We’re here to answer any questions you might have about Making Strides Against Breast Cancer. Below are answers to some of the most frequently asked questions, but if you have a question that is not answered below, please let us know. Call us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at 1-800-ACS-2345.
Making Strides Against Breast Cancer is the American Cancer Society’s premier event to raise funds and awareness to fight breast cancer. More than 145 Making Strides walks nationwide each year celebrate people who have battled breast cancer, educate people about ways to reduce their risk, and empower communities to join the fight. The noncompetitive walks range in distance from 3 to 5 miles.
Anyone can participate in Making Strides Against Breast Cancer. From corporate CEOs to school children, the success of Making Strides Against Breast Cancer depends on individuals who commit to raising money, the people who donate to them, and our generous sponsors. Friends, families, neighbors, classmates, sports teams, etc., can form their own teams and walk as a group. Organizations or businesses can also sponsor a team of walkers. Or, you are free to walk as an individual.
We also need volunteers to help at the event with registration, traffic, information, and many other important functions. Making Strides offers something for everyone. Participants in wheelchairs should contact their local American Cancer Society office prior to the event for additional information.
The online fundraising tool at your event Web site makes it easier than ever to raise money!
Visit your event Web site to:
- Start a team, join an existing team, or walk as an individual.
- Create and personalize a fundraising Web page with photos and stories.
- Send emails encouraging everyone you know to join your team or support you with a donation.
- Collect donations using our secure, personalized Web site.
- Track individual progress as well as the progress of your team members.
- Send weekly emails to keep your team members motivated.
- Learn the facts about breast cancer and how to detect it early.
- Send fun, animated e-cards to friends and family.
Let everyone in your social network know about your passion to end breast cancer. Visit your 
Personal Participant Center to:
- Add a personal fundraising thermometer for your Facebook page that will allow friends to donate and track your fundraising success; you’ll also find Facebook groups you can join to stay inspired!
- Find breast cancer facts you can include in your emails and on your personal page.
- Get banners to place on your blogs or other personal Web sites to encourage others to get involved in Making Strides.
- Use Making Strides Twitter codes to follow updates through your Twitter account.
- Find Flickr badges and instructions on how to tag a photo to be part of the Making Strides community nationwide.
- Post and watch Making Strides videos on YouTube channels and SharingHope.tv.
There are numerous ways to join our movement to end breast cancer. You can:
- Walk in Making Strides and raise donations from family, friends, and coworkers. The online fundraising tool at
your event Web site makes raising donations easy.
- Be a team leader and gather a group of any size to walk with you. Contact your local American Cancer Society office for a team leader kit.
- Double your fundraising dollars through a matching gifts program. Ask your personnel or human resources department for more details.
- Sponsor a Making Strides walker with a generous, tax-deductible contribution.
- Help at the event by donating your time and talent.
- Volunteer for the Society’s many breast cancer programs in your community, including a program that connects recently diagnosed women with women who have survived the disease and "been there" (Reach to Recovery®), and a collaborative program that helps patients cope with appearance-related side effects of cancer treatment (Look Good…Feel Better®).
- Become a grassroots advocate to ensure all women have access to mammograms and treatment, regardless of their income. Learn how you can take action at www.acscan.org/makingstrides.
- Protect yourself by learning and following the American Cancer Society’s breast cancer early detection guidelines at
www.cancer.org/breastcancer.
- Sign up for a yearly email mammogram reminder at www.cancer.org/MammogramReminder.
Since 1993, nearly 5 million walkers across the United States have collected more than $340 million to help fight breast cancer through Making Strides events. In 2008, 600,000 participants across the country raised more than $60 million to help fight this disease.
Funds you raise through Making Strides help the American Cancer Society save lives by:
- Educating and empowering people to live healthy lives and reduce their risk for breast cancer
- Helping all women facing breast cancer get well by providing resources and support to help them overcome obstacles in their personal cancer fight
- Investing in research that leads to groundbreaking discoveries into breast cancer’s causes and cures
- Fighting for laws that help women battle breast cancer and keep our mothers, daughters, grandmothers, and families healthy
For more details, please visit How Your Dollars Make a Difference.
We offer a quick and easy way for you to sign up for Making Strides and raise money online.
Simply log on to your event Web site and click on your state to find your local event. Then click Get Involved and choose to walk as an individual or join an existing team. From there, follow the few easy steps to complete the process. If you have questions about signing up, don’t hesitate to call your local American Cancer Society office.
We recommend that all participants sign up to use the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer online fundraising tool, which makes it easy to email many people at once to ask for support. It also makes it easy for donors to make quick and secure online donations. You can use your Personal Participant Center Web page to track online and offline (cash and checks) donations, and to send thank-you emails or e-cards. On the day of the event, bring your offline donations with you to turn in during registration.
The American Cancer Society Making Strides Against Breast Cancer does not have a registration fee and there is no minimum amount to raise to participate. The walk does raise much-needed funds to help the American Cancer Society save lives and fight cancer, but it also creates awareness about breast cancer and provides lifesaving prevention and early detection information. We encourage people who can’t make a donation or who aren’t able to request it of others to come out and show their support by walking in their local event.
The American Cancer Society does not give out free T-shirts for participating in its Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk. We’re guessing you have enough T-shirts already and we know that your dollars you’ve worked so hard to raise can be better spent on our important efforts to beat this disease. We hope you agree.
