Sponsoring One of Wounded Nature’s Clean-Up Boats

Wounded Nature – Working Veterans is the only organization utilizing veterans and water based vessels to clean up the environment, We educate the public on environmental issues on a year round basis, and provide first stage employment opportunities for veterans.

Clean-up Boat Primary Sponsorship Proposal

Index:

1. Introduction
2. Overview
3. Branding – Victory Vessel and Crew
4. Crew Events and Appearances
5. Audience Draw and Contest
6. Generating Media Coverage
7. Penetration
8. Opt In Email and Cell Phone Text Capture
9. State by State Events and Appearances
10. Cost
11. Contact
Appendix A

1. Introduction
Wounded Nature – Working Veterans is the only organization utilizing veterans and water based vessels to clean up the environment, provide first stage employment opportunities for veterans, and educate the public on a year round basis.

As a result of 10 years of economic depression funding for waterway and beach clean-ups has been either drastically cut or totally eliminated in the federal, state, and local budgets. As a result of these severe cuts, the only beaches being cleaned are the main public beaches where voters frequent. The beaches being cleaned happen to be areas that wildlife avoids because of the number of humans occupying this area. The areas that wildlife has migrated to, use for breeding, and raising their young are not being cleaned. This results in an accumulation of trash that wildlife eats, becomes entangled in and is an aesthetic eyesore to what should be a pristine area.

Wounded Nature – Working Veterans is working to address this problem by utilizing houseboats to transport workers into these clean-up areas, encourage public involvement in clean-up efforts, and education through public appearances by the clean-up crews. Veterans will be hired and utilized as crew members.

The houseboats will travel and clean areas along the entire east coast from Maine to Key West, FL.

Wounded Nature is working to make the East Coast become the showcase for displaying to the world how to solve the problems of reducing waste and the rate of unemployment for veterans. Your brand can become closely associated with this campaign and all of the positive connotations associated with it.

Wounded Nature – Working Veterans will have 4 boats moving up and down the East Coast cleaning beaches, visiting military bases, and educating the public at port festivals.  Individual vessels will have their own sponsor and be branded by the sponsor.

Wounded Nature – Working Veterans will also have one boat on the West Coast.  This boat will be focused on cleaning up the tsanmi trash combined with the trash that has already accumulated over the past several years. 

Due to weather and water conditions on the West Coast a Nordic Tug will be used in place of a houseboat.  As a result this increases the total annual operating cost for our West Coast clean-up vessel to $2.2 million total.

This opportunity will expose our sponsor’s brand to over 830 million views over the course of a year. Sponsor synergy and many social media components are not yet quantified, but could equate to an additional 20 million exposures per month bringing the total number of potential exposures to over one billion views for your brand.

This sponsorship exposure will have a greater value than many traditional advertising views because the majority of our exposures will be generated in the form of news reports, articles, and social media marketing in the context of endorsements; “should have been there,” “should have seen this,” or “make sure you attend.”

This sponsorship associates your brand year round in a high publicity context that is supporting a clean environment, veterans, and our military. It is our intent to help you sell your products, services and increase market share.

Not only is this proposal a great advertising vehicle that justifies ad dollars based on exposure, but it will also create a tremendous amount of political goodwill. Our sponsors will be able to tell East and West Coast politicians that their company is cleaning up their state at no cost to the state while also working to boost their economy by soliciting veterans and environmentalists to attend our events and participate in the beach clean-ups.

2. Overview
Wounded Nature – Working Veterans is a non-profit organization which evolved from the need of a solution to two substantial issues:

First, it has been discovered that plastic pollution in the ocean does not decompose as quickly as marine researchers once thought. As plastic breaks down slowly in the ocean, smaller particles are mistaken for being small particle food sources such as plankton and fish eggs, and ingested by ocean animals. This causes death due to blockage of the ocean animals digestive and circulatory systems.

The beverage industry estimate that over the next 3 years 600 billion containers will be sold and only 200 billion of those containers will be recycled. Currently 74% of Americans have access to curbside recycling yet only 33% of beverage containers are being segregated and recycled. Wounded Nature – Working Veterans will be working to improve the total percentage for plastics being recycled. The opportunity exists to prevent up to 400 billion beverage containers from being littered and reaching landfills.

