Discussion: CascadeOC hires an event director

I think this is a first for an orienteering club in the US, so I figure it's worth mentioning here. Last month, CascadeOC hired someone to direct all of our local events for the next year. She directed her first event yesterday!

She's new to orienteering, but not to event directing. The club's board and series directors still coordinate event schedules, land permissions, and venue selections, but all of the day-of-event management will be taken care of by the paid position.

So far, so good!

Proof that you don't need in-depth orienteering knowledge to successfully run and manage orienteering events. Great work!

Just curious but do you pay her by the event or is she salaried? Also, is she an "employee" or a consultant?

TT needs to take the idea to the WA board

I haven't seen the signed contract, as the club president handled all of that. But the original intent was to have it structured similarly to how we've paid mappers. I'm not sure how often she gets paid, but presumably per meet.

CascadeOC has three series each year that total 19 event dates between them (March-June, July-October, November-February). The goal was to have someone direct at least an entire series, but we found someone willing to do all of them.

She actually started during the middle of a season, because we wanted to get a few events under her belt before the behemoth Winter Series (~3000 starts) begins in two weeks. We used to have a long-time volunteer who tirelessly directed all of our Winter Series events, but she became unavailable a few years ago, and the club shared the duties in the interim, which burned out several people. We've been looking for a qualified candidate since the spring!

Fantastic. Some set-in-their-ways clubs that shall not be named, but have seen their number of events drop by half from 2013 to 2015, should take notice.

What responsibilities does an event director have? Who else needs to contribute to the event?

Yeah, tell us more!

The club's board and series directors still coordinate event schedules, land permissions, and venue selections, but all of the day-of-event management will be taken care of by the paid position.

This essentially explains it.

We have 3 series coordinators for the 3 series (eg: I'm the one for the Choose Your Adventure Series), and we decide when and where the events will be, and are responsible for the event and series pages on the website. The series coordinators are also responsible for finding the course designers. Together, the series coordinators and course designers are responsible for event/course notes.

The board has a land permissions coordinator, and she handles all of the permitting for all of our events. And the club has a team of e-punch coordinators that handle all of the timing and results. Basically, anything orienteering-related is still managed by orienteers.

The event director deals with all of the day-of-event stuff. Bringing equipment from the locker, setting it up, and taking it back is a big job, especially for the logistically-heavy and foul-weathered Winter Series.

The event director also manages all of the volunteers and all of the registrations and payments. Our club has an online pre-registration and volunteer sign-up system (not the O-USA one), so she manages all of that.

The other big benefit is having a constant presence for event responsibility. I get a little annoyed when I need to find the event director for something, only to find that she's out on the course, and the backup can't answer my question. Or, when I've been asked (usually on the spot) to be the backup while the primary goes out. I think it's better for organization and for safety when you have one point of contact for the entire event.

(Obviously, every club's situation is different, but our Winter Series events are 350+ each, so we're looking for more organization.)

I think that is awesome. You guys have really nailed the organisation there!! So what is her background? Event management?

UncleJim - some years ago our sprint series was 'outsourced'. It was fantastically successful in attracting newcomers, numbers boomed. But ultimately that ended and it came back to being done by Orienteering WA volunteers again, perhaps due to a perceived lack of control, perhaps due to the inherent resistance to paying people to do what volunteers do for all the other events. I can't comment how well the system is going these days, too long away from Perth now! I think numbers are quite good, not sure how the 'extra' stuff is going - as in, race reports, photos, etc.

Thanks for the background Tooms, I had heard about it, but never really knew the details

inherent resistance to paying people

I don't really have much analysis to add to this plainly stated fact, but from where I sit, this may be the most important single reason there hasn't been growth (or "growth", pick yours) in this particular sport in this particular environment.

inherent resistance to paying people

I don't really have much analysis to add to this plainly stated fact, but from where I sit, this may be the most important single reason there hasn't been growth (or "growth", pick yours) in this particular sport in this particular environment.


