Award Application - 2011 ALL AMERICAN AWARD Recognition of American Cancer Society Relay For Life Events Description: The All American Award recognizes growth, retention, Relay branding, diversity, and leadership in incorporating the 5D’s within Relay events and throughout the year. The 5D’s include: Fundraising Development, Event Development, Leadership Development, Team Development, and Survivorship Development. To qualify: ● Events must meet National Relay For Life standards • Events must show overall growth • Events must demonstrate successful implementation of the 5 D's • Events must use proper event branding/signage with current RFL logo • Events must show connection between RFL and ACS • Events must demonstrate outreach efforts to diverse group(s) To Apply: Applications including any attachments (photos, forms, clippings, etc) must be submitted electronically to your Chris Reichert by August 15, 2011. Divisions must submit final nominations to chris.reichert@cancer.org by August 15, 2011. Division winners are announced during the September Division Relay Summit. National winners areannounced to Division lead staff in October & awards will be sent to Region Relay Manager. Because of the large numbers of applications to be reviewed, we encourage you to submit your application soon after the completion of your event. You may include up to two photos for each of the 5D’s (no more than 10 photos total). For questions, please contact Chris Reichert. Thank You!

Award Application – 2011 ALL AMERICAN AWARD Name of Relay For Life Event: Western Berks Date of Event: June 10 & 11, 2011

Division: East State: Pennsylvania

County: BERKS County Population: 411,442

Lead Volunteer: Denise Pasko Lead Staff: Jessie Rivera

Phone Number: 610-636-1432 Phone Number: 610-921-2329

Email Address: lauschgirl@gmail.com Email Address:Jessie.rivera@cancer.org

Growth in the following three areas is a key indicator of your Relays success. Demonstrate your events growth

from last year by filling in the amounts requested below.

2010/2011

Income (dollar/per cap) $169,691 / $237,254.68

Teams (number of teams) 66 / 60

Survivors (3% calculation) 233 / 312

Team retention is also a key indicator in your Relay’s success.

How many of your teams are returning teams? Please list the number and percent of total teams.

(Example: 40 teams returning with 100 total teams in 2011 = 40% retention.)

60 teams with 38 returning = 63% retention

Implementation of the 5 D’s is critical to your Relay’s success. Describe how your Relay

implemented each of the 5 D’s in 2011.

Leadership Development (Establishing a Business Culture, Focus on Building Relationships, Chairs &Co-Chairs for

Sub-Committees, 2 Year Transition of Leadership, etc.):

1. Does your event have 20 or more committee members?

X Yes

□ No

2. Does your event have a 2-prong structure (growth & production)? Please describe.

X Yes

While we all work together for the same goal – A successful Relay event, Our “growth” committees (Mission,

Survivor, Advocacy, Publicity, Sponsorship, Team Development, and Online) work closely all year long to get

more people involved and build the awareness in the community. An example includes the mission committee

introducing a Reading Hospital Nutritionist to present the good/bad vegetables for cancer related illnesses and

prevention.

The “production” committees (Entertainment, Logistics, Registration, Accounting, Luminaria) work together to

ensure the overall event day is successful by making the event entertaining, having the ability to emotionally

impact everyone, and educate our participants on prevention, detection, and patient services. This helps our

Relay ensure our participants return year after year.

We worked very hard to organize our committee in a structure that concentrated on the “whole package” and

not just the event as a “show.” While I, as the event chair, and co-chair Marie Shuman oversaw and worked

primarily with the growth of the event throughout the year, our second co-chair, Beth Woytko oversaw and

managed the production. We built a team using a traditional business model, working toward our strong suits

and allowing each of us to play toward our strengths and letting the others pick up where perhaps we had a

weakness. The key to growing our event, in our opinion, has been to build a strong leadership team and

surround yourself with strong and willing volunteers.

□ No

3. Does your event have a succession plan? Please describe.

X Yes

We have an extraordinary committee. We try to maintain ACS’s recommendation of a 2 year-term and then the

Co-Chair moves to the Chair position.

