Help with the Mid-West Classic planning Options

[Curvie Roadlover]

Hi WCC Planners,
I have a question concerning the upcoming 2004 Mid-West 914 Classic. Would it be possible to set up a 914.com e-mail address (or something similar) that I could use to set up a paypal account for the purpose of allowing attendees of our MWC to paypal their registration fee to? I would like to allow people to “pre-register” for our event at a $5 discount. This would be for the purpose of saving attendees some money, but also to generate some money to get the ball rolling on the event t-shirts, trophies, coffee mugs, etc. I could use my own personal e-mail for this but I thought people might feel more comfortable paypal’ing their money to a 914 related e-mail address, you know?
I’d like to be able to send out a notice with something like, “The pre-registration entry fee can be pay-pal’d to midwestclassic@914world.com”
Is this “do-able?”
Thanks in advance,
-Tom Mulcrone (Curvie Roadlover)
Event co-organizer, Southeast Michigan 914 Owners' Group (SMOG)
7199 Kolb
Allen Park, MI 48101
(313) 388-8464
tmulcrone2@comcast.net

[JeffBowlsby]

On the sponsorship topic, we have had very good results, thanks to Jeroen exclusively. But there were interesting things that happened which were important and interesting:

Sponsors were not contacted until we had about 50 attendees signed up. We currently have just over 70 914 cars expected at the WCC, showing potential sponsors we were serious.

All of the sponsors contributed and were asked for only relatively small dollars...$100-200. We have 10 sponsors. Nearly everyone approached eagerly signed up. Jake agreed to sponsor the AX for $200. with trophies indicating his 'RAT' name. We have Rallye Shields for each car, which 3 sponsors funded and have their names on them. Those guys were lucky...that was a deal... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Sponsors have paid for the event T-shirts, which have their logos imprinted on them. Several companies have donated parts to give away at a Raffle in exchange for publicity.

But what was also interesting was that we got no response from some of the larger concerns. I guess that will always be the case. With the experience from this first WCC and the visiblity it has, I think we will be better prepared to do it better next year.

I think the most important thing though was early publicity. Get a webmaster and put up a webpage ASAP. Look at the WCC materials and improve on them. One critical decision early on was made..we piggybacked onto other local events, so that we could leverage the interest in our event with the publicity and activities of the other events already planned. Our area has so many P-car things happening, people here can easily get burned out and they become selective. I wonder if next year we could coordinate a 914 Classic Weekend and hold simultaneous events at several locations throught the country? I guess it depend on the other local events if we continue to piggyback...

Hope the MWC event prospers Tom, all 914 owners will win. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)