First of all, it is an opinion, not a "plainly stated fact".

Second of all, "from where I sit", plenty of money as been spent on salary, travel, and related expenses over the past 5+ years, at least at one "unnamed" organization, and I see zero evidence that such expenditure has contributed to growth at all. (There may or may not have been growth; the data I've seen suggest that it is de minimus at best, and negative in the most important domain, but even if I've misread the data, every econ 101 student knows correlation is not causality)

Finally, "from where I sit", my opinion is that I do not have any resistance to paying people for performance or a job well done. OTOH, and the evidence suggests that I am in the vast minority on this one, I do have an aversion to paying people for under performance, or the inability to articulate a reasonable strategic vision and a reasonable business plan to reach that vision, after a reasonable amount of time on the job.

CascadeOC hiring an event director is more of an effect of growth, I think, rather than a reason to create growth.

Our Winter Series has grown steadily at about 5% for the past decade, so what used to be event attendances in the low 200's are now into the upper 300's. We've got 8 of those from November-February, and it's a lot of work in a short amount of time, and after our longtime event director stepped down, we found that nobody want to do it. It's a lot of work for a volunteer, and we realized that we needed to value that position more, hence hiring someone.

And hiring someone from outside made more sense, because nobody from within the community wanted to give up running for an entire season to organize. For orienteers, this is supposed to be fun, and not a job. Directing a bunch of events feels like a job.

Our two smaller series also struggled with finding event directors, despite being significantly easier and less stressful to direct. I'm not entirely sure of what the root cause is here, but it could be a combination of volunteer burnout from the winter, the perception that all events are difficult to direct, wanting to compete more in better weather and terrain, and competing weekend activities in better weather (boating, backpacking, vacations, etc).

You'd think that with the 5% annual growth, we'd get more volunteers and event directors, but that hasn't been the case at the event director level. We usually always have ample day-of-event volunteers now, but that may be a result of our slick volunteer/registration signup system, and the fact that volunteers can redeem "volunteer points" for free entries in the system.

I think the club could have done better with developing more big-time volunteers, but it's hard.

Maybe having the new director will allow us to have better marketing, more photos, and other event amenities that attract growth. Several of us will have more time and energy to pursue those things now, at least.

COC's Event Director doesn't appear to have been hired to produce growth, rather to better deliver a product. I want growth, sure, but does the sport? Maybe there could even be a subconscious opposition to growth?

More concretely, does an "unnamed" organization expect their expenditures to produce growth? Some here are demanding growth, but is that the objective of the "unnamed" organization? There are other valid purposes, other worthy goals and priorities. Just curious. Is it fair to bash someone for something that they aren't expected to do?

No wander CascadeOC is a new US Relay Champion (3 point category), obviously there is a group of people in the club, who has the vision for our sport development locally, and acting upon it. I wish you guys, great luck with it.
As far as this secretly unnamed organization goes, from taxpayer point of view, I see taxes go up every year, as an orienteer I also see great developments with junior team. I guess you win one, you loose one.

I think that the problems with orienteering WA is pretty much universal. Low numbers, entirely volunteer run = volunteer burnout. We've got some great schools and juniors programs, but we really want more people in the sport. Hearing about CascadeOC's events and success is awesome. I personally want to hear more about the types of events held, how they are run because if there is a secret ingredient, or something different that we can do that we can use to up our regular numbers then we want to know! I also understand that it's a matter of human nature to not want to spend money, without a clear cut idea of what we will be getting in return. I've heard arguments that someone new to orienteering cannot organise orienteering events, or advertise. Cascade has already proven my point in that regard.

You should meet up with brycec sometime TT, he has similar thoughts - and was faced with the tidal wave of inertia ;-)

Trish Orienteering WA has been using paid personnel to manage aspects of 'event direction' for several years. The McCTeam prepares the event file, manage entries (both online and on the day) and process the results. I don't know what else an 'event director' does that could ease the volunteer burden. For some events we have an equivalent volunteer position called 'Organiser' which is a largely superfluous job at events where there are a competent setter and controller, their (Organiser's) role mainly being simply to find volunteers to bring equipment to the event.