We begin our succession planning for the committee EARLY and begin recruiting new committee at team captain

meetings in the late winter and early spring. When the ACS came to us (events as a whole) and said that we

needed to have key positions on the committee filled for the FOLLOWING year filled 6 weeks prior to the event

in order to fulfill pacesetter requirements, we thought ACS had lost its marbles! It was hard enough to recruit

people as it was, but to do it that early was just nuts… BUT was it?! So, we ran with it and developed a form that

we called the “COMMITTEE INTEREST FORM” (included) and we began discussing the work of the committee at

team captain meetings several months before the deadline and getting people excited about it. We would hand

out the interest form and were ASTOUNDED at the response we received! In that first year, we had over 50% of

respondents showing at least some interest in hearing more about getting involved in some way! We continued

to bring it up and distribute the form at each meeting until the end of the year (in case anyone had missed

earlier meetings) AND we also emailed the notice out through Convio! We grew our committee to over 20

people and had the largest committee in the county! And it is growing even larger for 2012! We like to

encourage as much “new blood” on the committee as possible! The best part is that we were able to find

QUALITY committee members from using this form. We had so much interest in the committee that we were

able to choose from the BEST candidates to be the committee chairs and co-chairs and slide everyone else onto

the sub-committee! It has worked out so well for our event! And everyone is happy

□ No

Additional activity/comments:

Another NEW and exciting thing we did at Western Berks that worked out AMAZINGLY well was we switched up

our meeting format this year. Rather than just have the event chair stand in the front of the room and speak at

the team captains, we totally reworked our meeting format! And YAH! Everyone LOVED it! A meeting would look

like the following: Welcome, general announcements, and then we would break the group into 3 or 4 groups for

“mini-break-out” sessions. And we would design the break-outs dependent on what issues were particularly

relevant at that time of year. This did several things for our meetings: 1. Made them far more interesting for our

team captains, 2. Allowed us to cover much more material in the same amount of time, 3. Allowed our team

captains to get to know more of the committee, 4. Allowed our committee to get to know our team captains

better and 5. Allowed us to scout for that “new blood” for the committee! It was AMAZING and we hope that

more events will try this format! Please see DECEMBER TC AGENDA (included) for an example!

Team Development (Team Development Committee that includes Team Recruitment Chair, Team

Retention Chair, Team Mentoring, Data Collection, Outreach to diverse groups, etc.):

1. Retention percentage 63%

2. Number of new teams 22

3. Describe your outreach efforts to diverse groups

Our teams consist of Businesses, Faith Based, Friends and Families, Medical Offices, Schools, Social Clubs, Youth,

and National Partner. We reach out to different organizations either by attending a meeting or by mail or by a

personal visit/meeting. We invite them to become involved by volunteering, starting a team, or just attend our

event. We also are in contact with interested people who attend our fundraisers. Our team development chair

and event chair carry business cards and event videos and team captain handbooks in their vehicles and when

they are out on their daily business talk to businesses or organizations or individuals in the community and

distribute information constantly! Go out to eat? Talk to the wait staff or manager about starting a team! Taking

the kids to school? Talk to the teachers or principal about a mini-Relay! We try it all!

We set out this year hoping to expand our base with corporate/business teams and schools. We were really able

to score a big success by recruiting the Godiva Gems team, which is a team we have been “courting” for the past

three years! Not only did the Godiva Team sign up and raise over $2000, the husband of the team captain is a

cancer survivor and one of the coaches for the Reading Express football team, Ken Miller. He has become quite a

strong speaker for advocacy and actually spoke at Lobby Days in Harrisburg. We also recruited XO

Communications as well as the Baldwin Hardware team – all big employers in the area!

We were also very excited to dig deeper into the Wilson School District and we ended up with a team from

SEVERAL of the schools within the district! We had a friends and family team from the Shiloh Hills School in

addition to a school team from Wilson West Middle School and Wilson Southern Junior High! If you can believe,

EACH of these NEW teams raised over $2000 and the Shiloh Hills school team ended up our 4th ranking team

raising over $10,000!

We are definitely interested in attracting more youth teams and this year we did recruit one ALL-youth team.

Kids Crushin’ Cancer was a team of all children and they raised approximately $4400! This team was very active

and excited to be a part of the fight against cancer. They were VERY proud of their Silver Team Fundraising Club

status!

