The Relay I'm involved with will be celebrating its 14th Relay this May. In the last five years, the Relay has sort of decreased in popularity. It's very sad because it used to be much, much bigger and more exciting.
Has anyone else battled with a long Relay that has seen a decrease of popularity? How did you deal with it? What was the outcome? Has it changed?
I have seen this in our relay also. I know it happens in alot events that go year after year. I know in our relay we're trying to get more youth involved. Getting them on the committees. That gives them a chance to learn and see what it takes to be on a committee.
April 17, 2007 - 1:33pm login or register to post comments
rflvolunteer
Posts: 359
Joined: 2006-08-08
Dwindling Relays
You are not alone - many events nationally are battling the same thing - after all, what do you do 14 years down the line? :) Well, no silver bullet solution but here are some things that events that have gone through this have done:
1. find a couple of very connected people to get involved...
2. Have your committee sit down and review who is invovled, from a geographic standpoint (are there parts of town that are not covered that you could canvass, etc.?), type of organization standpoint (see the link to the attached doc on where to find teams), etc.?
3. Make the weird ask - ask your committee to ask someone to get involved that they might not otherwise ask - their local gas station attendant? Grocery clerk? tax preparer (once tax season is done, they usually have a little more time :) )?. Your relay might be great at this, but most events have strength in certain areas and weaknesses in others. Our event was on a college campus and had almost no university participation! Sounds dumb, but it took a LOT of work for us to change that despite the proximity etc.
4. Appoint an honorary chair - A connected honorary chair can be a big help - you don't give them any Relay duties, other than to be an ambassador, make some calls, get people there and to committee and team captain info meetings, and speak at the event if they want.
5. Go find survivors - Survivors are at the heart of our event - get the local paper to donate an ad looking for participants and particularly survivors - invite them to the reception at the event in the ad... Tell them to call you - if you have survivors, you will build a base that will come back - after all, for them cancer is an integral part of their lives (that's what they tell us when we survey them), and they want to be involved. They tend to be the most loyal committee members.
Joined: 2007-03-05