Second, veterans returning to the United States from the war in Iraq and Afghanistan are facing employment discrimination, due to a falsely perceived risk of emotional instability. The national rate of unemployment among returning veterans is about 4 percent higher than the rate for civilians, and in some states, it is up to 15 percent higher. As a result, each veteran who is unable to successfully transition into the civilian workforce ends up on disability, which ends up costing the American taxpayers 2.1 million dollars over their lifetime.

Wounded Nature – Working Veterans is the first organization to benefit both causes of cleaning up pollution in the ocean and also granting unemployed veterans jobs. In doing so, Wounded Nature – Working Veterans secures a unique position in the non-profit sector. Our vessels make it possible to access remote beaches and estuaries along the East and West Coasts that have previously been untouched by other groups staging clean-ups. Through collaboration with the Veterans Administration we hire veterans to remove the plastic, trash and medical waste from these rural beaches. Not all of the veterans we hire will have been injured during their tour of service. The veteran’s employment with us provides them with their first civilian paycheck and aids their transition into the workforce. For many of our workers, the first paycheck is symbolic of the end of a long and difficult journey to reintroduction.

Our year round campaign includes: launching beach clean-ups, visiting military bases and hospitals, and educating the public at port festivals. We will contact the major local media outlets in each state before we dock, and offer two major networks the opportunity to live aboard one of our boats for two days during our visit. Our staff will document and promote our journey through press releases, staged media events, the internet and social media, and each of the veteran workers aboard the ship will have the opportunity to set up personal blogs. In many ports, the presence of the boats will lead to other attractions being booked around our visit.

3. Branding – Clean-up Boat and Crew
We will have 5 clean-up boats with each one honoring that individual boat’s primary sponsor. The boats will be 50-55 feet in length, outfitted for saltwater use and have a cruising speed of 10-12 knots. In fair weather the ships will move along the coast in the open ocean within two miles of the shoreline. During days of threatening weather, the East Coast boats will utilize the intercoastal waterway.

Each clean-up boat will have a crew of four. There will be a USCG licensed captain and 3 crew members. The captain will be responsible for the overall maintenance and supply (food, fuel, fresh water) of their vessels at each stop. The 3 crew members will be veterans and will be the ones actually making the personal appearances. For some events the vessel captain will also appear with the crew.

The primary sponsor will be responsible designing the “skinning” of their boat. The sponsor will also have the opportunity to name their boat.

The team for each boat can be outfitted by the sponsor to wear the sponsor’s corporate colors and brand. The crew members from each vessel will be referred to as “Team Sponsor” For example if Pepsi supports a Victory Vessel, that boat would be referred to as Team Pepsi and the entire crew would be outfitted in Pepsi branded clothes. Another crew may be Team FedEx, etc.

The sponsor can outfit the crew members for their sponsored vessel. If the sponsor does not wish to handle this, Wounded Nature will outfit the crew and include the sponsors brand on all of the shirts and jackets.

Sponsors can sell their branded outfits including the Wounded Nature – Working Veterans logo on their web site. It will further reinforce to your customer base your company is commitment to the environment and veterans.

4. Crew Events and Appearances
Each team will be the focal point for the public at each stop. Teams will be encouraged to acquire supporters and followers to show up at their appearances. This will be done via media interviews and social media marketing.

At each appearance, our crews will work to convey 6 important messages:

1. The public needs to reduce consumption of “throw away” items with an emphasis on Styrofoam, plastic bags, and plastic bottles.
2. The public needs to recycle those plastic items it does use.
3. The public needs to stop littering. Cigarette butts, bottle caps, plastic bags, and Styrofoam pose the greatest health hazards to wildlife.
4. Our sponsor companies work to reduce consumables, make their facilities green, and recycle to minimize output to landfills.
5. Employers need to hire veterans who have recently separated from the military.
6. Our sponsoring companies hire veterans and gain valuable team contributors as a result.

Whenever possible, crew members will be available at each port to make appearances in support of their sponsoring brand. This could entail private parties, special appearances away from the main event, or special media interviews set up by the sponsor.

5. Audience Draw and Contest
Using the clean-up boats to identify ourselves, we will draw the participation of large crowds by sponsoring contests. The contests, geared toward fun without the chance of injury to anyone, will tie in with our blog and social media campaigns, while generating a substantial amount of local and national publicity.

The contest will be established in conjunction with our sponsors and be geared towards increasing attendance and publicity at each event.