As I understand it Cascade has one person who can bring and set up all their equipment, and still manage entries, results etc. In WA how could that one person tow all three of a caravan, trailer, and toilet trailer (which also has to be collected the previous day) 50-100kms, set up the arena, set up the computer, take entries and produce results, and then tow all three items back, unload everything, go home and inmediately get on the computer to get results posted, return toilets the next day, etc. etc. So we'd need to employ at least three people to do all that.

We also employ people to co-ordinate two of our event series, to run our biggest event (School Champs with 1,000 entries), and have a part-time paid admin assistant. It would be nice to lower the volunteer burden further, but I think we're doing pretty well on that score.

I agree that growth in participation is slow, and conversion to membership even slower. There will be programs and money coming in over the next couple of years via a change in the way the federal government funds sports. Their (Feds) objective is to grow participation in sport to alleviate obesity and mental health issues, so we'll see how that works.

All of this to say that maybe we can learn stuff from other people geeez have I hit a sore button?

I'm sure we can, and I am quite open to, learning from others.

The point I'm trying to make is that sure, someone with no orienteering experience can do that role of Organiser/Event Director, but for us it is a very minor, or even unnecessary role except for very large events like the National Champs carnival or the WA School Champs.

The vast majority of work involved in our events is done by the mappers and setters. I was a big supporter of the NavDash outsourcing referred to by Tooms, but that person did the mapping, setting, promoting, and organising of the Series. If we could find someone to do all that, for every one of our events, I'd be happy to pay two or three times our current entry fees.

Actually, I'm more interested in how Cascade OC attract twice as many people to their events than we do, although in comparison the Seattle metro area has twice the population of the Perth metro area, and Vancouver and Oregon are quite close whereas we are very remote.

> I'm more interested in how Cascade OC attract twice as many people to their events than we do
Most of attendance is from school league - WIOL, but few of the kids there pick up the sport beyond that.

And Simmo hits the nail on the head... In 'traditional' orienteering the job requirements to set up an event are highly technical and require many years of competent high nav-standard experience. That's not found outside current or former orienteers. The vast bulk of hours/labour required is arguably needed from one of 'the converted'. Admin, on the other hand...

I don't argue that some jobs need a bit of training. However - there are a lot of things that don't require specific knowledge. ie: marketing, events management (not talking about setting or mapping!!). Trying something new in marketing won't hurt too much. Event numbers can only grow if new people are brought in to be exposed to the sport and I think that is where we have 'opportunities'.

Yeah, I'm a little confused by the objections raised here. Do Aussies not have any trouble recruiting event directors? It seems to me that in the US the problem isn't with finding day-of-event helpers (or course setters), it's with finding someone who wants to run the show. Nobody really wants to be in charge of the boring stuff (like ordering toilets or figuring out who will tow them), or have to tell other people what to do, or be blamed when stuff goes wrong. Seems like the perfect kind of work to hire a non-orienteer to do.

For instance, who does all of this stuff:

"tow all three of a caravan, trailer, and toilet trailer (which also has to be collected the previous day) 50-100kms, set up the arena, set up the computer, take entries and produce results, and then tow all three items back, unload everything, go home and inmediately get on the computer to get results posted, return toilets the next day, etc. etc."

Who coordinates that work? Surely not the mapper and setter? Would it not be feasible to hire someone to be in charge of coordinating all that (and doing a portion herself)? Maybe there's no shortage of volunteers willing to do all that stuff, but it seems like an area where it would be possible to save some volunteer energy for technical tasks. Hire someone to make sure the event is advertised, handle registrations and payments, order toilets, find drivers to tow equipment, find a couple people to help set up and tear down the arena, etc.

Permits (= landowner relations), food. Your number-one in importance item doesn't require specialized knowledge and can certainly benefit from the same person doing it each year.

