Notes from our December Meeting

We hope everyone had a fantastic holiday and are looking forward to a great 2012!  We held our 3rd committee meeting on December 13th at St. Basil's in Bridgewater.  We began by reviewing our open committee positions, which include Luminaria, Sponsorship, and Recruitment/Retention.  We asked that Annie contacts Carol to reprise her role as Luminaria chair, as she did a wonderful job last year.

The Sponsorship and Recruitment/Retention positions involve calling contacts from years past and the National Team members.  If you are interested, please contact Melissa at melissa.padeni@cancer.org, and she will be able to set you up with a list.  We are looking for anyone willing to give a few hours over the next couple of months for these positions.

We filled our Food/Beverage position, as Barb and Annie will coordinate with the Lions to arrange the grills, food, beverage, and ice cream truck for this year.

Our committee updates are as follows:

Social Medial/Public Relations:

• We are sending out our press releases to the Brockton Enterprise, the Bridgewater Independent, and BTV.
• We have placed notices of our meetings in the St. Thomas church bulletins.
• We have blog entries posted every Friday at Noon at www.relaybridgewater.blogger.com.
• We are creating a QR code for our flyers.  The code will be scan-able by QR readers on smartphones, and it will redirect to the Relay Bridgewater website. 
• Josh is customizing the website pages, and he will be sending out a Save the Date for Retention/Recruitment.  The StD will also be posted on Facebook, the website, and the blog. 
• We found out that no local towns/cities are currently enrolled in Patch, but we are keeping this option on the table if Patch expands to the Brockton area.  
• We now have a Twitter account!  Follow us on Twitter - @RFLBridgewater.  We have also set up a Hootsuite account that allows us to update Twitter and Facebook at the same time.  
• We posted on Facebook about our open committee positions. Let us know if you know of anyone who might be interested. 

Recruitment/Retention/Sponsorship:

• Josh will be sending out Save the Dates for Retention/Recruitment. 
• We need to reach out to the National Team Partners for 2012.  Is anyone interested in volunteering an hour of their time to contact 10 partners?
• We are working on getting Relay Ribbon Sponsors. 

Logistics:

• B-R is still looking like the preferred site, but we are still waiting for the final contract.  The approximate price for this year is $3,900.
• We brainstormed many new theme laps for this year, as well as new ways to get the information out (texting, road signs, etc.)
• This year's theme will be our 10 Year Celebration and the 2012 Olympics.  We are working on an idea to have a "lit" purple torch carried throughout the entire Relay (passed from team to team).  
• Barb will be contacting Waste Management about the dumpster for this year and the ice cream vendor, as well as the Water Warriors for the water donation. 
• The Lions will be manning grills for this year.  We suggested 400 hamburgers and 150 hot dogs.
• Pepperonis and Bridgewater House of Pizza are on board again.  They will donate 20% of the proceeds from any Relay order (just mention Relay at the time of order) and they will also deliver to the site.  

Survivors:

• Annie is working with the Lions for food and beverage concessions. 
• Survivor gifts have been confirmed from PartyLite.
• We would like to have more caregiver recognition.  More discussion of t-shirts, a special lap, and a special speaker. 
• Annie has confirmed 3 Survivor committee meetings: April, May and June, all at St. Basil's. 
• Ray Ponte has confirmed for entertainment for the survivors.  He also has considered starting a team for Relay, so Annie will discuss that with him.

Fight Back Ceremony:

• Ellen has many great ideas for the ceremony, including 5 Fs (Faith, Family, Friends, Food, Fitness).
• We brainstormed about how to carry this throughout the event instead of having a stand-alone ceremony.

Opening Ceremony:

• Susan Wornick has confirmed as the Emcee for this year (unless her schedule suddenly changes). 

Olympic Theme:

• We spent much of the rest of the meeting discussing how to carry our Olympic theme throughout the event.  We are planning to use the history of the Olympics, sports, countries, etc., and we will tie into the foods, sites, and laps. 
• We kicked around ideas about the campsites, opening ceremony, entertainment (Amazing Race/scavenger hunt), the torch run, Wii time for "rental", Olympic music, competitions (hula hoop, sack races, etc), teams marching in like the Olympics opening ceremony, reaching out to Reebok/New Balance, Marathon Sports for voucher/coupon donations, medals from iParty, Marathon competition (by team/individual, 26.2 miles, proof w/ beads). 

Mini U/Chair Chat Discussion:

• We discussed the Relay Mini U held on 11/19, and the recent Fundraising Chair Chat held on 12/7.  
• We talked about the one-pagers - ABC's of Fundraising and 10 Ways to Raise $100 - these are great to include in the team captain's packets.  We also discussed ways to raise money after Relay (via holding a contest/competition). 
• Ribbon sponsors are very important for corporate support.  We will need the .PDF to email to interested sponsors. 
• Goal setting tools will be included in the team captain's packets, and they will help teams to determine their goals, as opposed to just arbitrarily picking a goal. 

Questionnaire:

• We want to bring back the Relay Bucks, but we need to determine how to redeem them and/or how to tabulate the amount per team. 
• Melissa will be sending out the wrap-up notes and survey for further discussion. 

Money Tracking Update:

• The admins at the WB ACS site will be entering all of the money online.  
• Melissa will review this at our next meeting

Our next meeting will be Tuesday, January 10th at 6:15 PM at St. Basil's.  

**Don't forget to follow us on Facebook! You can also reach the website at http://www.relaybridgewater.org/ or email us at relaybridgewater@gmail.com.**

Notes From Our November Meeting

We held our November committee meeting on 11/08/2011 at St. Basil's Chapel in Bridgewater.  We currently have committee positions still available, including Luminaria, Sponsorship, Food/Beverage, and Recruitment/Retention. 