Additional activity/comments:

We also LOVE the new feature of Convio that notifies us via email as soon as a new team registers! This allows

us to reach out via email to the new team captain immediately and personally welcome them to the event and

get to know them. We feel that this is important not only for morale but for retention purposes. Teams,

especially new teams that feel lost and overwhelmed find it much easier to walk away and we never want to

lose even one team willing to raise money to fight cancer! So, we readily took advantage of this new feature and

emailed each new team and immediately began a relationship with new teams coming into our event. It worked

beautifully! And to show you how important this can be, take a look at our statistics! We had 22 NEW teams this

year and those new teams raised approximately $60,000 for our event! It PAYS to pay attention and take good

care of your newbies! By building this relationship, it also allows us to ask the new teams if they know of anyone

else that might be interested in forming a new team or becoming a sponsor, etc. We designate some time

during our meetings for any new teams that may need additional guidance, encourage team captains to read

our “Team Captain Guidebook” that offers great tips, and we offer suggestions throughout the year on how to

raise money for the American Cancer Society and enjoy the Relay experience!

Survivorship Development (implementation of National Survivorship Model – Year round survivor

recruitment, collection of survivor data, honoring survivors and caregivers, involving survivors in committee

and on teams, providing volunteer opportunities in ACS programs, involving survivors throughout the year):

1. Describe how you involved survivors year-round

We invite our survivors to Kick-Off (which includes a sit-down meal) and recognize them with a gift. We also

invite them to a Pancake fundraiser as our guest (to eat free) and we send Christmas Cards as well as our

newsletters. When we talk to our survivors or they register, we encourage them to give their email address so

that we can include them in our Convio communications.

2. Describe how you involved survivors in/at the event

We hold a survivor dinner, ceremony, and lap as well as present each survivor with a gift bag (which our survivor

committee goes above and beyond in search of in-kind donations from businesses in the community to fill the

bag with extra goodies). This year we also did a Survivor Ambush Makeover where 5 lucky survivors received

special gifts, new hair styles, new clothing, new make-up, and were pampered for several hours during our Relay

(all free of charge). The survivors were then revealed to everyone in attendance before our Survivor Ceremony

began as they were delivered back to our event from their makeovers in a stretch limousine. The event was such

a success that it was covered by the local newspaper as well as the local news station (please visit

http://www.wfmz.com/berksnews/28203936/detail.html for the video clip and see included READING EAGLE

– SURVIVOR AMBUSH MAKEOVER article for a copy of the newspaper article or visit for the online version

http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=313838)

Another nice thing we did for the event this year was for our survivor dinner we had our teams “sponsor”

survivor tables. Each team had the opportunity to sponsor a table and by sponsoring a table they paid the $20

rental fee to rent the table and chairs from the rental company (and therefore making sure we had enough

seating for ALL survivors and their caregivers, in previous years we had run out of seating by relying solely on the

tables and chairs provided by the host school district). Once the team registered to sponsor a table, it was theirs

to do with what they pleased and the sky was the limit! The only thing we encouraged was that the sponsoring

team would visit with the survivors during the dinner, almost acting as their host and encouraged our survivors

and their caregivers to stick around and visit the carnival and stay for the luminaria ceremony. We thought this

would be a nice touch, some interaction between our survivors and our teams! The teams decorated the tables

in various themes – party theme, breast cancer awareness theme, beach-Zen theme, chocolate-lovers theme,

etc. Each table included not only decorations, but favors and gifts that the survivors and their caregivers could

take home with them as well! We also “strategically” placed the exit to the survivor tent to lead the survivors

and their caregivers into the HOPE Carnival in hopes that they would decide to stick around after the dinner,

rather than eat and run!

Our survivor committee is made up of all cancer survivors and this, we believe gave us an edge in tuning in to

what survivors are really looking for out of participation from a Relay event. From the very first phone call to

register or re-register the survivor(s), to a follow up phone call to invite them to an event, to the way our emails

were worded and survivor pieces were written in the newsletters, the survivors felt like they were a part of

Western Berks.

3. Did you provide caregiver recognition at the event? Please describe.

Yes we do. The Caregivers are also invited to the Survivor Dinner and to walk the Survivor Lap alongside of their

Survivor.

Kid’s Crushin’ Cancer team, as mentioned in the answer to question #3, (all youth team) was made up of kids

under 10, although 10 and under still were caregivers, were given special recognition as a first time all youth

team that hit Silver Team Fundraising Club representatives from the team were invited to carry the sails during

survivor lap.