Certainly in the US having one (friendly, organized, and did I mention friendly?) person to do permits is a really good idea. Is this an issue outside of the US?

I don't think permits are too much of an issue here. (Please don't read this tRicky)... I think over here there just isn't much of a focus on promotion to people outside orienteering. Which is why I really want to see what you guys do, if your events have something that is more of a social aspect to attract more non-orienteering folk, or if you get them when they are young and indoctrinate them into the sport :P Maybe you guys have really good marketing strategies, I think over here the marketing is lost on the to-do-list by our busy volunteers because they are stuck in the technical details of the event, booking toilets, printing maps, setting courses etc. Although we have our Admin assistant now and she is proving to be really helpful and full of new ideas.

We (antipodean WA) have had a series of well-spoken effective permit gatherers, volunteers all, over the years. A key position/portfolio. And yes, permits (access permissions in local parlance) are essential. Ask tRicky... No, don't!

Our system runs well, lots of vollies (eventually), lots of templates and manuals for quality control, but we lack members and (enough) good quality 'setters' and 'controllers' . So lower level events can suffer from being uninspiring to faulty. And are not great promotional vehicles.

Round we go 'gain...

So do I understand correctly that COC is paying contractors, not salaried employees? My understanding is that is easier in terms of accounting burden on the club, and management. I'd appreciate a short primer on how to do each one.

The system for recruiting volunteers sounds great. Does the event director need to do additional recruitment or do enough people sign up without that?

Volunteers are not too hard to find if the job is bite-sized and well-defined. Turn up from 8-11 and do this, this, this.

Paying someone to do the volunteer scheduling and instruction and to know all the this, this, thises that need doing seems sensible.

Cristina most of that stuff happens automatically. Once the event schedule is known, a roster is drawn up, so that at the start of the year you basically know which event you will be towing a toilet to, or have some sort of admin role. The Organiser (Event Director to you) role is basically limited to a few phone calls a week or so before the event to remind people they are on the roster.

Permits are all handled by one person for each series (Winter, Summer, Sprint) - and usually the same person for 2-3 years.

We have a group of school and uni students who operate the Sportident system for each event and get paid for doing it. Most events are enter on day, but this team also handles pre-entries when required. They operate from a caravan towed to the event, and because there are usually two of them at each event, they also each get to compete in the event while the other is working the computer.

Promotion of events is limited, but then we have found that most standard methods of promotion always fail, so nowadays we hardly bother and rely on our website and word of mouth. Could do better, obviously, but can anyone tell us how?

ledusledus - that's very interesting, as we ran a very comprehensive school program for 10+ years with a similar outcome. The schoolkids love doing orienteering, but almost none become regulars.

I'm interested to know how event attendance halved between 2013 and 2015.

(I'm a bit late to this thread)

I was referring to another U.S. West Coast club. Its total number of event-days fell from 47 in 2013 to 34 in 2014 to 23 (scheduled) in 2015. I also heard the club is very happy with the way things are going, and doesn't think anything needs to change.

Sorry I somehow added the word attendance in there and wondered how that future got predicted :-)

Quality over quantity perhaps?

No, the attendance is mostly tracking the number of events; the income certainly is, both net and gross.

Tundra/Desert is talking about BAOC. I agree that the numbers he quotes are correct. I disagree with his statement that "the club is very happy with the way things are going, and doesn't think anything needs to change". I certainly am not happy. However, our problem is not so much finding meet directors (although it is not easy). The harder part is finding people willing to set courses, particularly standard distance courses. We have a lot of sprints and lite-O in urban parks. A number of the older members who use to be very active in course setting no longer set courses, partially because of health reasons, but also because of fatigue. We just do not have the critical mass of experienced course designers any more who can produce a full schedule.

The BAOC 'reduced schedule' is still over 2x the 'full schedule' of my club. I think there was a thread a few years ago that compared the number of events each club hosted. I recall that US clubs hosted a lot more than here in Canada.

Out of curiosity how many races does Cascade host a year, what is the average attendance and average entry fee?