As far as committee updates: 

Social Media

• Josh is planning to put together a Committee Recruitment flyer that will be distributed in Bridgewater, West Bridgewater, East Bridgewater, Lakeville and Middleborough, and he will also be sending out a Save The Date for Retention/Recruitment regarding the 2012 Relay. 

• The website pages are being customized, our Facebook title has been changed to Relay For Life of Greater Bridgewater (thank you to everyone who helped by "un-like"ing us!), and our blog is being used as a resource for committee/team information and cancer facts.

• Alicia is also looking into towns that have a Patch website to add that to her media contacts.

Recruitment/Retention/Sponsorship

• We discussed how to get the schools and social organizations more involved. 

• We need to reach out to the National Team Partners for 2012 - we need at least 2 volunteers for this, and the position can be done from home (phone calls and emails). 

• We also talked about getting Relay Ribbon Sponsors and the proposed sponsorship structure for this year. 

Logistics

• We have almost completely confirmed Bridgewater-Raynham as our site for this year, though we are waiting on the contract.  The proposed price is $3,900, which is less than what we paid last year.

• Bridgewater House of Pizza is on board for orders for this year's Relay. 

• DJ Andy has confirmed for both days for this year, and he has generously donated his time and equiptment.

• We are starting to collect items for Team Captains' Buckets - I will post a list of items needed after our next meeting. 

• PartyLife has confirmed their donation for the Team Captains' gifts and for the Luminaria candles (Melissa is planning to inventory the leftover candles from last year to see if we have any supplies to use first.)

• Our theme this year will be our 10 Year Celebration and the upcoming Summer Olympics.  We brainstormed lap ideas and the idea of having a constantly carried/lit torch passed from team to team. 

Survivors

• Annie is talking to the Bridgewater Lions about their interest in running the grills this year.  We proposed a number regarding hot dogs and hamburgers, and the Lions will look to getting this donated.

• PartyLite confirmed the donation of Survivor gifts.

• We would like to have better recognition of Caregivers.  We discussed t-shirts, specific laps, and a special speaker

Summit Update

• Melissa attended the Relay summit this year, and the focused on volunteer recruitment. 

Questionnaire

• Melissa is intending to send out the wrap-up notes and survey notes prior to the December meeting for discussion

• At our next meeting, we will discuss the idea of using Relay Bucks as an incentive.

Money Tracking Update

• This year, administrators will be entering all of the money online, and we will be able to enter the money in on Bank Night and shortly after Relay so the online numbers should be more accurate.

**Our next meeting is Tuesday, December 13th at 6:15PM at St. Basil's Chapel in Bridgewater.  We hope to see you there!**

Don't forget to follow us on Facebook! You can also reach the website at http://www.relaybridgewater.org/ or email us at relaybridgewater@gmail.com.

Notes From Our October Meeting

We know everyone can't always make it to the Committee and Team Captains Meetings, so we've decided to post the meeting notes here for review!  If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask. 

This week, we will review our October meeting.

Our first meeting was October 12th.  Our 2011 Relay netted $115,000 in donations (a total of $134,000 was raised, and $19,000 went toward expenses).  We had 45 teams, more than 530 participants registered, and 90 survivors.  Our 2012 Relay goals are $125,000 in net income and 97 survivors.  We confirmed that this year's Relay will be held from 3 PM on Friday, June 15th to 9 AM on Saturday, June 16th.  At the time, we discussed returning to Bridgewater-Raynham or moving Relay to West Bridgewater High School.

We reviewed the Leadership Chart and Committee Structure, and everyone who attended completed a volunteer interest slip.  If you are interested in being a part of the committee or taking on a volunteer role, please let us know and we will forward a copy of the slip for your review. 

We decided to purchase http://www.relaybridgewater.org/ to provide an easy to remember directly link to the Relay For Life Bridgewater, Lakeville, Middleborough page.  We also considered creating a QR code which, when scanned with a smartphone app, would bring up the mobile website.  We will follow up on this after the Mini-Relay University in November.

Relay Summit was attended by Melissa, and this year they focused on volunteer recruitment.  We also discussed the idea of Mini-Relay at the local elementary schools, as this will be run specifically by volunteers at the specific schools.  We also had a Save The Date for Mini-Relay University for 11/19 which focused on pumping up the committee and embracing social media.

We talked about having more volunteers and recruiting through the schools and social organizations.  We put together a list of places to contact (the high schools, National Honor Societies, Boy Scouts, the churches, etc.).  And we also need to reach out ot the National Team Partners for 2012. 

We discussed the post-Relay survey results.  In particular, we discussed the entertainment/DJ/sound system, the weather, concessions/food/beverage, CERT involvement, Lions involvement, and Floating Luminaria Lanterns.  This link goes to a YouTube video from the Yalobusha County Relay in Water Valley, MS.  You can see the Lanterns at the 44 second mark.

Specifically, we discussed how we need to upgrade the sound system to make sure everyone can hear, how we should consider a large board to show the theme laps, how we need to have more concessions and food this year (which may be covered by the Lions involvement!), and how we probably won't be able to use the CERT volunteers if we move Relay to West Bridgewater.  We also discussed the parking at West Bridgewater, the access to the track, and whether we would be able to use A&A Metro as our shuttle.  We did discuss the idea of having a raindate, considering the weather for last year.  Unfortunately, that just isn't possible or practical with all of the logistics.

Next week, we will post our November notes. 

**Our next committee meeting is December 13th at 6:15 PM at St. Basil's Chapel in Bridgewater.  We look forward to seeing you there!**

Don't forget to follow us on Facebook! You can also reach the website at http://www.relaybridgewater.org/ or email us at relaybridgewater@gmail.com.