Looking for a way to help save lives from cancer?

Join our Relay For Life committee!

   “Western Howard Relay is Bankrupting Cancer in 2010!”

Team Development Chair: The team development chair is responsible for recruiting new teams to participate in the event and retain veteran teams.  The team development committee works with team captains to ensure that they know what their team is supposed to do before, during and after the event.  Organizes team information and ensures that teams are informed of meetings, deadlines, etc.

Team Retention – Keep them coming back. Who’s coming back? Did they have a good time? What can we do to make our relay better? Come up with a plan to re-capture the teams that have not come back. Some teams just have to be asked, to come back. Maybe they didn’t make it last year due to a wedding. Year-round communications, sending a birthday, holiday and or a thank you card.   

Fundraising Chair – Motivate teams to fundraise year-around and monitor their progress, help teams write fundraising letters, ensure fundraising is taught to our youth teams & ensure that fundraising best practices reach every participant.

Church Development – The church chair is responsible for meeting with local churches to get the word out about relay. Work closely with team development chair.

Sponsorship - The sponsorship chair is responsible for acquiring sponsors for the event.  He/she is responsible for presenting sponsorship opportunities, while adhering to sponsorship guidelines.  Also works to obtain underwriting opportunities which consist of donations that are used to defray expenses incurred during the event.  (Examples: a printing company donates the printing of the event program or a tent company donates tents to our relay.)

Co-chairs - The chair “in training” who will chair next year’s event. Responsible for assisting the event chairman, His/her primary responsibility is to lead areas of Relay that fall under “the production” of Relay such as: team meetings, rally, opening/closing ceremonies, activities, advocacy, logistics, etc.

Logistics - The logistics chair is responsible for making all arrangements with the facility and ensuring that necessary items are provided at the event location. This person is responsible for overseeing the set-up of the site before the event, as well as breakdown after the event. (Arrangements & permits have already been booked and put in place)

Entertainment/Ms Relay/Activities - The activities and entertainment chair is responsible for scheduling entertainment, games, family fun activities and run the Ms Relay pageant the night of the event.

Ceremonies - The ceremonies chair is responsible for all ceremonies (opening, closing and work w/ luminaria chair for luminaria ceremony) during the Relay.  This includes acquiring entertainment (we already have a band, PetRock)  speakers, etc., for the ceremony.

Food/Hospitality – Decide on needs & ask community businesses for donation of goods for relay… bottled water, coffee, donuts, juice, ice cream …etc for event. 

Accounting, Registration & Meet/Greet- This position serves three major roles. The first is accounting – in other words, this chair is responsible for overseeing the tabulation of all monies and meeting all reporting deadlines. The second is registration – this means being responsible for overseeing the registration of participants.  Recruit volunteers to meet and greet all participants and visitors.

Newsletter – The newsletter chair will take meeting notes and work with other committee chairs to compile “need to know” information into a monthly newsletter to be sent to all participants. 

Silent Auction – The silent auction chair is responsible for writing or calling local and national stores/business for donated goods and overseeing the silent auction at the event. Each team will be asked to donate at least one item to the auction. Keep track of all items on spreadsheet. Ensure that each item has a bid sheet. Recruit volunteers to help set up the auction. Collect all monies from winners.

Mission Delivery – The Mission Delivery chair is responsible for mission activities for the rally, meetings and monthly messages.

Online - Working closely with ACS Staff partners and Relay Committee members, the Online Chair will be responsible for promoting online registration and fundraising to team captains and participants.  Responsible for managing email campaigns, site customization, and reporting functions, and interacting with other committee members as needed to integrate online component into event fundraising structure. The online chair will also update our Facebook & MySpace accounts with the latest info.

Photograph, DVD, and Slideshow– This chair is responsible for making sure the relay is fully documented photographically. Create a DVD from all the pictures that were taken at relay to be used as a fundraiser.  This year we want to have an Honor & Remembrance slide show during our luminaria ceremony of loved ones, friends and family that participants would like to see honored.   

*All committee positions are set up as two year terms.  We don’t want committee members to take on their position all by themselves so we ask each committee chair to recruit a sub-committee for their segment of the committee.  Committee members are asked to attend monthly committee and team meetings.  If you have any questions please contact Marcia Brake, 410-489-003 or Phyllis Smelkinson, 410-781-6908 or whcrelay@aol.com.

The Society has many other volunteer opportunities available throughout the year, including volunteering with patient support programs, transporting cancer patients to treatment, working in local offices, advocating for changes in public policy, and participating in fundraising events. Call 1-800-ACS-2345 to find out how you can make a difference in the fight against cancer in your community.