The IOF has three standard distances: Sprint, Middle, and Long. Perhaps calling anything not resembling a Classic Course of the 1990s "lite-O" may have to do something with causes of the fatigue? Those "lite-O" attendees, after all, could have been sources of the future critical mass, and certainly of funds.

My intent this winter is specifically to recruit less experienced course designers to do score so we can have more events, since our vets are fading out of hosting. The die hards can still do conventional meets to prep our few travelers for regionals/nationals.

Hearing about CascadeOC's events and success is awesome. I personally want to hear more about the types of events held, how they are run because if there is a secret ingredient, or something different that we can do that we can use to up our regular numbers then we want to know!

I wouldn't say we're a success across the board. In many cases, we're like a lot of other clubs: we rely on volunteers and they get burnt out. We don't get huge turnouts for the rest of the year (just one Winter Series meet is about as big as each of our other two series). We have trouble finding mappers and making a lot of new maps. We rarely host A-meets for a club of our size. We don't really offer too much formal training. We have a vacancy on our exec board. And until now, we've had a hard time finding event directors. If anything, by choosing to hire someone, we're acknowledging an existing problem by being flexible and trying something new.

We don't really do well at marketing (yet). Our website could be better. For a city of our size that is both outdoorsy and engineery, there are lot of potential orienteers that we're missing.

But, as I said earlier, every club's circumstance is different. I get asked sometimes why we don't host more A-meets, like how BAOC hosts 2 a year. I get asked why we don't have weekly training, why we don't host a Sprint Camp, and why don't we have a gazillion sprint maps like Vancouver.

Instead of focusing on what we don't do, I think those asking the questions should give us credit for what we do do. We have a huge Winter Series and School League. We're good at it, and it's not easy. It's like 8 one-day A-meets in the span of 3 months. And to echo Balter's comments about our relay win... all 3 runners on that team graduated from our school league and would not have orienteered otherwise. BAOC does A-meets. Vancouver does sprints, and CascadeOC does school league.

So do I understand correctly that COC is paying contractors, not salaried employees?

Yes. I haven't been involved with the details, but the original plan was to do this more like how we handle mapping contracts.

The system for recruiting volunteers sounds great. Does the event director need to do additional recruitment or do enough people sign up without that?

Recruiting day-of-event volunteers used to be horrible. We had a volunteer coordinator position and all she did was email and call people and beg for people to volunteer. In 2008, we started a Volunteer Incentive Program (VIP) where people would earn points based on their volunteer shifts. A typical shift earned enough for a free entry. You could also save up your points and buy stuff like club jerseys, hoodies, compasses, and e-punches.

But it was really the introduction of our online registration system that debuted in 2012. Participants could register, pay (using Paypal or VIP points), and sign up for volunteer shifts. Event directors could easily award VIP points. Since then, we've had pretty much all day-of-event volunteer roles covered. No more begging! There are, occasionally, some reminder emails about registering and volunteering before the pre-reg window closes.

Most of attendance is from school league - WIOL, but few of the kids there pick up the sport beyond that.

That's definitely true. With 200 kids in the league each year, you'd think that more of them would come back. But, when I look at what I was doing as a kid, I don't really do any of those things anymore, either. I no longer play basketball, tennis, or the cello, for examples. The fact that we're exposing 200 kids to orienteering and that they enjoy it now is a win, in my book.

Out of curiosity how many races does Cascade host a year, what is the average attendance and average entry fee?

Our current routine is 20 race dates a year, which are organized into 3 series:

Winter Series & School League
2013-2014 average attendance: 360 starts (overwhelmingly solo)
Schedule: 8 dates, November-February
Format: point-to-point courses, park/trail terrain, 30-60 minute winnings time for advanced adults

Ultimate Series
2014 average attendance: 75 starts (overwhelmingly solo)
Schedule: 5 dates, March-June (7 races, but 2 are a doubleheader, and 1 is hosted by another club, EWOC)
Format: each race and terrain is different: night-o, score-o, sprint/relay, classic, long, goat.