We would also ask the audience to utilize social media to get the word out for each contest. The judges (one representative from each of our sponsors) along with the audience will decide the winner for each location. We will then ask the public to vote each month on our web site for a state winner. Each voter would have to sign in and we would have an opt-in box for them to allow each of our primary sponsor’s companies to contact them directly.

6. Generating Media Coverage
Becoming the primary sponsor for Wounded Nature – Working Veterans, and branding the Victory Vessels will generate a substantial amount of continuous positive publicity over the course of an entire year. Our publicity efforts will reach into traditional, digital, and social media platforms.

Because we advocate for both marine wildlife and former members of the military, our support base is enormous, and the support base has room to grow in several directions. Our goal is to generate publicity through as many media outlets as possible. To do so, we will be utilizing the following media venues to reach as many people as possible:

TRADITIONAL

TV – The clean-up boats are a natural for TV news shows because it presents a great visual. We will invite a TV crew from a couple of stations in each state to live aboard with us for two days while we are in their state.

The Military Channel has already committed to producing a special show covering our launch, and documenting the selecting of our inaugural group of veteran workers.

Newspapers and local magazines – We will list our appearances and events in their community calendar sections. We will also be profiled in post-event articles describing our work serving each paper’s local, state and national communities.

Public Appearances – In addition to the port festivals and military base appearances, we will send crew members to visit local colleges, public aquariums and hospitals.

DIGITAL

Twitter – Our press releases, blog postings, and daily updates will be utilized to keep our followers and supporters updated via Twitter’s RSS feed.

Blogs – We will have several blogs with daily postings.

Google, Yahoo and Bing news archives.  Every time a WNWV press release is posted on the web site it will automatically be indexed into the news archives for distribution by Google and other news services.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Facebook – Recently, Facebook surpassed Google for usage and popularity. WNWV will use its Facebook presence to advertise as well as solicit donations. At each event, we will invite the public to have their photo taken with our Victory Vessels and crew and share that photo and our web site with their Facebook fans.

YouTube – We will have videos of life aboard the Victory Vessels, and of our events and contests posted on YouTube.

7. Penetration
This sponsorship will expose your brand 830.2 million times over the course of a year. The majority of those exposures will be in newspapers, magazines, online and on TV. Exposure for our sponsors will have a greater value than many traditional advertising outlets since the majority of our exposures will be generated in the form of news reports, articles, and social media marketing in the context of endorsements; “should have been there,” “should have seen this,” or “make sure you attend.”

Wounded Nature – Working Veterans ships will attend at least 14 -16 port festivals annually, visit at least 15 military facilities, and perform a minimum of 35 beach and estuary clean-ups. The port festivals will draw between 10,000 – 250,000 per event along with a significant amount of media coverage. The beach clean-ups combined with offering the media the opportunity to live aboard our ship will generate a maximum amount of positive publicity for your brand. The initial impression for newspaper and television is the result of the total combined news viewership per state is as follows:

FL – 18 million
GA – 7 million
SC – 8 million
NC – 5 million
VA – 7 million
DE – 3 million
NJ – 9 million
NY – 15 million
CT – 6 million
RI – 2 million
MA – 4 million
NH – 2 million
ME – 1 million

The above figures (87 million) show the immediate reach for projected newspaper (40%) and television (60%) coverage.

The subsequent follow-on reach due to newspaper and television articles being archived, or appearing on Twitter, and Facebook are as follows:

Newspaper article archives are retained for 2-4 weeks. For newspapers the average number of unique visitors to their site each month is 3 times their weekly circulation rates. Throughout the month they will average the same amount of repeat visitors. This provides newspapers with a total reach of 7 times average weekly circulation over the course of a month. This presents the potential additional exposure to 243.6 million readers.

Television stations are the wild card and their numbers and archiving methods vary widely. They retain aired news articles for anywhere between 1-8 weeks and their monthly web visits vary between 2-20 times the average nightly news viewership based on Nielsen ratings. Based on this variance, we are using 4 weeks for archiving and 8 times nightly ratings for averages. This provides the potential additional exposure to 417.6 million viewers.

Magazine coverage – Wounded Nature – Working Veterans will work to obtain article coverage in environmental, boating, fishing, marine, business, veteran, military, regional and national magazines throughout the year. Magazines have a pass along rate average of three readers per subscription. Combined, these magazine articles will generate an additional 32 million readers. The combinations of Marine, Army, Air Force, and Navy Times magazines alone will generate over 6 million potential views.