And we had a really extraordinary activity and lap during the event. The goal for our "Make Your Own Superhero

Cape" and "Superhero Ceremony" was to show that you don't have to have the stereotypical comic book and

movie superhero powers to be a hero to a cancer patient or cancer survivor. It isn't necessary to have the ability

to sling from webs, fly, or have a super-human strength. There are everyday people in this world who lead very

ordinary and normal lives who are absolutely considered heroes. These are the caretakers, the friends, and

family members of cancer patients and cancer survivors. We chose the Superhero Cape activity to help promote

the awareness of how important it is to be a caretaker or a friend or a family member. We want everyone to

know that the average ordinary every day person can be a hero to someone with cancer. Our Superhero

ceremony included appearances by Supergirl, Wonder Woman, Spider Man, Batman, and Superman, all of

whom are the first thing people think of when you mention "superhero". And, while it's not wrong to say that,

yes, they are superheroes; we want people to recognize that the costume doesn't make the hero. Once our

costume-clad friends stepped back, they revealed other heroes; survivors, caretakers, friends, and family. They

may not be thought of as commonly as the others, and some people may be confused as to why these

individuals were included in this ceremony. But, to those facing cancer, or who have beaten cancer, or to

anyone who has watched someone struggle with this disease, it's very obvious that lacking a costume or crazy

powers does not stop someone from being a hero.

Caregivers were recognized during luminaria ceremony. “Let us please take a moment to thank the special

people in our lives, our caregivers. They may be a doctor, a nurse, a mother or father, a son or daughter, a

brother or sister, a coworker or a friend. Without these special people in our lives, keeping us positive and not

allowing any negativity, they keep hope in our grasp, never letting it go, never giving up, they as well, go the

distance. Without our caregivers, there would be far fewer survivors in this world. Thank you for being our

support, our strength and our defenders of HOPE.” Also, caregivers were invited to walk the silent lap to

remember the loved one they lost and they were invited to walk hand in hand with their survivor to walk the lap

in celebration.

Additional activity/comments:

During the event we also provided all survivors with an information card requesting their information should

they wish to become more involved with Relay and join or form a team/committee. We received good feedback

and even a response through the mail!

Another thing we have previously done have been have been to engage the help of the girl scouts to make cards

– for the survivors (and the cards were given to the survivors in their survivor gift bags) with the explanation that

the cards were to be signed BY the survivor and to be given TO their caregiver. Inside the card it said “Thank you

for helping me celebrate more birthdays!”

Fundraising Development (focus on fundraising as a priority, ensuring that fundraising tips reach all

participants, encouraging letter writing for fundraising):

1. Did you promote fundraising year-round (including online if applicable)? Please describe.

Yes we did. We held several challenges for Online fundraising throughout the year, including a 12-days of

Christmas Challenge (which included emails over the course of 12 days with a new online challenge each day)

and the “Ultimate Call to Action” (see included email) we issued one week before the event that netted

approximately $6900 in online donations in just ONE week!!

We also have posters for Team fundraisers available at our Team Captain’s meetings and encourage our team

captains to share their upcoming fundraisers at the meetings.

We had 794 participants and 682 of which were registered online! That just goes to show how heavily our event

relies on our website. We have a page on our website dedicated to “FUNDRAISERS” where we post team, Relay-

wide, and County-wide fundraisers. We would also send out emails via Convio when fundraisers were coming

up. Team Captain meeting agendas (see included APRIL TC AGENDA) and monthly newsletters (see included

copy of MAY NEWSLETTER) also included announcements about fundraisers. We also encourage new teams to

participate in County-wide fundraisers such as Sweet Streets and selling Reading Phillies baseball tickets as an

easy way to earn money for their team. Our team development chair also shares great “how to” tips on raising

money.

We did our best to educate our teams about sponsorships as well. In November we had a breakout in our team

captain meeting about sponsorship to explain sponsorships and how they are like any other kind of fundraising

and that anyone can find them and they apply to their fundraising goal. We found that most people simply did

not understand what sponsorships were and how easy they were to obtain! (and I think that is true for every

Relay event!) As a follow-up to the breakout, at the February meeting, we had one of our participants who took

to heart what she learned in the breakout and proceeded to go out and obtain over $1000 in sponsorships share

her experiences and what worked and didn’t work for her when approaching businesses!

