Relay For Life
Where competition can increase profits.
Relay for Life happens every year, all over the country to raise money and awareness for cancer research. Its branches are deeply rooted and connected, I would say, to almost every high school and college campus around the nation. I'm the type of person who loves these types of things, charity events, donations, you name it and I probably will find myself signing up. Don't get me wrong, I'm not some altruistic person looking to do good everywhere, but for some reason I can't say no. In order to hopefully prevent yet another year of an early morning wakeup for Detroit Partnership Day, I want to see why we are so compelled to give my time and money to these causes. Charity aside, there must be some sort of motivation, some sort of underlying competition.
Steven Garcia explains that in order to increase competition, there must be a relatively small group of people competing against one another. This makes the goal seem more tangible. In the case of a charity fundraiser, people compete to raise the most money. However, if competition works best in smaller groups, how can a charity increase participation while continuing to make the most amount of money?
Well... In order to even sign up for Relay, you must join a team-- a team that is a small group, usually consisting of people you know and interact with often. This helps to increase overall participation and it breaks down the overwhelming nature of thousands of competitors into a small and familiar group of people to compete with. This is where it all goes downhill. They make it very easy for you to send out a prewritten email to friends and family soliciting donations to the charity. Unlike most events where the money raised is usually disclosed, Relay for Life conveniently creates a website for each group, comparing members to increase incentive for competition. Members end up competing in order to be the highest fundraiser. Then they compare teams in order to foster competition within the larger groups making it so that even the person who has no chance to win the highest fundraiser, still wants to help out their team by continuing to donate smaller amounts of money. While I am not naturally a competitive person, the end result helps out a good cause, and at the end of the day competition isn't gonna hurt someone to raise more money for charity.
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| Jordan Litt-- highest overall fundraiser 2011 |
I have attended many Relay for Life events in the last few years - at my high school, in my local community and on campus. The American Cancer Society does a great job at promoting RFL, not solely by promoting the cause (which is an amazing one) but, as you said, by integrating competition and fun. They make the process of donating easy, especially with the adaptation and utilization on the online resources. Participants can set goals and easily view their progress with meters (like a thermometer). In addition, the tier system continues to motivate participants to raise more. When you raise a certain amount, you are considered "Purple." Raise more and you've reached the "Silver." You just can't stop until you reach the "Gold." Another huge aspect of the RFL competition has been the creation of a common enemy among all participants: Cancer. The Slogans for the past few years have been all about "fighting back," slaying the dragon. In many ways, RFL and the ACS attempts to capitalize on our gravitation towards games, and I think the results speak on their success.
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