Location: American Cancer Society Office
Date: Tuesday, May 19, 2015; 6:00-7:00
pm
As I arrived, Katherine said that we would be in a different
room today, which was at the other end of the floor. It was a corner office with a nice view of
Michigan Avenue and over the last 3 years that I have been coming to this place, I had never been in this room. It was the 102nd birthday of ‘ACS’ and as such, there was a giant
pink cake – made of cardboard cutout - leaning against the wall. Allyson said that once everyone had arrived,
we would be taking a picture with that in the background. I asked Allyson if she knew about the
background of cancer in general i.e. how many years before ‘ACS’ was formed was there knowledge of cancer. And was it even called cancer back then. These were discussions for another time I
suppose since we had work to do today
 |
| The "Birthday Cake" |
One other committee
member arrived and my suspicion was that the others thought that the meeting
was at 6:30 pm. I was the culprit for
the confusion since I had requested a later time, as I had thought that I have
a commitment. But since that hadn’t
happened, I had told Allyson to change the meeting back to 6 pm. While she had sent out an email, looks like
people had not received the memo. We
took our “selfie” with me holding the
phone, since I had the longest arms, and then got underway. I showed Allyson my idea of posting our event
on the ‘Meetup’ group and how I was
planning to use the ‘ACS’ flyer as my
main text. Le’Loni arrived and sure
enough, she had thought that the meeting was at 6:30 and she said that she
blamed me for this! That was it though,
since no other committee members had shown up.
Something tells me it would be just us going forward.
Katherine started by discussing the numbers such as Funds
raised so far, participants etc. Next,
Allyson got up on the whiteboard to brainstorm some of the ideas for our two
"kickoffs’", one in downtown on August 15th - when I would be out of
town - and then one on August 29th in the 'Southside'. I said that we should have two very distinct
themes, more corporate for downtown and more family friendly for the
other. I asked what the objective was
for the "kickoffs’", since they wanted us to invite people and this would help us
“sell” better. I said that if the intention was to add
teams, then there was no point in me inviting the same people I was going to
ask to form teams anyways. I once again
reiterated that we should have either computers or ‘iPads’ or something else to sign up people at these events, or have
each committee member be available with a smart phone so that they can sign up
people. As we started getting into the
specifics of what we should and shouldn’t do at the 2 events, Allyson pointed
out that some of it was for the “Event
Sponsorship Team” to figure out.
While we were discussing this, we were also signing some
hand written cards, which would be sent to "Survivors" on “National Survivor Day”. During
our stay there, I must have signed at least a hundred of these cards. Allyson then went around the room asking for
updates on how many teams we had signed up and our plans for that as well as
securing sponsorship. Le’Loni mentioned
how she was networking with her sorority sisters and the other volunteer did the same. My idea was to recruit in office, and of
course the 'Meetup'. When Allyson asked
about Sponsorship, I said that all of my contacts were in non-profit and there
really wasn’t much they could spare for this cause.
Time was up and while others were chatting, I was distracted
with some work emails. We took one more "selfie" with Le’Loni in it, and once again I was responsible for extending my arm
and taking it. Allyson posted it on ‘Facebook’ and was tagging everyone, and
asked if I was on it. I said no and she
replied, “of course”…not sure if that
implied that I was anti-social or inept in using technology, but whatever. Le’Loni said that she thought that I looked like
someone who “tweeted”; to which I
answered in the negative as well.
Allyson and Katherine asked if anyone could stay and call people to
recruit them for the walk, saying that since it was the 102nd birthday on
Saturday, we wanted to reach 102 teams by then, being at 80 currently. I said that I had to go and the others said that
they could come later this week. With that, we all beat a hasty retreat before they could convince us otherwise!
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