Ever since we have gotten a new chairperson for our relay event three years ago, the attendance has gone down drastically. Our chair this year has told teams that they were not enough campsites for them, when there were only 18 teams and we have a huge soccer field. he feels he doesn't have enough time to update the website because he is in charge of two other relays. I do not think that we will meet our goal this year, because after our event we only had half of what the american cancer ssociety wanted us to raise. Last year after the event we only turned in two thousand more dollars. This year we lost two of our biggest fundraisers, if anyone has any suggestions or had this problem please let me know.
Regardless of the number of teams in your Relay it comes down to people in the community stepping up to the plate and being excited about Relay. The staff person can only spend so much time with the different Relays he/she is in charge of. You need to recruit volunteers to take on different committee positions.
In our Relay we have a tri-chair. One is in charge of financial, one in charge of creative and one in charge of logostics. Under each of these chairs are several sub-committees. For example, our Financial Chair oversees volunteers for Relay Store, Registration adn Accounting. The Creative Chair has sub-committees dealing with online, Relay kick-off, Program Book, advertising and other on/off-site promotional events for our Relay. Last but not least is our Logicistics Chair who has sub-committes in charge of setting up and breaking down Relay.
Obviously each Relay is different and how they run it. We are a big Relay with over 100 teams this year so our "staff" of volunteers has increased as well. Some of our volunteers are writers for the local newspapers and magazines and they helped to promote our event. We got a local radio station to help promote the event. I'm a bookkeeper so I handled Accounting for our Relay. We have a person who does advertising so she ran our Program Book. The only person getting paid to run our event is our staff person. Everyone else is a volunteer in our community.
The point is that no one person can do it all. That's why you need other people to help.
If you really want your Relay to turn around and go up, you need to step in and find people who are just as passionate about Relay as you are. Its obviously you are a "Relayer For Life". Share that passion with your community. If they see how excited you are, they will get excited as well and want to know how they can contribute.
Do not dwell on the negative. Keep your chin up and your enthusiam high for your event. EVERY DOLLAR HELPS NO MATTER HOW LITTLE THE DONATION IS. Do not worry about not meeting your donation goal. While money is a big part of Relay its not the only part. Promote the mission statment of ACS. Let the community know where that money goes and that it stays in the community. Everyone has been touched by cancer directly or indirectly. If someone can honestly say that cancer has never touched them then they are either living in a bubble world or do not know alot of people.
SORRY TO HEAR THIS. IT SEEMS THAT EITHER YA'LL NEED A NEW EVENT CHAIRPERSON OR YOU NEED TO ENCOURAGE AND LIGHT A FIRE UNDERNEATH THE CHAIRPERSON YOU HAVE AND GET THEM A WHOLE LOT OF HELP. OUR RELAY CHANGES CHAIRPERSONS EVERY 2 YRS. NEW BLOOD, NEW IDEAS, LESS BURN OUT. WE WELCOME ALL TEAMS TO RELAY AND EVEN LET THEM SIGN UP THE DAY OF RELAY. THE MORE THE MERRIER AND A LOT MORE FUN. THIS YEAR'S RELAY HAD 46 TEAMS. IN THE PAST, WE'VE HAD MORE THAN 50 SIGN UP TO PARTICIPATE. THE MORE TEAMS, THE MORE MONEY RAISED FOR RELAY. IT ALSO SOUNDS LIKE YOU NEED MORE ADVERTISING AND TO GET THE WHOLE COMMUNITY INVOLVED. IT'S A STRUGGLE, I'LL ADMIT BUT WORD OF MOUTH, GETTING FRIENDS TO COME AND PARTICIPATE HELPS. SO DOES MENTORING A NEW TEAM. BEST OF LUCK TO YA'LL.
did you get a new chairperson or a new staff partner? if it is indeed a chairperson that has this attitude, please look into getting new volunteers. 3 years of this, and the chair should be rotated out anyway. also if they are a volunteer chair, they should not be in charge of 3 relays. we all know that to do it right is a lot of work. perhaps you just need more volunteers for your committee.( like an online chair to take away that excuse.) my committee has a say on the goals for each year. like how many teams we feel we can expand by, and how much money we realistically believe we can bring in. we actually increased what our staff partner had set for our $ goal. (and we just broke through that goal on fri.!)
if it is your staff partner, god bless you and i hate to say this but they do have supervisors at the acs. perhaps you should take your concerns to the regional rfl director. my rfl has had at least 8 staff partners in the last 11 years (that i can remember). i wouldn't trade our current one for anything.
I think the biggest reason people don't come to these things is because they don't feel it relates to them personally. What everyone needs to do - unless of course you don't need anyone more coming because you're so overcrowded - is find some way to relate to everyone. School news helps a lot! Make an interesting, catchy commercial. An easy way to get the attention of people is to put on a popular song. I know in my school, people look up right away if it is a song they really like. Listen to SOJO or WAYV. Then make sure you keep people interested. Relate to everyone you can. Make sure the message is personal and gets everyone's attention. Put up posters - it helps! I love reading the posters and I'm sure that some other people do too. Pass out fliers in homerooms. Even if a lot of people don't read them, some people will. Announce it at the end of the school day on your afternoon announcements. Maybe you could start a club for it and get people involved. Have your school newspaper write about it - but make sure the article is by a good author. Otherwise, the reputation of RFL might go down. People won't want to read a bad article.
Well, all this stuff is for highschool, since that's what I'm in. I'm not an adult yet so I couldn't really tell you what to do in that situation. Hopefully this will help.
~Rae
--
~Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.~
Yay for Relay! :)
I love friends, so email me or whatever anytime! And I'm a very cheery person, so watch out...it's contagious! AND READ MY BLOG *smile*<
Joined: 2008-06-16