2. Did your event include onsite fundraising? Please describe.

Our event used to do the “traditional” on-site fundraising that you might see at most events when we thought

“what is the biggest problem with on-site fundraising?” and the answer is – the only people spending money at a

Relay are the Relayers, which is traditionally why on-site fundraising, as a whole, is not tremendously successful

in bringing in big dollars (generally speaking). So, we thought, how can we solve that problem?? How can we

BRING people TO the event to spend their money?? Have a CARNIVAL! So, that is just what we did! In 2010, we

hosted the first “HOPE Carnival” and found that it exceeded our expectations for on-site fundraising. The teams

that participated in the carnival, collectively raised approximately $6500!! We had stumbled upon a winning

idea! We have decided that the carnival is the best way to bring the public to the event to not only spend their

money, but learn what Relay For Life is all about. Once they arrive, they can see that it isn’t only for “people with

cancer.” We have such an opportunity to reach out to the community and it is WORKING! And we plan on

hosting the HOPE Carnival as an annual event, something the community will hopefully begin to recognize and

accept and attend more and more each year.

In fact, our carnival idea has been so successful that other events across the state have asked us to consult on

opening a “HOPE Carnival” at their event! The concept of bringing outside money into the day-of-event

fundraising is worth exploring for every event! Plus, once you have them on-site, you can share the mission of

ACS! It is win-win for ACS

We also sell Luminaria during Relay, host a Chinese Auction, and have a concession stand open the full 24 hours.

We had several hundred more people on-site because of the carnival therefore the on-site sales of concession

food and luminaria were increased because of the increased carnival crowd. People were on-site to spend

money at the carnival, but while they were there, they were buying dinner for their family and picked up a

luminaria or two (or more) for their loved ones!

The Chinese Auction is something else special worth mentioning as it has grown substantially over the past two

years. We have taken the on-site income for our Chinese Auction from $1647.25 in 2009 to $3390.64 in 2010

and now $6400.00 in 2011!! Please see pictures below!

3. Did you offer fundraising incentives (for individuals and teams, i.e. fundraising club, early bird etc.)

We promoted the Team Fundraising Club as well as incentive prizes for teams and individuals who raised the

most money. We also like to recognize teams throughout the year that are doing an exceptional job. We

recognized teams (and individuals) for TFC, as well as other milestones and achievements both at our meetings

and on a one-on-one basis. We have built our entire event based on communication and good relationships. We

have done our very best to make it FUN for everyone. We try to recognize everyone, whether at a meeting or

individually. We know our team captains personally – every one of them – and we reach out to them on a

regular basis so everyone feels they are being recognized. We feel that “personal touch” makes a big difference

in keeping teams and team captains happy and productive.

We not only recognized our teams as teams, but we did a lot of recognizing our teams as a part of our event (as

the collective whole) this year. We all as team captains bonded together to reach pacesetter status (the ONLY

event in PA to have achieved this honor 5 out of 5 years!), we came together to become the FIRST event in PA to

become an ACS CAN Club event, we came together to not only reach our event goal of $172,000 before opening

ceremony (see picture below), but to take our event from the #1 event in the county to the #1 event in the

REGION (which was the personal goal we set for ourselves at kick-off and WE DID IT!!!) That didn’t happen by

accident. Our team captains – our teams – pulled together and MADE it happen. Our teams were so excited

about raising money this year, we are currently (at the time of the submission of this application) approximately

$70,000 OVER GOAL!

Additional activity/comments:

In the “Ultimate Call to Action” online challenge in the week leading up to Relay, we did offer a “fabulous” prize

for the top fundraiser, although, our participants could have cared less about the incentive. They wanted to

WIN! They wanted to reach our goal! And so they banked that money in a big way. We did end up awarding the

top three online fundraisers a prize (a Relay prize) during the opening ceremony at the event and recognizing

everyone’s efforts to helping us achieve the AMAZING achievement of hitting our event goal by the beginning of

our opening ceremony!

Event Development (effective emotional ceremonies, well planned survivor lap and activities, well planned

Luminaria ceremony, caregiver recognition, fun event):

1. Were your ceremonies emotional, engaging, entertaining, powerful, and diverse? Please

describe.

Yes!