In addition to the above, we will have blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo News, Google News, among other social media avenues producing at least a potential 50 million views over the course of the year long sponsorship.

There are many additional factors that cannot be predicted or quantified at this point. Combined, this could amount to a combined additional 20 million brand views per month. Our unknown exposure predictions include:

- Sponsors efforts to promote their association with Wounded Nature – Working Veterans. This could take place in the form of commercials which include their houseboat, web site links, contests, etc.

- National news based on boat followers. We will invite boaters, fishermen, retirees, and veterans to travel with their boats and to schedule their vacations to accompany us as we move up and down the East Coast. Once we accumulate over 100 boats traveling with us, media coverage will be national with all of the major networks covering our mission.

- Independent blogs and social networking sites covering our contest participants and their followers, the boaters following us, and any land followers we acquire.

- YouTube. This is a big unknown with tremendous potential. All of our events will be videotaped, edited and submitted to YouTube. Not only will we be submitting videos but so will our followers and contest participants and their families. If a video goes viral due to humor, tragedy or of great interest by the general public then it will generate millions of hits and stay active throughout the internet for years. The average videos tied into us will generate thousands of hits based on key words alone.

- Military Channel, which has committed to covering our launch. Ratings will determine if any follow on shows occur.

Combined, without the inclusion of our unknowns, your brand will be exposed 830.2 million times over the course of this year long sponsorship. This is an exposure cost of $17.16 per thousand.

If we achieve our best case results of 1.07 billion exposures, your CPM will be $13.31.

Typical Advertising CPMs

Outdoor = $1-5 CPM

Cable TV = $5-8 CPM

Radio = $8 CPM

Online = $5-30 CPM

Network/Local TV = $20 CPM

Magazine = $10-30 CPM

Newspaper = $30-35 CPM

Direct Mail = $250 CPM

Personal Appearances and Vehicle Appearances = $1,000 CPM

With Wounded Nature – Working Veterans’ sponsorship, the majority of those exposures will include newspapers, magazines, online sites and be on TV. Our exposures will occur within some of the most expensive advertising real estate with the majority of the views appearing in the context of news articles and social media endorsements.

These media projections for brand exposure do not incorporate any West Coast publicity.  We will not be able to project a clean-up schedule until the debris field pattern becomes better defined. 

8. Opt In Email and Cell Phone Text Capture
Wounded Nature – Working Veterans will, through contests, appearances, and publicity, work to capture email address and cell phone numbers. There will be a separate opt-in feature for each of our primary sponsors to obtain permission for sending our followers special offers and announcements.

In addition, we will utilize our social media avenues to generate opt-in sign ups.

9. State by State Events and Appearances
Listed in Appendix A are the military bases and ports we will visit as we enter each state. Actual scheduling will depend on available dock space and the event organizers. Due to the number of military bases and ports, we will have to rotate appearances in some states.

In each state, the beach clean-ups will be scheduled during the week and will be used to generate publicity for our weekend port docking events, which will each last about 2-4 days

At each port we will make our clean-up boats available for our primary sponsor to host a lunch aboard. The sponsor will be responsible for supplying the food and beverages with our crew assisting to host their customers.

The schedule of locations to be visited and the month of visit are included in Appendix A.

10. Cost
This sponsorship opportunity is a terrific value for both exposure (total number of eyeballs on your brand) and image. This opportunity will associate your brand in a positive context with a cleaner environment and will show support for our military and its veterans.

Since each clean-up boat has to be custom manufactured to meet our needs and branded to represent your brand, cash flow is spread out over 15 months. That makes this sponsorship easy on your company’s cash flow. The cost for the first 3 months is $175,000 per month. The cost for the next 8 months is $100,000.  The last 4 months, your cost is $75,000 per month.

Year two costs will be 15% less than year one. As we sell memberships, obtain grants, and acquire secondary sponsors the annual operating costs associated with each clean-up boat will decline.

