The team is made up of 4, 5 and 6-year-olds out to have a good time in the grass and drink a juice box when it’s all over. Altogether they played 8 games, and had practice once a week. It’s never too early to start learning about teamwork!

Now it’s getting pretty cold to have the kiddos running around like an aimless swarm of bees. Soccer doesn’t have a lot of finesse at age six. As Jeff said, “it’s more like herding cats”.

He has been speaking with lawmakers about House Resolution 2935, a.k.a. the Travel Promotion Act. The goal of the bill is to create America’s first “destination marketing organization”. This group would be a non-profit organization called the “Corporation for Travel Promotion”, and would manage the tourism promotion of the United States to international travelers.

Learn about the Travel Promotion Act

If you didn’t know, international travel to the United States is down significantly in the last 8 years. We have fewer tourists today than in 2001. As far as keeping up with the competition, we are the only nation in our “competitive set” that does not have a budget for promoting our nation as a travel destination. It seems, with all of our breathtaking National parks and natural beauty, we would encourage an income that allowed us to keep these spaces open and wild. Yosemite, the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone are just some of the wonders of our continent that have drawn visitors for years, and can continue to do so.  The average international tourist spends $4500 during a visit to the US. These are important numbers to a struggling economy.

The bill is also set-up to allow the Corporation to pay for itself. It includes a $10 entry fee for visitors that would fund the Corporations’ efforts.

There are things you can do to support this bill, and help to bolster travel from our neighbors and friends abroad. Contact your House of Representatives Official via the US Travel Association. Let them know that this bill effects you. After all, we know how much international visitors enjoy the bed and breakfast experience!

New brochure design for the Boys & Girls Clubs Foundation of the Olympic Peninsula puts the focus on helping children.

A foundation helping children
The Boys & Girls Clubs Foundation of the Olympic Peninsula is a nonprofit organization which helps fund the good work of our local Boys & Girls Clubs. To this day, thousands of children in our community have benefited from the opportunities and inspiration provided by the Clubs. Foundation board members (and InsideOut partners) Pat & Jim McCauley were happy to donate InsideOut’s services to design a logo and brochure for this worthy cause.

Logo distills the message
The Foundation focused on potential donors who were planning their finances and seeking opportunities for charitable giving. The board wanted donors to know they were joining in a special endeavor to help local children. After some brainstorming, the board’s members decided to create a club of donors: “The Legacy Society”.

InsideOut designer Jennifer Lozada sketched out a number of logos based on the concepts of “legacy, growth and helping local kids”. The final version exemplifies these ideas with images of helping hands and a bright green sprout.

Communicating the benefits of giving
The next project was the brochure. Brochures would be distributed in local financial planning offices and mailed to potential donors. We decided that an 11″ x 17″ piece folded to 8.5″ x 11″ would give us plenty of room for necessary text and many photos.

Financial planning brochures often use dark conservative colors. To help our brochure stand out, we chose a sunny color which also contributed to our growth theme. The logo with its sprout worked well over the background of an old, established oak. Both the sunshine yellow and the oak also communicated the idea of “local” (the nickname for one of the area towns is “Sunny Sequim” and Garry Oaks are a protected species here.)

The Foundation has many wonderful photos from the local Boys & Girls Clubs. The brochure features these photos very prominently. With all the images of local kids, it’s clear that they are the main reason to give. The text supports this idea by providing potential donors with necessary information about the organizations involved, a reply form, and types of contributions accepted. The brochure makes it clear that the nonprofit Foundation and Clubs are long-standing legitimate contributors to the community, worthy of support.

The result
The Boys & Girls Clubs Foundation of the Olympic Peninsula is delighted with the result. Board Member, Billy Nagler’s comments sum up the board’s reaction:

“I am so impressed! The pictures of the kids are precious… the organization of the whole thing is marvelous, the copy is very very informative and well done. What a piece of work, folks… you can be proud of this.”

Click here to view pdf of entire brochure.

With that philosophy we continue to work with various local organizations that have a global reach such as Rotary International.

Our president, Patricia McCauley has been a rotarian for thirteen years and has served both as president of her Club, Sequim Sunrise Rotary and as District 5020 Public Relations Director.

InsideOut Solutions recently sponsored and populated the Sequim Sunrise Rotary online auction through a online auction company. InsideOut also produced the print catalog and multi-media presentation for the Live event. The first-ever public Sequim Sunrise Rotary auction was a huge success raising over $32,000 for local and world causes.

Of the funds raised $12,000 will go to buy 12 Shelter Boxes that will provide housing and aid for up to 120 disaster victims at no charge.

InsideOut Solutions is proud of their small contribution to this wonderful auction success and will continue to help organizations improve the world we live in for our own sake and that of future generations.

“Hey Charlie – don’t pick the dandelions! Keep your eye on the ball! No, no, don’t lay down! Oh, Charlie!”

That’s about how it sounds at a 3 to 6 year-old soccer game. The game mainly consists of a lot of running (hopefully in the right direction), tripping over each other in excitement, trying to remember which way your goal is, and of course totally losing focus in favor of picking flowers or laying down on the grass for a while.

But that is all part of the fun of coaching a team of tots playing “the beautiful game”. Even Pele was a 3-year-old, once. The head of our web department, Jeff Logan, coached these 3 to 6 year-olds this year, including his son Charlie. The team was sponsored by InsideOut.

They had a lot of fun, started to learn the basics of the game of soccer (dribbling, passing, shooting goals, making daisy chains) and most important, how to work as a team. We are happy to support a constructive past time for youths and feel these kind of organizations are important for a healthy community.

The InsideOut sponsored 3 to 6 year-old soccer team, coached by Jeff Logan on the right.

InsideOut Solutions has always been committed to the locality in which we reside – we have done pro bono marketing and print projects for some of the community organizations here on the Olympic Peninsula, like the Boys and Girls club and the Irrigation Festival. Sponsoring a youth soccer team is a great way to give back – and fun to boot!