Our survivor ceremony is VERY well attended as you can see in the photo below. Our survivor ceremony was

extraordinary. A great deal of consideration must be taken in order to put together an appropriate yet

entertaining survivor ceremony. This year our survivor chair came up with the idea of having our survivors and

caregivers release butterflies just before we embarked on the emotional survivor lap. Butterflies always seek out

the beautiful flowers and feed on them to survive, just as we wanted our survivors to look for the beauty in their

lives to help them be the powerful survivors they are. As the butterflies that represented courage, strength, but

most of all hope were released, the diverse emotional feelings were represented in everyone's eyes as they

looked to the butterfly filled sky. For the survivor lap we chose music that made our participants feel and share

in the emotional journey of love, living and laughter. There was not a dry eye to be found either on the track or

in the eyes of their loved ones who cheered them on from within the stadium. Even though tears were falling,

some of the butterflies took the participants by surprise by dancing around their heads as if encouraging them

to lead the way. The Survivor Committee’s engaging spirit through their hard work, passion and inspirational

speeches was felt by all in attendance.

This year we promoted year-long Luminaria sales through a successful incentive program which was proved by a

record number of Luminaria sales generating $10,000! We encouraged pre-event personalization of the bags

which brought a deeper connection for all participants. New to our event, was our first Reflective Gardens

where luminaria bags were placed in a beautiful reserved garden setting featuring a beautiful centerpiece

waterfall, completely donated by a local landscaper. Our ceremony theme was “Friends Go the Distance” which

truly reflects all who participate in our Relay. The ceremony included the top two team representatives reading

emotionally packed poems followed by a talented gentleman singing a moving and heartfelt version of Michael

W. Smith’s Friends. As the lights went out, the two team representatives lit ceremonial bags on a beautiful

decorated setting of purple and white coverings as we remembered those we’ve lost and honored our beloved

Survivors. Caregivers played an important part of our ceremony as we acknowledged their role in going the

distance, never letting us dwell on negatives and always kept us positive. In closing, an amazing 9-year-old girl

sang Go the Distance where the emotion of her song brought HOPE to every heart complimented with the

simultaneously lighting of Hope in the bleachers with a star in place of the “O.” With not a dry eye in the stands,

together we walked a silent lap in remembrance of our experiences and with those special friends we’ve shared

them. A wonderful CELEBRATION OF HOPE was achieved as each step took us closer to a world with more

birthdays!

We received overwhelming feedback after the event about how satisfied and inspired people were!

2. Was your event engaging all throughout the night? Please describe and submit program /

schedule.

Yes. In addition to the carnival, which is a HUGE draw and has tons of games and fun, we had activities planned

for the full 24 hours including: special laps, lap beads, games, music, bands, arts and crafts, dunk tank, etc.

Please see included SCHEDULE OF EVENTS. Even though it stormed and we had to move everyone inside, there

were still games played and singing while they waited out the storm. By 3am we had to move everyone indoors

and just take a look at this link to see the spirit of our Relayers in a hot gym at 3am with nothing to do

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4N6fsLPXv4). Simply AMAZING!

The outstanding part of what our Activities/Entertainment committee did this year was to engage our Relayers

BEFORE the event. As discussed in the answer to question #3, we had mini-breakouts in each of our monthly

meetings. At the May meeting, one of the breakouts was an Activites/Entertainment breakout and I have to say,

the chair and co-chair WOW-ed the team captains! They came in with props and music and got people invested

in the activities that were to come at the event! From this meeting on, they sent emails through convio to start

filling the schedule for the dunk tank (which in previous years had gone un-used because no one had bothered

with it), but simply by generating a buzz about it and generating a schedule before-hand, we had FILLED the

schedule for the ENTIRE available time at Relay in ½ hour increments and raised $674! We also doubled our

income from the Ms. Relay competition just by really generating that interest prior to the event by discussing it

at the meeting and by emailing details through Convio! We had 10 contestants competing raising approximately

$3088 (compared to the 3 contestants who had raised approximately $900 the previous year)!

3. Was your event properly branded with the current RFL logo and does your event connect RFL to ACS? Please

describe.

Yes. We have banners, posters, and signs hanging throughout the stadium as well as ACS staff on site. We

encourage all of our teams to use the brandwizard website for all of their flyers and promotional materials prior

to the event as well. We utilize the current RFL logo on all of our materials that we distribute and if we find

someone using an older version, we promptly correct the problem and provide them with the correct materials.

We also promote the use of the RFL URL on all flyers and promotional items. We heavily use our website to

distribute information, so as much as possible, we like to direct people to our website for information.

