Location: American Cancer Society Office
Date: Tuesday, May 13, 2014; 6:00-7:30 pm
I came to the ACS offices this
evening to find that our group was much smaller than last month. Besides Carrie and Jesse, Ted was in
attendance, and he was staring outside the conference room window at a building
which appeared to be in the process of being brought down. He pointed out that it was being “deconstructed one floor at a time”, a
process where they started from the top and work their way down. Must be a bit strange for people in adjacent
buildings to see the height go down every day!
 |
| My mind |
We sat down and Ted started us
off with an ice-breaker question, “If
your mind was a store, what kind of store would it be?” He said that his would be a ‘Costco’, because you can stumble upon
anything that you would want. Carrie
said that hers would be ‘TJ Maxx’
because she is frugal whereas Jessie’s was a running store. It was my turn and I said that mine would be
a used book store because like old books that exist in dark corners of the
store, waiting for someone; I remember things since some memories are not meant to be forgotten. Other examples were ‘Super Walgreens’ – where you can get everything, or a ‘Dollar Store’, where a lady said that
she could please all of her nieces and nephews.
We opened with an update on
current statistics and were pleased to see that the number of teams that were
registered was way up than at this time last year…in fact at this time last
year the website wasn’t even up! Next up
was the “Mission Moment” and Carrie
talked about the extreme dangers of Skin Cancer. She provided some information on how to
protect ourselves and said that it was also true for pets like dogs, especially
their paws and noses. For the “Advocacy Moment”, Le’Loni talked about
e-cigarettes and how Illinois is passing a law to ban it in indoor public
places. It seems that the liquid in an
e-cigarette comes in candy flavor, thus enticing the youngsters, but is deadly
if swallowed. Carrie then mentioned some
of the upcoming events like the ‘Chicago
Sky WNBA’ game which required volunteers for a “Strides” table, and a ‘White
Sox’ game in August where we could buy a ticket and then the first 1800
people would get to participate in a parade on the field. Plus, the proceeds would go to us.
Next, each committee member had
to give an update and we first heard from the ‘Survivors’ group. They had
a sample teapot from ‘Starbucks’,
which costs $2, and which they wanted to hand to survivors and caregivers. Another idea was for pink umbrellas. ‘Advocacy’
was going to have their tent shaped like a purse, with picture of ‘Uncle Sam’ with a purse and a pink
ribbon. They also talked about having elected
officials show up and hosting a “scavenger
hunt” game to encourage people to visit other tents. ‘Promotions’
talked about reaching out to local communities and churches and posting flyers
all over different neighborhoods. The
also wanted to engage companies for sponsorship and have local salons and
businesses advertise in their windows.
We talked about promotions via social media and apparently the mandate
from ACS is for “Strides” to not
start a new ‘Twitter’ page.
The ‘Entertainment’ group had secured the services of previous years ‘Zumba’ artist. They were also looking to organize a “Flash Mob” and have a “memory garden” with flowers of
different colors for survivors and caregivers - which had been my idea! They talked about inviting a nutritionist to
talk about a balanced diet. The ‘Children’s Activity’ team wanted to do
a “Kids Zone” and ‘Chicago Sky’ were going to come in and
help out with that. The idea was to have
activities such as jump rope, potato sack race, tug-of-war etc. Other than that, there was to be a “tattoos” station, and efforts were on
to secure ‘Radio Disney’. Jesse brought up my “virtual card” idea and I said that if we were going to have kids do
it, then it need not be just for breast cancer survivors, but could be for
other hospitalized kids. I mean how cool
would that be – kids making cards for other kids. I even knew a partner they could go to!
Carrie then talked about the
kick-off breakfast on August 4th.
The goal was to send out 1600 invites, expecting approximately 430
guests, of which 350 would form teams.
That sounded quite aggressive and I said that we could improve our chances
if we had laptops for instant sign-ups.
It’s always better to get people when they are excited, else the
enthusiasm would drop over time. Plus,
we could give them mementos like pins to show our appreciation for their
initiative.
The meeting was over, but Carrie asked if people waited to stay back for
“Sponsorship Workshop”. A few of us waited and saw a quick tutorial on how to ask for sponsorship from businesses. We were to start by asking for, well... sponsorship. If they declined, then we were
to request them to form a team, then donation of an object and then as a last
option, ask if they could put up flyers in their establishment. We went through couple of scenarios with
different businesses. She then asked us
to get approval before approaching some companies, since there already may be
some discussions in progress through ACS.
I asked if we were late since ‘Komen’ and ‘Avon’ have their events early
in the year. She said that she’s been
working on bigger clients since last December!
She talked to us about making a personal connection rather than phone or
email and the skill of asking open-ended questions – something that I had gone
through with ‘Adler’ training. We ended
on this and I chatted for a while with Jesse before leaving. We are getting a lot of traction and I look
forward to working with this team. If we
can achieve even half of what’s being planned, it will be a great event in
October.
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