Gumball Challenge Timeline
<< Background of Kiva | Contents | Getting Organized >>We've compiled a list of suggested steps for your Organizing Committee (OC) to reference while planning your campaign. Feel free to revise as you see fit: this is your campaign after all!
Making Contacts | Team Formation, Job DistributionFundraising/Event Groundwork | The Final Push!
Launch the Gumball Challenge | Challenge Wrap-Up
Making Contacts
(Quarter: Sept 24th to Oct 7th)
(Semester: Aug 19th to Sept 2nd)
Begin the Search! Build a Team!
As soon as school starts, email existing student groups and individuals who express an interest in microfinance to join your Organizing Committee. Feel free to look to your friends, professors, and social networks. Make sure you also contact faculty members in related fields. These could include professors from the business school, those interested in international development, etc.
Define Leaders
Be sure to pick a point-person for each of the important segments of your campaign. There must be a President and Treasurer. These positions are the most important, and it is crucial that these individuals are responsible and motivated! It is strongly recommended that you also recruit campaign, fundraising, events, education, and public relations coordinators. All coordinators will report to the President and work in tandem for the Gumball Challenge week. For more information on Organizing Committee positions, please see Getting Organized.
Networking and Marketing
Continue your search for interested students. If you see in the beginning of your efforts that you are missing a strong candidate for a specific role, try targeting more specific groups (e.g. try e-mailing a business student group to find a student interested in fundraising from local businesses). Begin to spread the word about the upcoming Challenge, and encourage the Marketing Coordinator to begin thinking of a strategy for inspiring and maintaining student interest in the event.
What we need from you:
Register your OC starting August 15th. Registration ends Oct 7th if you are at a quarter-system school and September 2nd if you are at a semester-system school. Upon registration, we will contact you with further information and suggestions on developing your OC, working with other interested student groups, and formally establishing your organizing framework. Remember that if more than one person/group registers to establish an OC at the same University, they will be encouraged to work together at their first OC meeting (see below) to divide specific tasks and responsibilities within the group.
Team Formation, Job Distribution
(Quarter: Oct 8th to Oct 13th)
(Semester: Sept 3rd to Sept 22nd)
First Meeting
Having registered your OC, start to unite around a shared vision: decide on a strategy for your Gumball Challenge campaign, create attainable goals for yourself, build a team mentality, and introduce everyone to each other. At the end of this meeting, the OC President should send an email to Gumball Capital with your goals, plan of action, and a brief description of the OC members.
Second Meeting
Discuss the timeline, and decide which students and members will be best for each OC position to make the campaign a success. Give the first tasks to your current team members, particularly the Event Coordinator.
Specific duties to hammer through in the meeting:
Event Coordinator - Anticipate the tasks that need to be planned far in advance, such as booking classrooms or lecture halls, and figure out whatever other logistics need to be planned ahead of time. Consider such things as A/V equipment for the opening and closing ceremonies, LCD projectors for the judging locations, etc.
Finance Coordinator - Detail your strategy for collecting and keeping track of the money, come up with any questions/clarifications now to avoid uncertainty later.
Marketing Coordinator - Keep brainstorming and begin to implement your strategy for inspiring and maintaining student interest in the event.
Third Meeting
More students will probably come looking to help out, but by the third meeting your OC should have set all of its roles and tasks. At this point, the OC members should know what they need to do, and each should start working on his or her respective tasks. It is the President's responsibility to check in every so often and schedule meetings to make sure everyone is on the same page.
What we need from you:
Confirm that your Organizing Committee has at least a President and Treasurer, and provide contact information (name, e-mail, phone number) by Oct 13th if you're at a quarter school, and Sept 22nd if you're at a semester school. We would like to have meetings with your OC's President twice a week, and hold weekly meetings with your Treasurer to gather progress reports and maintain general correspondence. Additionally, we would like an e-mail confirmation with your team's goals, plan of action, OC members, and what you expect from us. Your OC should join the Gumball Capital Global Facebook group to facilitate communication with Gumball Capital and with other OCs.