We recognize that branding is an issue and we encourage our participants to not only reference the “Relay For

Life” name but the “American Cancer Society” name as well when speaking to members of the community and

potential sponsors and in-kind donors, etc. One of our sponsors had purchased window decals for us that display

the RFL logo and relayforlife.org. We distribute them to teams and at fundraisers and to sponsors and in-kind

donors. We will give them to pretty much anyone that will display them in their business or car.

Having a clear plan and vision for your Relay is also critical to its success. Does your event have a plan that

incorporates future goals? Share details of your plan for income, teams, and survivors in upcoming years:

We at Western Berks have BIG GOALS! And we tend to achieve what we set our sights on! We have the most

motivated and inspired group of volunteers ever! We always strive to do better each year by increasing our

goals for survivors, luminaria, dollars raised, teams, sponsorship dollars, and ACS Can memberships. We also

strive to promote awareness of Relay for Life by attending community events such as Health Expos and National

Night Out. We attempt to increase our fundraising efforts by holding several Relay wide fundraisers each year

such as Relay Bingo, Breakfast with Santa, Chicken Barbeques, etc. This not only increases dollars but helps to

reach more people in the community, which in turn helps to create more teams and awareness.

We are indeed an All-American Relay, a showcase event that the American Cancer Society can be proud of! We

have not yet closed the books on the 2011 Relay season, but at the time of completing this application, Western

Berks is so far $70,000 ABOVE GOAL and STILL banking money! We are growing by leaps and bounds and I

cannot simply say that it is luck. Yes, we have worked hard. Yes, we have a fantastic group of volunteers. But it is

what you DO with the volunteers that will make a difference. They need to be motivated, they need to be

inspired! And I truly believe that communication is the KEY to our success. I have been asked time and time

again what our “secret to success” is and the only answer I have ever been able to offer is that we don’t have a

secret – we have an outstanding group of volunteers, as does every event, but we have built a special culture at

Western Berks and it is social networking and communication and IT WORKS! And the proof is in the success of

our event! ONLY event in PA to be Pacesetter 5 years in a row! We became the first event in PA to become an

ACS CAN Club event! We actually hit our event goal BEFORE opening ceremony!

We started out this year only wanting to become #1 in the East Region (only?! Right?? HA!) Well, we exceeded

that goal and ended up coming so close to reaching a quarter of a million dollars banked this year! So, we would

have to say that even though our event goal may not reflect this, our personal goals would be to hit a quarter of

a million dollars in a single year! And we tend to achieve our goals! Watch out ACS! Bigger and better things are

going to be coming from Western Berks! Our number of teams actually dropped this year because of the

dropped cap on team member requirement – we streamlined, which was fine by us. We feel it makes more

sense this way. Our number of participants did not suffer, though. We increased from 682 in 2010 to 794 in

2011, even with fewer teams. So, we ran with our 60 teams this year and we hope to grow, grow, grow even

more! We do have our eyes on our site facility, though. We are nearing maximum capacity and as we grow we

may have to consider a site change. So, while I say that our team goals soar to 80 teams and beyond, we have to

consider our logistics as we move forward. We need to make sure everyone stays comfortable and happy! And

as far as survivors go? The sky is the limit. Our survivor committee is made up of all cancer survivors and this, we

believe gave us an edge in tuning in to what survivors are really looking for out of participation from a Relay

event. From the very first phone call to register or re-register the survivor(s), to a follow up phone call to invite

them to an event, to the way our emails were worded and survivor pieces were written in the newsletters, the

survivors felt like they were a part of Western Berks. I had personally received feedback from several survivors

that had appreciated being “kept in the loop” on what we were “up to” throughout the year (even if they were

going to miss a particular fundraiser or even the event in June). Our number of survivors increased

tremendously (FY2010-2011 we increased 95 survivors – up to 312 from 217 in 2009-2010) and we can attribute

that to the overall philosophy of having survivors leading the charge and creating an entire package of

communication throughout the year to keep in touch and letting them know how important they are to the

American Cancer Society. We LOVE our survivors and we want to expand to include many, many more in the

coming years! I think that at over 300 we have finally built a good “base” of survivors to build on! We can grow

from here and include and appreciate so many more in the years to come! We have so much great work ahead

of us!

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