American Cancer Society Making Strides Steering Committee Meeting

Location: American Cancer Society Office

Date: Tuesday, March 11, 2014; 6:00-7:00 pm

Carrie had made it clear during our kick-off meeting that there would be no passengers this year and everyone had to be serious about their time commitment, as well as thoughtful regarding their role.  Prior to this meeting she had sent some forms to be filled by prospective committee members, and which included things such as preferred meeting schedule.  She also asked us why we wanted to be on the committee and what we would bring to the team.  I said that I had enjoyed my time on the committee last year and would love to repeat that.  I also stated that I was an event leader with One Brick and as such would be in a position to request volunteers as needed.  One of the questions was what my ideal ‘Strides’ event would look like and I said that I had just seen one last October.  Finally, I said that I preferred to be a “General Volunteer”, contributing wherever needed and that I would prefer Tuesday’s to be the day for the meetings.  Well, I don’t know if she agreed with the other things, but Tuesday’s it was going forward. 

My favorite studio

I arrived at 6 pm to find some new faces and a bunch of paperwork in front of Carrie.  She handed us each a binder and said that we would be filling it up over the course of the year. Looking at the stuff on the table, it looked like we would be filling it up this evening! We were going to be chatting with the team in Indianapolis over ‘Skype’ since they were having their meeting at the same time as us.  In order to get us all in the camera shot, we had to re-arrange our seating positions.  But even with all of this planning, we were having some technical difficulties and while we could see their team, the reception was shoddy at best.  So we disconnected and moved back to our original spots.  First order of business was an icebreaker for everyone to get to know each other, and Carrie asked us for our favorite movie, this after all being the awards season.  I was pleasantly surprised to hear many off-beat movie names such as ‘Dirty Dancing’, ‘Saturday Night Fever ’and ‘Breakfast At Tiffany’s’.  Surprisingly there was only one ‘Academy Award’ winner in ‘Gigi’, not exactly a well-known film.  When  my turn came, I said that I favored anything made by ‘Pixar’ and there was a lot of nodding on that one.

Carrie showed us the meeting schedule for the year and it looks like she is going to be firm on the rule of 7 out of 9 attendances.  She also made us sign some sort of a “pledge form” and said that people could potentially be kicked off the committee for not following guidelines.  Then she started passing out documents that would go inside our binders, starting with maps for “Lake Area" walks such as the ones in Illinois, Michigan and Indiana.  After this she talked about ‘ACS CAN – Cancer Action Network’.  ACS does not have any paid lobbyists and so they rely on ‘CAN’ on being the “voice of change” for policies.  She insisted on all of us joining – a requirement to be on the committee – and our job as a member would be to respond to a call for action, such as petitioning local politicians etc. 

Statistics on ACS funds and spending

Next, we saw some statistics on how ACS spends its money and where it comes from.  Almost 72% is directly spent on Cancer related programs and services, such as research, patient support and education, whereas the remaining 28% is utilized for covering expenses.  Furthermore, 62% of the money comes from funds raised through people.  Only 5% comes from Government grants and 33% is via investments.  This means that promotion is of critical importance and one of our key promotional events last year was the “Kick-off breakfast”.  Carrie said that the aim for this year was to improve on the number of attendees from last year and she was aiming for at least 450 people.  She then went into details of what each committee would be doing including the appointment of two co-chairs to work with Carrie and Jessie throughout the year.  We had some feedback from the walk last year and there were a few areas where we were ranked lower and needed improvement, such as Entertainment.  Well, that was good, since we now knew what we had to work on.

In the end my binder was quite thick with all of the handouts from this evening’s session.  I gave my pledge form and while I wanted to sign up for 'CAN', Carrie did not have change and so I said that I would do it next time.  I left soon, but only after collecting a pin to promote the “Colonrectal Cancer Awareness Month”.  As an assignment, we were to register for our committee team – or start one of our own.  Plus, for the next meeting we were to come with 3 ideas for the walk and also their execution strategy.  It was definitely a lot to think about in the interim.  But something tells me that it will all be worthwhile.