microsoft Word into the age-appropriate letter. Each letter has Santa’s “signature” at the bottom (which is really just the word “Santa” written by hand and then scanned as a TIF or JPG file and inserted into the merge).

After the letters are merged, each one is individually checked to make sure the grammar is correct. For example, Santa’s letter says: “Your ______ [relationship] ______ [name] agrees with me.” The word “agrees” is pre-written onto the letter because the majority of the data merged into these fields will be singular, such as “your brother Howie” or “your dog Spot.” However, if the data to be merged happens to be “your parents,” then the “s” in the word “agree” will have to be manually deleted so the letter makes sense. There are a few other instances where the letters must be manually changed, including the phrase “the ___ grade” (must be manually changed if the data to be merged is “preschool.”

Once the letters have been proofed and corrected, they will be printed onto colorful, child-appropriate, pre-printed, Christmas stationery, available from any office supply store. The envelopes will then be run through mail merges and the children’s names and addresses printed directly onto the fronts using the same font as the letters inside.

The letters will then be stamped, placed inside a larger carton and mailed in early December to a special address offered by the U.S. Post Office. This special Post Office, located in Alaska, will open the carton and mail the individual letters using a special “North Pole” postmark. If done within the first two weeks of December, the kids ought to receive their letters in plenty of time before the jolly old elf is expected to arrive at their house.

We will charge $3 per letter.

The goals for the above sales are as follows:

|Goal #1 |To raise at least $500 for the Chapter |

|Goal #2 |To sell at least 200 Letters |

|Goal #3 |To involve at least 2 new members. (Less than one year in the Chapter). |

|Goal #4 |Have at least two local Merchants allow us to set up display “tables” |

3. What are the specific manpower assignments? (show names and duties)

|Jeff B. |Jeff oversees all projects conducted by the chapter. |

|President | |

|(Street address deleted) | |

|(Phone # deleted) | |

|president@ | |

|Daniel C. |Dan oversees all projects in the Financial Development portfolio. In |

|(Street address deleted) |addition, he provides any additional support where needed. |

|(Phone # deleted) | |

|financial_vp@ | |

|Larry R. |Larry assists the Financial Vice President in supporting financial projects of|

|Financial Director |the chapter. |

|(Street address deleted) | |

|Randy C. |Randy assists the Financial Vice President in supporting financial projects of|

|Financial Director |the chapter. |

|(Street address deleted) | |

|Lea Anne C. |Lea Anne tracks and records all monetary income and expenditures of the |

|Treasurer |chapter. |

|(Street address deleted) | |

| Bill I. |The Chairperson is responsible for: |

|Chairperson |Planning the project; |

|(Street address deleted) |Promoting the project to the membership and community |

|Tim C. |Tim updates the Alexandria Jaycee event line (hotline) on a regular basis. |

|Event Line Coordinator |The hotline is one of the main vehicles for communications with Jaycee |

|eventline@ |members. |

|Ericka C. |Ericka coordinates most aspects of public relations for the Alexandria |

|Vice President, Communications |Jaycees, including press releases, the web site and collection of articles for|

|(Street address deleted) |the monthly newsletter. |

|Pr_vp@ | |

|Kristie K. |Kristie maintains the Alexandria Jaycee web calendar that allows for |

|Web Calendar Coordinator |accomplishing project publicity over the internet. |

|calendar@ | |

|Gail Spurr |Gail Spurr is our contact with Springfield Mall in arranging our display. She|

|Springfield Mall contact |has prior experience with us when she was our liaison with Landmark Mall in |

|6500 Springfield Mall P.O. Box 789 |the past ***NOTE the Mall would only let us set up the display if it was a |

|Springfield, VA 22150 |charitable thing, so they had a different flyer made for that site. P.S. we |

|(703) 971-5509 |were truthful in how we worded the display since a portion of general Ways & |

|gspurr@ |Means went into our CD projects. |

4. What specific materials, supplies and resources will be required?

|What |Who |When Needed |

|Hotline announcement |Chairperson |10/20/03 |

|Newsletter articles |Chairperson |9/20/03 and 10/20/03 |

|Envelopes & stationary |Chairperson |12/1/03 |

|Stamps |Chairperson |12/1/03 |

|Computer and word-processing software |Chairperson, Committee |12/1/03 |

|Flyers/information forms |Chairperson |ASAP |

|Address and info to send letters to |Chairperson, |Now |

| |(See attached appendix) | |

5. Describe The Potential Problems And Solutions To Successfully Complete This Project.

|Problem 1: |Lack of people buying letters |

|Solution 1: |Promote early, advertise heavily in high traffic areas such as supermarkets, shopping malls and churches. |

| | |

|Problem 2: |Shortage of manpower from Jaycees. |

|Solution 2: |This is a minimal manpower project. With good coordination, 1-3 people can run this project. |

|Problem 3: |Buyers will want to overly customize the letter or get confused on what information to give |

|Solution 3: |Keep the information form easy to understand with a reasonable number of items to personalize, and have them give you |

| |a contact person and phone # for any questions on the form if it wasn’t filled out right. |

