American Cancer Society Making Strides ELT Meeting

Location: American Cancer Society Office

Date: Tuesday, June 16, 2015; 6:00-7:00 pm

I arrived at the office building and the security guard said that I was not in their system.  Maybe 'ACS' had enough of my inactivity and had fired me from the group.  I wrote an email to Allyson and Katherine and even called their desk phones.  I had been joined by another volunteer and she was having similar issue.  Finally, Katherine came down and that was good since none of us would have been permitted upstairs otherwise.  It seems that the guards now required people to provide them a list of visitors, which seemed logical.  We went upstairs after the usual struggle with the entry scanners and saw that besides the 2 of us, it was just Allyson and Katherine this evening.  Allyson said that we would have the meeting even if one person had showed up.  Fortunately for us, another one joined us, but that was it.

The objective was to recruit teams

I asked about the bus accident that had caused a death on the intersection outside the offices just 2 weeks ago, and they mentioned how one of their colleagues had seen it and were very disturbed.  It was understandably so.  We started by looking at the numbers and one of the main points of emphasis was kickoff attendees.  I asked about our main objective for kickoff, since if it was recruitment, then I had already started that.  Allyson pointed out that it was not just recruitment but promotion as well.  We discussed the current number of teams that had already registered as well as the participant’s, and we had almost 3 times the number of participant’s as teams.  Allyson said that we were well ahead of target as well as where we were at this stage last year.

Next, Allyson asked for our commitment to recruit teams and while it was initially 5 teams, she asked if we should reduce it to 3.  I said that we may not be able to evaluate that accurately, since I may invite people but you can’t control their behavior.  Allyson said that it was a goal, just like exercising and I said that while exercising was in our control, human behavior was not.  My point had been to show that it is a flawed premise to make a commitment for something that we couldn’t track, but it was clear that we were not going to agree on this.  The other ladies were against me as well, meaning that I must be wrong and should just let it go.

Allyson said that for her birthday she was asking people to sign up and raise money in lieu of gifts.  That’s what I had asked for from some of my friends!  Next, we discussed the sponsors and Allyson asked us to either find some or provide them with leads.  In fact, an idea from our previous meeting had led to a sponsorship.  They asked us to refer any other sponsors that we see at other events.  They could then make cold calls.  They also needed “Survivor” speakers and I said that maybe we should ask at our walk if “Survivors” visiting the tent would be interested being spokespersons the next time.  For donations one of our team members mentioned that her friend makes desserts and could donate some for our kickoffs, which was a great idea.  As far the kickoffs were concerned, we still required a ‘DJ’, though as Allyson pointed out, they didn’t have to be a professional  Also, they wanted us to see if any of the restaurants near downtown would do something like match or discounts after the kickoff.  I said that shouldn’t we ask our hosts ‘Hard Rock Café’ first, since they may get upset that we were driving their prospective customers to other places!

There was an ‘ACS CAN’ fundraiser on July 21^st at ‘Harry Caray's’ and which would substitute for our monthly meeting.  I was going to post this on the ‘Meetup’, but said that ‘CAN’ needed to have a more impactful pitch, because unlike “Strides” promotions, ‘CAN’ does not make me feel “warm and fuzzy”.  Katharine said that there were stories like how ‘CAN’ has contributed towards the “no smoking in Illinois restaurants” law, and I said that I could use that as a pitch on the ‘Meetup’ site.  I hadn’t posted the event yet because people usually do not want to commit to anything so far ahead of time.  I said that we had poor turnout last year at the ‘CAN’ fundraiser and we needed to ensure that it did not happen again.  Also, I said that we should request ‘Harry Caray's’ to play on a loop some ‘ACS’ related presentation on TV, but Allyson said that they had done enough in terms of donations and we should not ask for more. 

Like a broken record I brought up my point on having registration at kickoffs.  Once again, this led to a spirited debate where Allyson said that lessons from last year had been learnt and were being implemented by the “Events Planning Team”.  I said that I didn’t care who did what as long as ideas were being discussed; my point being that the “events team” could plan the implementation, but it was our job to provide them with ideas.  We left after what had definitely been a contentious meeting.  But that’s how meetings should be, as long as important decisions are being made, for it demonstrates passion towards the cause.  Else, what’s the point?