While we definitely encourage you to set a personal fundraising goal and try and meet or exceed it, participants are not required to raise a minimum amount. Also, the donations you request are for your general participation in the event, rather than per mile. You can ask for donations of $10, $25, $50, $100, or more from friends, family members, coworkers, and neighbors. Money may be turned in at registration or donated online through our secure Web site. If you have not finished collecting your funds by the day of the event, or are unable to attend, send your contribution form and remaining donations to your local American Cancer Society office. Click here to find an event near you or to start raising money online. The sooner you get started, the more progress we’ll make together to help eliminate breast cancer.
The American Cancer Society has made every effort to protect your personal information. We use industry-standard SSL encryption techniques to ensure that your credit card information, passwords, and personal information travel securely over the Internet. There is also an encryption engine on our database server that securely stores your data.
Credit card information is not stored in our database. During the donation process, we send donor credit card information to an online processing terminal using a secure connection. The information passed back is an approval or denial for the credit card donation.
It's up to you. If you are interested in starting a team, select the Start a Team option. There is no minimum number of people required to start a team. However, if you would prefer to walk by yourself, select the Walk as an Individual link instead. If you would like to join an existing team, select the Join a Team option and search for the team’s name.
Every time you visit your event Web site, be sure to log in with your username and password clicking the Login button on the top right of the page. If you have visited the site before, your computer may have a cookie and will recognize you, logging you in automatically. Logging in provides you access to your participant center Web page, your personal page, your team's information, and online tools to encourage your friends and family to support you. (A cookie is a small piece of information a Web site leaves on a visitor's computer when the visitor is browsing the site. Cookies are used to remember information about a visitor to be used at a later time.)
Remember that your username and password are case sensitive. Click here to find your password. You will receive an email with your username and password.
First, log in to the site using your current username and password. After logging in, you will see a link at the top of the page called My Profile. Once you are in your profile, you will be able to change your contact information, email address, username, and password. All changes will be made to your account immediately. There is no need to log in again.
Welcome back – we’re happy you’re walking with us again this year! As long as you sign up for the same event you walked in last year, you’ll be able to access your personal address book and fundraising page from the year before, which will make it easier than ever to get started in 2009!
Toward the bottom of each email message, there is a link that says Click Here to Unsubscribe from This Email Message. Click the link and follow the instructions given to unsubscribe. Please remember that the emails we send you are related to Making Strides Against Breast Cancer and often contain helpful updates and event information that unsubscribing might prevent you from receiving.
No problem. Simply log in to your personal participant center using your username and password, and update your email preferences to ensure you are opted-in to receive important Making Strides Against Breast Cancer emails.
A personal page is an online promotional tool for your use when asking your friends and family to join your team or sponsor you by making a donation. Once you sign up for an event online, a personal Web page will automatically be created for you. You have the option of personalizing this page by going to My Participant Center. You will be able to customize it with photos and stories. It is an easy and effective way to spread the word to everyone you know! Upload a photo of yourself or a loved whose breast cancer journey has motivated you to action. Or, share a personal story about why you walk. This is your place to express why you support Making Strides and encourage others to join you.
No, but we recommend you do. Once you sign up for an event online, a personal page is automatically created for you. A compelling personal page attracts and engages supporters. So it’s best if you tell your story and explain why Making Strides is important to you. Emails you send through your participant center will link people to your page, so be sure it speaks to them with your personal words and photos. Your personal page can be your own creative expression of your commitment to the cause. And a compelling personal page will help boost your fundraising.
Our easy-to-use online fundraising tool allows you to safely and securely upload email addresses of friends and family into your Making Strides Against Breast Cancer address book. By using our sample emails, or by creating your own, you can ask everyone you know to join you as a participant or support you with a donation.
Log in to the site using your username and password. Then click on My Participant Center. The bottom right-hand side of your participant center is where you can modify your personal fundraising goal. Simply enter your new goal and submit the changes.
Only the team leader has the ability to change the team name or team division. The team leader will need to log in to the site, click on My Walk Center, click the My Team Progress button on the top right, and update the team name, division, and goal on the Team Progress page.
Log in to the site using your username and password, then click on My Participant Center. Click the My Progress tab; this will allow you to view your donor list and the amounts donated.
Log in to the site using your username and password, then click on My Participant Center. Click the Team Progress tab; this will allow you to view your team roster and the amounts raised by each team member.
By default, a personal page is public, meaning your name will appear on the participant search list, and anyone visiting the site will be able to support you. Setting your personal page to "private" via the tools in My Participant Center means your name will not appear in the participant search list and only people you personally invite will be able to support you.
Most browsers have what we call "caching issues," which basically means your computer is remembering something you don't want it to. This is common when you frequently use the back button on a site, and can also happen to if you're using a shared computer. To clear your cache, follow the instructions below based on which browser you're using:
- Go to Tools
- Click Options
- Go to the Privacy section
- Go to the Private Data section, Click the Settings button and make sure Cache is checked
- Click OK
- In the Private Data section, click the Clear Now button
- Go to Tools
- Click Internet Options
- In the General tab, go to the Temporary Internet Files section
- Click Delete Files
Please note that clearing your cache may take several minutes, during which time your computer may appear to freeze or the browser may appear to stop responding/lock up. Please be patient and allow this process to finish. If you continue to experience problems after clearing your cache, completely quit the browser (close all open windows, regardless of what site is open in that window), then reopen the browser. This will clear session data, which can also cause caching issues.
