ACS gets ready for RFL in SL

American Cancer Society (ACS)
Meeting 30 January 2010

The ACS held a 'meet and greet' of their Relay For Life of Second Life PR/Marketing Committee, which is headed up by Poppy Zabelin (area Chair) and Breezy Carver (area Co-Chair), in preparation for their  annual fund raising efforts through Relay for Life (RFL).  Fundraising will begin in March and conclude with the annual RFL event in July.   Teams are currently being formed to participate in the July event. 

Over the previous fundraising season, over $275,000 USD was raised to fund cancer research, education and prevention.   Distribution of funds can been seen at the ACS website blog http://cancer.blogs.com/international/ and the RFL official blog http://rflofsl.blogspot.com.  Additional information can be found at  http://twitter.com/RelayForLife_SL/.  The RL RFL community has recognized the SL RFL efforts, acknowledging that a lot of money was raised through SL.  Twelve to fifteen percent of the funds raised in SL go to support the International Relay for Life.  This year, notecards will be available for anyone wanting to see how the funds are distributed.  Out of 5,230 relays around the world, RFL in SL ranked 112th in 2009 for fundraising. 

The overall aim of the PR/Marketing area committees is to REACH OUT!!!

Poppy gave an overview of the committee structure. Committee members include Beverly Hastings and Salem Draconia (Mission),  HollyJean Allen (Outreach), Nevar Lobo and Amethyst Starostin (International Relations),  Poppy Zabelin and Breezy Carver (Publicity/Media) with Saffia Widdershins as publicity advisor, IshtarAngel Micheline (Photography), Ren Stonecutter (Education) and May Rosebud (Greeters for RFL main event).

MamaP Beerbaum is the Event Co-Chair with overall  responsibility for teams, PR/Marketing, Technology and Security.

Teams will be responsible for advertising their own fundraising events.  An event board has been created for the teams to post their fundraising events.  The boards can be placed at different locations to get the word out about their events. 

Nevar and Amethyst will be available to mentor and teach people from different countries in SL how to start teams, fund raise in their communities and spreading the word about  official events. They are building a team of ambassadors and translators and would like people with different language skils to volunteer to help. The Japanese and Ukraine communities have also become involved and ambassadors are in both of those countries. 

KEY DATES
February 1 – teams registration opens
March 13 – Kickoff Party and start of fundraising!
July 17-18 THE MAIN EVENT – GO RELAY!

By Shellie Sands