11. Contact:

Rudy Socha
CEO / Wounded Nature – Working Veterans
P.O. Box 20363
Charleston, SC 29413-0363
Cell 440-452-1042
rudy@woundednature.org

Appendix A

Appearance schedule for Victory Vessels:

January – West Coast Florida

Ports and downtown areas providing dockage:
Port of Tampa, Tampa, FL
Port Manatee, Palmetto, FL
Port of Panama City, Panama City, FL
Port St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg, FL

Military Bases:
MacDill AFB, Tampa, FL
Coast Guard Air Station, Clearwater
February – East Coast Florida/Florida Keys

Ports and downtown areas providing dockage:
Port of Miami, Miami, FL
Port Everglades, Fort Lauderdale, FL
Port Canaveral, Cape Canaveral, FL (the second busiest passenger port in the world)
Port Fernandina, Fernandina Beach on Amelia Island, FL
Port Palm Beach, Riviera Beach, FL
Port of Jacksonville, Jacksonville, FL
Port of Key West, Key West, FL

Military Bases:
Patrick AFB, Brevard, FL
Tyndall AFB, Panama City, FL
Naval Air Station, Jacksonville
Naval Air Station, Key West

March – Georgia

Ports and downtown areas providing dockage:
Savannah, GA
Brunswick, GA
Jekyll Island, GA

Military Bases:

Hunter Army Airfield, Savannah, GA
Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, Camden County, GA

April – North Carolina

Ports and downtown areas providing dockage:

Beaufort, NC
Morehead City, NC
Wilmington, NC

Military Bases:
Camp Lejeune, Onslow, NC
Ft. Bragg, NC (we would bus our crew out to FB for the day)

May – DC/Maryland

Ports and downtown areas providing dockage:
Ocean City, MD
Baltimore, MD
Washington, DC

Military Bases:
The Pentagon, Washington DC
Walter Reed, Washington DC
United States Coast Guard Headquarters, Washington DC
Washington DC Navy Yard
United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD
National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, MD
Fort Meade Army Base, Odenton, MD

June – Delaware/New Jersey

Ports and downtown areas providing dockage:
Lewes, DE
Wilmington, DE
Cape May, NJ
Newark, NJ

Military Bases:
Dover Air Force Base, Dover, DE
Coast Guard Training Center, Cape May, NJ
Naval Weapons Station Earle, Colts Neck, NJ

July – Rhode Island/Conn

Ports and downtown areas providing dockage:
Newport, RI
Woods Hole, RI
Warwick, RI
Misquamicut, RI
New Haven, CT
Bridgeport, CT
Stamford, CT
New London, CT
Mystic, CT

Military Bases:
Naval Station Newport, Newport, RI
United States Coast Guard Academy, New London, CT
Naval Submarine Base New London, Groton, CT
Fort Hamilton Army Base, Brooklyn, NY
The United States Military Academy, West Point, NY (we would bus our crew to this base)

August – Mass/New Hampshire/Maine

Ports:
Boston, MA
Plymouth, MA
East Dennis, MA
Provincetown, MA
Nantucket, MA
Martha’s Vineyard, MA
Gloucester, MA
Portsmouth, NH
Hampton, NH
Portland, ME
Bar Harbor, ME
Rockland, ME
Eastport, ME
Freeport, ME
Kennebunkport, ME
Portland, ME
Bangor, ME

Military Bases:

Southeastern New England Coast Guard Base, Woods Hole, MA
Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Portsmouth, ME
Naval Air Station Brunswick, Brunswick, ME

September – New York

Ports and downtown areas providing dockage:
New York City, NY
Manhasset Bay, NY
Flushing, NY
Port Washington, NY
New Rochelle, NY
Rye, NY

Military Bases:
Fort Hamilton Army Base, Brooklyn, NY
The United States Military Academy, West Point, NY (we would bus our crew to this base)

October – Virginia

Ports:
Norfolk, VA
Virginia Beach, VA
Hampton, VA

Military Bases:
Langley Air Force Base, Hampton, VA
Fort Monroe, Hampton, VA
Fort Eustis, Newport News, VA
Marine Corps Base Quantico, VA
Norfolk Naval Shipyard, Norfolk, VA
Naval Station Norfolk, Norfolk, VA
Naval Air Station Oceana, Virginia Beach, VA

November – South Carolina

Ports:
Hilton Head, SC
Charleston, SC
Beaufort, SC
Murrels Inlet, SC

Military Bases:
Charleston Air Force Base, Charleston, SC
Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, Beaufort, SC
Naval Weapons Station Charleston, Charleston, SC
Fort Jackson US Army Training Base, Columbia, SC (we would bus our crew to this base)

December – Overhaul/Maintenance

*This is a starting point and adjustments to the schedule will be made as new opportunities present themselves.