American Cancer Society Making Strides ELT Meeting

Location: American Cancer Society Office

Date: Monday, April 27, 2015; 6:00-7:30 pm

I had been selected to be on the “Executive Leadership Team” or “ELT” tasked with organizing the “Making Strides” walk this year, and today was our kick-off meeting.  I arrived at the ‘ACS’ offices along with Le’Loni and we went upstairs to see that our Committee chairs Allyson and Katherine, along with 2 other ladies were gathered in the smaller conference room.  Other than them, there were a couple of other ladies who couldn’t be here this evening and we would be the team for the year.  We started with introductions and I learnt that with my 3^rd year on the team, I was the longest tenured committee member in the room, and that included Allyson and Katherine!

Our first 'ELT' meeting

We discussed the 2015 Goals in terms of attendees for the 2 kickoffs that we have planned – one in Southside, which would be more family friendly, and one for the corporate sponsors in downtown.  I asked what we were targeting in terms of conversion rate i.e. how many of these attendees would subsequently start teams or even register to participate.  I felt like that should be the point to having a kickoff, but perhaps not everyone shared my views.  Every year, we keep pushing for “Teams” to register and I asked why, because at the end of the day “Participants” is probably a more relevant metric.  But I guess teams is important since we do want people to come together as a community and that helps in fundraising. 

The main change for this year was that as per the national mandate, there would be no more registration fee and I felt that from a fund raising perspective, that was a big loss, since $25 is a big number.  I said that we should promote this everywhere.  ‘ACS’ does not have a Marketing budget, but I said that this “no fee” structure will help us attract teams, and we should make everyone aware of that.  We talked about registering for the walk and I asked if the committee was going to have a team because if we were, then I would much rather join that than start my own.  Allyson said that we should.

Our main responsibility as an 'ELT' was to help recruit new Teams and Sponsors.  I said that we should have some sort of “shared” document that will allow us to see who the existing sponsors were, so that we are not recruiting either them or even their competitors.  Also, if certain people have committed to come back e.g. yoga instructors, masseuse etc., then there was no need to recruit them.  One member talked about how she can arrange for a donation of cookies which have “omega-3 oils” and she said that they were delicious.  Whatever happened to the good old fashioned Chocolate Chip!

Next topic was membership to ‘CAN’ and with the Governor’s budget cuts, this was a key topic.  We all had to get membership and the first two tiers were $10 for “standard” and $20 for “premium”, which gets you a pin.  I wanted to get the lower tier, but did not have change and no one else could break a $20.  Le’Loni kept saying that I should get the premium not because I had the money but because of “the goodness of my heart”.  My only problem with the committee is that it is mandatory for us to get this membership.  While we would do it anyways, I just have a problem with being told to do something or else being turned away. 

We then had a general brainstorming session on our strategy to recruit teams.  I said that I could post on ‘Meetup’, with a message approved by Allyson and Katherine, and they liked the idea.  I said that since I’m analytical, I would like to be able to track how many people we were recruiting through various channels, such as ‘Meetup’.  Apparently when you register, you can answer that question.  Next, I mentioned that we as committee members should be given some talking points, so that we could promote our cause in a unified manner.  I said that I get a lot of questions on the difference between us and ‘Avon’ or ‘Komen’ and so it would be nice to have some discussion points along those lines as well.  Le’Loni said that we could say that we are the only walk in October and while that was a bit weak, Allyson said that we could point out that almost all of the money that we raise goes back into research.  Now that was something I could build on.  Our final task of the evening was to schedule future meetings and we did so from now till October.  We all left with action items and homework for next meeting – come up with 5 strategies to create teams and recruit sponsors.  Looks like I have my work cut out.