Fundraising/Event Groundwork
(Quarter: Oct 14th to Oct 27th)
(Semester: Sept 23rd to Oct 27th)
Exploring Fundraising Options
The OC Fundraising Coordinator should be actively seeking out local businesses that might be interested in giving matching grants. This committee member may also solicit prizes from businesses; these may come in the form of gift certificates to restaurants or for other services and coupons or vouchers to area businesses. The Fundraising Coordinator may also want to organize a brainstorming session to come up with ideas of corporations to contact. By the end of this time period, the prizes and judges should be set.
Organizing Events
The Events Coordinator should be working on planning his or her events by reserving space, contacting speakers, buying materials, and so on. Be sure to check in on his or her progress and keep the rest of the team updated. The Events Coordinator should work with the Marketing Coordinator to begin advertising for the events (and the campaign week in general) as soon as the dates are finalized. At this point, the details of each event during the Challenge should be fully hashed out, and there should be a plan for taking care of the final details.
Registering Teams and Finding Judges
Make sure the mechanisms for registering the Challenge participants, or Gumballers, are robust and accessible. Use the groups and faculty members you contacted earlier to help you get students excited about participating in the Challenge. Recruit faculty members and other prominent people in the community to act as judges or speak at the kickoff event during the Challenge (see Judging and Awards for a more complete list of people to contact).
Given that Gumballers will be competing in the Challenge as groups, or Competitor Teams, work on coordinating them to ensure that everyone who wants to participate can initiate or join a Competitor Team. This may be facilitated by social networking sites, creation of a matching website, holding a networking mixer for teams still looking for people and those interested in joining a team or recruiting friends to participate on half-filled teams.
It will be easiest to coordinate Competitor Teams as they sign up, rather than at the end. Try to combine small teams, or get interested individuals together to form teams. By Oct 28th, your list of Competitor Teams should be finalized.
What we need from you:
Keep us updated on your OC's progress, and feel free to ask any questions. Correspondence should still be maintained through the assigned meetings through your OC's President and Treasurer. Give us an idea of how many Gumballers are signing up as you go along.
The Final Push!
(Oct 28-Nov 2)
Logistics
Be prepared, there will be a lot of work to do this week!! Have an OC meeting to run through everything that needs to be done, especially with regard to the kickoff event. All Competitor Teams should be registered by this point.
The Fundraising Coordinator should be in contact with sponsoring organizations to make sure they have 'sealed the deal' for matching donations or other grants, and let the organizations know how they may contribute. Begin collecting the prizes from sponsoring organizations.
Financial Aspects
The OC Treasurer should have submitted the list of Competitor Teams to Gumball Capital's Treasurer, and will soon receive the $27 micro-loans for each registered team. The Treasurer should have a meeting or send out an e-mail to the Finance Leader of each Competitor Team to let them know how they will receive their money, and how to return it at the end of the Challenge. They should provide tips for soliciting and obtaining donations/pledges/payment. See Money Matters for more information on Organizing Committee finance documentation.
What we need from you:
We'll need a count of the Competitor Teams in order to disburse the $27 micro-loans for the Challenge (Deadline: Oct 28th). Additionally, the OC President and Treasurer should initiate daily correspondence with us starting the October 28th.
Launch The Gumball Challenge
(Nov 3-10)
After a lot of work and planning put forward by the Event, Marketing and Education Coordinators, when the big day arrives, begin early. It's time for the rubber to hit the road. You will have access to a large audience and need to collect as much money as you can for this noble cause. Get the gumballs ready and have all your literature ready too. Set up stands, booths, and banners in areas that can capture maximum eye contact. All plans and instructions provided by the campaign/event coordinator must be implemented to the best of your ability.
Your Organizing Committee will finally see your work pay off as you mobilize and inspire your peers to work on this cause. Remember, the payoff is a gift of financing to enable an extremely poor entrepreneur to attain self-reliance. This is a priceless contribution that will touch and improve many human lives.