Choose Your Adventure Series
2013 average attendance: 65 starts (lots of teams for paddle, corn maze, and vampire)
Schedule: 6 dates, July-October
Format: score-o's in different terrain: campus, paddle, forest, corn maze, etc

We also have one annual race that isn't part of a series, the Bog Slog, which is between Christmas and New Year's. It's always been point-to-point, and it recently had a duathlon option, but last year was changed to a mass start race with social afterward.

CascadeOC also inherited a 4-race Wednesday Evening Series from SammamishOC in 2014. They are a super tiny club that wanted a year off, so we took over for them this year.

Entry fees are ridiculously cheap, and we'll likely have to raise them as our permitting fees are now mirroring what California has been seeing, and now that we have a paid event director.

Currently, if you're not a club member, and you don't pre-register, and you need to rent an e-punch, it's $13. If you have all of those things, it's just $6, and actually cheaper if you attend all events. One of the pre-registration bonuses is that if you pre-register online for an entire series, you get one race free.

My intent this winter is specifically to recruit less experienced course designers to do score so we can have more events

That was part of my intent when I created the Choose Your Adventure Series in 2011. Make 'em easy to organize and beginner-friendly for both participants and course designers. There's been some success with this. Of the 12 events from the last 2 years, 4 were designed by first-timers.

For our Winter Series, since there are 8 courses per event, we have course setting teams of two, usually with an experienced course setter and an apprentice.

mirroring what California has been seeing

For completeness of record and especially for those who love to accuse us of wanton Silicon Valley attitudes, I would like to emphasize that not only are we seeing a constant increase of permit fees to high-3-digits per use, but also a significant increase in the amount of time it takes to obtain a permit, primarily through hardening of policies, increase in required paperwork, and an increase in thoroughness of the review process.

The orienteering club has found a way to deal with both problems by not scheduling events in expensive or "excessively formal" jurisdictions, which partly accounts for halving of events and 30+ idle maps.

And the obesity problem marches on as the opportunities for organised community sport wither through risk management administrivia.

Thanks Pink Socks for the info, and Tundra/Desert - the same tightening of processes seems to be happening even down here at the opposite side of the sphere.

Cascade also does a great job of supporting course setters, especially for the school league races. The course-setting handbook really helped me refine my courses and ensure they were of an appropriate difficulty level for all participants - as a parent of a young orienteer, I've learned to appreciate just how important that is. Clubs looking to expand their course setting population might ask COC to share a copy of the handbook. I loved course setting and learned a lot from the experience.

It also helped to be married to a mapper...who kindly agreed to update the map after witnessing my frustration after I did a trial run of a few of my favorite legs and discovered that none of them would work without a map update!

Thanks pink socks for outlining your various events and types. I am amazed at your fee structure. Our club is one of the biggest and healthiest in NSW (Eastern Australia) and our fees are close to yours, but ours are about half of the rest of those of the clubs in our state. This is for local or regional club type events. We have a wonderful mapper who won't take reimbursement for his time and efforts and hence our bank balance is healthy allowing us to invest in equipment, retain low entry fees and support our Juniors (we've had about 10 representations at JWOC/WOC in the past 10 years). Our statewide events attract a fee of about $25 per run and national events about $35-40. We have fees payable to State forests,National Parks and some landholders (permit applications mostly - but fees nonetheless), plus capitation fees to State and national bodies (to fund them plus Insurance coverage). Forest orienteering is under threat from a number of fronts - map makers, change in perception of orienteering (sprint and urban) and access difficulties, but with advances in technology it should be becoming easier. Our numbers at major level events (twice a year national titles) have plateaued; our state events numbers have diminished on average (possibly greater numbers in total but more events) and younger ages <12 (plus their parents' ages - 35-45) declining. This is the target area we need to stimulate for a rebirth. Our former elites (and some current) are busily having babies and I am confident in numbers in 2025 onwards - just hope we can get to then.