Overview
The Relay For Life of Nerdfighteria is an event proposed by American Cancer Society Community Manager, Hilary Howser. Hilary’s vision is a Relay not restricted by city-limits or physical spaces. Her idea was to create a Relay attached to a sub-culture, or group of people connected by like-ideas. The result is the Relay For Life of Nerdfighteria. This Relay will exist exclusively online. Team recruitment and cultivation will be virtual in nature, fundraising will be crowd-sourced, and the ceremonies will be live-streaming from cities across the country.
Think: Year-round Project For Awesome with a twist.
Timeline
The Relay For Life fundraiser“year” is September 1st – August 31st – this is called an ‘event cycle’. Because we are well into the 2016 event cycle already, the Relay For Life of Nerdfighteria will begin as a Team for a Nashville, TN event managed by Hilary. The participants registered on this Team will become the Event Leadership Team [event managers] of the Relay For Life of Nerdfighteria. They will utilize the upcoming months as a Team to learn more about the Relay world, train for their respective volunteer roles, and do some initial planning for the event. Then, on September 1st, 2016, the Relay For Life of Nerdfighteria website will go live.
Ideally, the following initial tasks will be completed prior to September 1st, 2016: Roles and responsibilities for each volunteer defined Relay For Life of Nerdfighteria Date/time solidified Goals set: Total fundraising amount, number of teams, number of registered cancer survivors, amount in sponsorship Sponsorship proposal finalized Marketing materials [logos and “look” of event] finalized Plan for recruitment and marketing created Defined planned for ceremonies completed o How will the ceremonies be hosted? o Will the Relay livestream be passed “as a baton” from one time-zone to another? Or perhaps the livestream will only be passed as necessary according to the chosen hosts? Plan for ordering perks/Nerdfighteria branded promo materials
Website
From now until September 1st, 2016, the Relay For Life of Nerdfighteria will live in conjunction with a Nashville, TN Relay event. Volunteers will register with this Nashville event [it’s free to do that!] and Hilary will provide a recruitment page for the Relay For Life of Nerdfighteria on the website as well. This will be a landing page of information that Nerdfighters can reference to throughout the initial planning process.
Volunteer Expectations
Requirements: Be a Nerdfighter [or want to be a Nerdfighter.. therefore, being a Nerdfighter]
Hilary can train anyone to be a leader in the Relay For Life world – but she can’t teach passion. The best part of the Relay For Life of Nerdfighteria is that it has never been done before and is therefore a blank canvas. Volunteer roles are traditionally designed for local Relayers. This Relay, however, is not confined to physical spaces so there is a lot of flexibility in altering role expectations and responsibilities.
Volunteers will work one-on-one with Hilary to design a custom role using traditional volunteer roles as a model. These newly created roles will be used for years to come – that’s right, YOU have the opportunity to create the official roles that will be used for many years!
Volunteer Event Leadership Team [ELT] Meetings
Meeting schedule and platform will be at the discretion of the volunteer ELT group. Platforms include, but are not limited to, email chains, Skype, Google Hangouts, phone, text, and Facebook messaging/private Facebook group.
DFTBA Records Involvement
Hilary has reached out to Hank and John Green in reference to the Relay For Life of Nerdfighteria. Hank responded kindly and referred Hilary to Valarie Barr. Initial plans are to recruit and market on the effyeanerdfighters.com website. Further involvement with any YouTubers depends heavily on our ability to organize and grow. Obviously, the larger the Relay For Life of Nerdfighteria is, the more DFTBA Records will get involved.
VidCon
Hilary IS attending VidCon 2016 with the sole purpose of networking for this Relay. She would love for other volunteers to attend with her, but this absolutely IS NOT a requirement and the American Cancer Society will not be reimbursing any expenses. If you are planning to attend VidCon, please let Hilary know and she can organize a meet-up and workshop.
Contact Information
Hilary Howser
American Cancer Society 2000 Charlotte Ave Nashville, TN 37203
615.341.7314