Nov 3th: Kickoff
Have faculty members, entrepreneurs, or representatives of microfinance institutions recruited to speak at your kickoff. Have an introduction by the President of the OC. Then, lead into your key-note speaker (10-15 minutes) and end with an overview of the rules of the Challenge. All micro-loans should be disbursed at this point.
Nov 5th: Office Hours/Networking Mixer
This event can be used to sustain the enthusiasm from the previous day's event. It can be used to find others to join their team, for teams to ask the OC questions, and for people to become more educated about microfinance. Invite the general student population, especially those on teams and interested in microfinance. Invite interested faculty members, entrepreneurs, and representatives of microfinance institutions. Format could be like a cocktail party, with appetizers and other finger foods to encourage mingling (again, this is just a suggestion, use your imagination).
What we need from you:
We'll need up-to-date information on the fiscal situation of your OC and your Competitor Teams. Balance Sheets provided by the Finance Leader of each Competitor Team to the OC Treasurer, will be collected and updated onto Gumball Capital's website. For more information, see Money Matters (OC) and Team Finances (CT).
Also, daily correspondence between the OC President and Treasurer will still be maintained with Gumball Capital officers throughout the Challenge. Keep us updated on how things are going, send anecdotes and quotes about the Challenge. We'd like to hear how students perceive the Challenge, both those involved and those just observing. We're also interested in your feedback, we want to what went well, what didn't, and what would have helped you to prepare better. Feel free to e-mail these to us, post them on our blog www.gumballcapital.org/blog, and encourage the Competitor Teams to e-mail their thoughts to us as well.
Challenge Wrap-Up
(Nov 11-17th)
Tally Raised Funds
This is the last, but very important action. You should start collecting all the acquired revenue from the Competitor Teams, as well as a list of people who have made pledges and/or purchased their services. The Finance Leader of each team is responsible for giving the funds raised to the OC Treasurer. All funds that were raised (or pledged) need to be collected, consolidated, and added up. The Treasurer, President, and Fundraising Coordinator should work in tandem to get this done.
Nov 11th: Gumball Challenge Awards/Closing Event
Competitor Teams submit their funds, results, and business model to the judges, who will decide the winners and give awards as they find appropriate. We've included a list of awards that can be assigned; feel free to modify this list as you wish/have prizes (see Awards and Judging Criteria).
Congratulate Everyone Involved
Thank everyone! Hold a little celebration for your Organizing Committee. Also, be sure to send out a widespread email to students letting them know how much their friends and peers raised and how many low-income entrepreneurs that money will help. This is the fun part--let people know what a good job they've done however you can, and they'll be much more likely to do it again. Hopefully the success of this first year will inspire more students to participate next year.
Fundraising Coordinator
Don't forget to send out "thank you" letters to all donors, to facilitate future contributions and also to use this opportunity to continue to spread the word about Gumball Capital some more.
What we need from you:
We need your final tally of the revenue totals for each Competitor Team, and for the entire school. See the sample Competitor Team Balance Sheet in the pdf/paper copy of the full starter kit for your own reference. All collected money should be returned to the Treasurer of Gumball Capital. This tally and the funds raised are due by Wed, November 14th. The tally can be e-mailed to the Gumball Capital Treasurer, and the money should be sent by check in the mail (see Money Matters for more details). The information provided will be used to determine which Competitor Teams deserve the National Grand Prizes, provided by Gumball Capital.
Also note, that the manner, speed, and amount in which the money is transferred by your OC to Gumball Capital will be taken into account as Gumball Capital awards the respective OCs with their own prizes and recognitions. Both the Competitor Team Grand-Prizes and OC prizes will be awarded on Sat, November 17th. See Awards and Judging Criteria for more details.
Please contact Gumball Capital's Chief Operations Officer at (408) 318-1237 or doreen@gumballcapital.org if you need any more help or advice!
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