As all of you know, the event business has been completely shuttered since March 14. Every event that should have been held the last several months has had to make the sudden decision whether to postpone, cancel, or try to go virtual. While these decisions have not been easy for anyone, there has always been the hope that events would get going again soon. We still don’t know when everyone will be able to go to full capacity on events, but there are baby steps being taken by many to make it happen. Athlete Guild has been on the forefront since the beginning helping events to handle the issues regarding refunds, postponements, and communication to participants. For those of you who put your faith in us to help guide you through this process, we hope that we have helped with the transition to make it as smooth as possible. We know from talking to some races, that our competitors simply threw their hands up and said wait until it is all over. They left the races without any guidance and for those races it has been really difficult. Our goal from the beginning has always been about trying to help non-profits succeed through racing. The tactical objective is to host a successful event, but strategically the goal is to simply raise money. This is why we encouraged our races to go virtual where they could and when they couldn’t we worked with participants to convert those funds to donations. We actually had several non-profits make more money in the last few months with virtual events and donations than they did in prior years. As we have said before, we don’t believe that virtual events will carry long term, but it has certainly helped during this time.
So what have you been doing during this downtime? At Athlete Guild, we have kept our eye on the ball and continued to innovate to help you make your events even more successful. Race directors often make the mistake of focusing on the finish line or other physical aspects of the race instead of the real needs. While these are certainly important, the goal for an event is to make money and our focus is in providing the resources you can use to grow your event. This includes donations, communication, and marketing support to the event. We know that we do all of it better than anyone and while we give you the tools that help, we do a lot internally to support those efforts. We will be announcing several features in the coming months that we have deployed to our site that you will find very useful to your event. We want you to be a success.
See you at the race!