6. Complete a proposed budget indicating all anticipated revenue and expenses.

PROPOSED

|REVENUE |Proposed | |BUDGET |

| |Letters (200 @ $4) | |$800 |

| | | | |

| |Total Revenue | |$800 |

|EXPENSES |Proposed | |BUDGET |

| |Flyers (Donated) | |$0 |

| |Stamps (200 @$0.37 = $74.00, | |$100 |

| |Mail letters to the North Pole +/- $26 ) | | |

| |Stationery | |$100 |

| | | | |

| | | |$200 |

| | | | |

|NET INCOME | |$ 600 |

ACTUAL

|REVENUE |Actual | |BUDGET |

| |Letters (149 @ $3) | |$447 |

| |Shelter Donation for 27 letters | |$15 |

| |Outright donation ($14 added to what was real price) | |$14 |

| |Total Revenue | |$476 |

|EXPENSES |Actual | |BUDGET |

| |Flyers (Donated) | |$0 |

| |Stamps (176 @$0.37 ) | |$65.12 |

| |Mail letters to the North Pole via Express Mail | |$27.30 |

| |Stationery (free, leftover from last year) | |$0 |

| | | |$92.42 |

| | | | |

|NET INCOME | |$ 383.58 |

7. List the specific steps to bring this project to a successful completion showing planned dates for each step.

|Date |Action |

|09/08/03 |Present Preliminary CPG to Board of Directors |

|09/15/03 |Develop flyer and Santa letters |

|09/22/03 |Start distributing Santa Letter child information forms at Chapter Meeting and around the community. |

|10/27/03 |Present Flyers and information forms to members at monthly meeting to take and sell. |

|11/24/03 |Present project and distribute information at monthly meeting |

|Late November |Arrange displays to be set-up at local merchants |

|12/05/03 |Last day to collect data and money |

|12/06/03 |Information is merged onto a letter template, letters stuffed, and addressed |

|12/08/03 |Mail the Santa Letters to the North Pole for distribution |

|12/18/03 –12/23/03 |Children receive letters and get excited. |

|02/09/04 |Present final CPG |

IMPLEMENTATION AND EVALUATION

8. Record any revision of the original plan.

How this question is answered is up to the individual. Here are some suggestions that you might like to follow:

•

• The original suggested price was changed to $3 per letter. (Prices had been $2.50 the year before.)

• A 4 ft. tall and 1.5 x 2ft. display was built for distributing letter request forms at Springfield Mall. The display is reusable, but needs to be re-wrapped with Christmas wrapping paper next year. The display held 300 request forms (the stripped–down display is in the storage bin; see photo).

• Mini displays (a modified manilla envelope with a “V”-cut with a flyer on the front, and holding 20-25 request forms) were created and hung up at area Giants and local community bulletin boards.

• 27 letters were sent at no charge to the Carpenter’s Shelter kids; an anonymous donor agreed to subsidize the cost for these letters.

• Added Goal #4.

• 4-5 letters were not mailed to the North Pole since they arrived well after the deadline. These received local Alexandria postmarks.

• An online order form was created to be used on the website; however, we did not get it up in time to actually publicize and use it. In the future, this will be a tremendous asset, as anyone from anywhere can order a letter and use PayPal to cover the costs. Note: work with Larry Radford to get the data e-mailed to the person who is doing the data entry of the letters. Since the form was created using Front Page extensions, which are not supported by our current web server, Larry is housing the database on his own personal computer server.

• No press release was sent out because we ran out of time.

• We wound up advertising at Springfield Mall rather than Landmark Mall.

Materials/supplies not planned for:

Refer to your answer to questions #4 and #6 and make sure you include here any items that weren’t planned for but were actually used for the project. Put approximate value for donated items, actual value for purchased items.

|Wood and nails for displays |Chairperson |Free/$8.00 |

|Wrapping paper $ bow for Springfield Mall display |Chairperson |Free/$2.00 |

|Manila folders |Chairperson |Free/$3.00 |

Additional committee members that were used to make this project a success:

List people here who joined your committee after you completed question # 3, and any duties that changed from those described in question #3. Put down the date new people joined the committee and why they joined. Put those dates in your question #8 timeline as changes also.

Name Kristie K.

Address (deleted)

Phone (deleted)

Duties: Database entry, template design, website work, and info follow-up.

9. What changes or recommendations do you have for a future chairman?

Take this opportunity to discuss the good, the bad and the ugly . . . Remember that every project has many sides to it. Running projects and completing the paperwork is not just a waste of time, but an opportunity for growth and development of leadership skills. Future project chairs will be able to use your planning guide to help them run a successful project. Help them learn from your successes and your mistakes.

