Wow, that is super tight. The YMCA I serve has an annual fundraiser 4 mile race that consistently raises about $45K for the branch. The race gets about 1,000 participants and generally similar support and offerings to what you described. The big difference at ours could be sponsorships, thought the number and tiers of sponsors seems similar to your race. I wonder what magic juju they are using?
At a certain point its also scale. having 3x the participants doesn’t change how much course is needing to be blocked off or the # of traffic cops at those crossings. So each marginal participant is a higher % profit for the race.
In the years I’ve been running road races, I used to see streets closed by volunteers like Boy Scouts or members of local service clubs. But it feels like years since I’ve seen anything but police officers protecting intersections and side streets. That change has to have added significantly to the cost of races, given that most of those officers will be earning overtime pay.
I’m curious what race directors have seen about the need and cost of full-on law enforcement for traffic control.
It’s generally one of, if not our highest expense. Most municipalities we deal with are $100 per hour or more at this point. Another expense that I don’t think most people realize is the paid staff to replace volunteers. They aren’t coming out like they used to so we’ve replaced them with paid contractors. On one hand it’s great as it ensures a little more consistency and quality, but on the other hand it often adds thousands to our expenses that weren’t there a few years ago.
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