•

• Get a press release out right at Thanksgiving, or even earlier if possible. Offering the online payment option will make it much easier for the general public to take advantage of the Santa Letters, so publicize this option heavily.

• If we can get a coupon or gift certificate from a chain like McDonalds or Chick-Filet added into the letter, then we can increase the price to $4 -5 per letter. Ben & Jerry’s will give you free coupons, as will the Chick-filet in Landmark Mall. But with a higher priced letter, we can afford to buy $1 gift certificates to either a McDonalds or Burger King.

• Besides having two letter templates for age (pre-school & school age), also have 1-3 extra templates for similar aged siblings. (Siblings will compare their letters and are impressed if the letters look different.)

• Make a concerted effort to have more displays in as many venues as possible. At least 60% of the letters were sold at one particular site (Giant at Beacon Hill Shopping Center). I marked the various batches to track where they were picked up.

• The Springfield Mall site was ok, but next year let’s see if we can get multiple locations. They had us place a small stand in the Gift-wrap area. It did fairly well, but could have been better.

• Work on local businesses both in and outside of the Mall to allow us to set up “mini displays” (letter sized).

• Regularly patrol the displays and refill them as necessary.

• Set up a Dutch auction on eBay. We ran out of time this year, but it can increase our potential market.

• Tag each form for where it is being distributed; this way we can better market them each year.

• Call the Post Office in advance and find out what date they recommend the letters arrive in Alaska in order to have them arrive back at the mainland in time for Christmas. To meet this date, it may be necessary to Overnight the letters to Alaska. There is nothing worse than Letters from Santa that arrive on December 26th!

10. Give specific and measurable results for each goal established. Describe the impact of this project on the chapter, individual members and the community. Evaluate your primary purpose.

Restate your primary purpose and describe just how well the project met it. Then restate each of your goals and evaluate them here. You can just copy, then paste your primary purpose, and goals from questions #2 here, then add a result line. Results can be evaluated by percentage. For example, if one goal was to have 25 people attend, and 50 actually attended, you can say you met that goal by 200%.

Result: Succeeded, we did manage to raise a significant amount of money for Ways & Means.

Goal 1 To raise at least $500 for the Chapter

Result: Not met, but barely not met, this goal became harder to achieve when we lowered the selling price. However it will be attainable and surpassed once the recommendations put forth for next year are implemented. Our net income was $383.58.

Goal 2 To sell at least 200 Letters

Result: Not met; we sold 149. Although the goal was not met, we did sell more letters than we really expected. We sent a total of 176 if we include the letters to the Shelter kids.

Goal 3 To involve at least 2 new members. (Less than one year in the Chapter).

Result: Met, at least 7-8 new members took forms to distribute at work and their community.

Goal 4 Have at least two local merchants allow us to set up display “tables.”

Result: Met -- Springfield Mall, four local Giant supermarkets, and Starbucks Coffee provided venues for us to set up displays.

Use the areas below to describe the impact that this project had on the individual, the chapter, and the community. This is where you will show how the project was a success for the chapter, the community and you, as the chairperson, or for an individual involved in the project. Let this area tell about the success and the benefits of the project. There are some, or you wouldn’t have gotten this far with this project.

Those involved got the sense of a job well done by giving a whole lot of children (176) a continued belief in Santa Clause and got them excited about Christmas; and we have the feedback to prove it (see letter of praise at )!! We also learned new methods of marketing, production, and distribution of a product/service.

CHAPTER

The Chapter made some money to bolster its treasury, and it got a boost in its reputation as an organization that helps its community.

COMMUNITY

One hundred and seventy-six children and their families got proof that Santa Claus really exists….and that he is an Alexandria Jaycee.

Postmaster

ATTN: Christmas Cancellations

North Pole Branch U.S. Post Office

5400 Mail Trail

Fairbanks, Alaska 99709

This is the address Bill used for the 2003 letters. They were Express Mailed on Dec. 10 and our sample test letter arrived here on Dec. 16.

Useful numbers to have: 1-800-ASK-USPS.

Local number at post office in Alaska: 907/488-1376.

The North Pole Station is once again offering its special North Pole postmark during the holiday season.

People who want to receive the postmark should perform the following four steps:

First, they should completely address and apply postage stamps to the envelope or envelopes on which they want to have the North Pole postmark.

Second, they should insert the envelope or envelopes into a larger envelope or container. Third, they should include a note requesting the special North Pole postmark.

Finally, they should mail to the address above.

The Postal Service recommends large orders of addressed and stamped envelopes be sent via Priority or Express mail. The letters will be postmarked North Pole.

Postmarked cards will not be returned to customers for mailing from their own town. North Pole cancellations requests should be received in Fairbanks by December 7. We called to see what their turn around time was, and they said with their new machines, it was less than a week. See above

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