Relay for Life teams, donors can use Internet this year
By Becky Barclay
Published in News on March 15, 2006 1:56 PM
Something new to this year's Relay for Life is online registration.
The Wayne County Unit of the American Cancer Society maintains the online registration at its Web site at www.wayneacs.org. There is a link to online registration.
Online registration includes information about this year's Relay for Life to be held May 19 and 20 at Wayne Community College. There is also information about survivors, luminarias, corporate sponsors, meetings, teams and team members.
John Smith, Cancer Society volunteer, is in charge of the online registration.
"This year is our first year with online registration," he said. "Teams can register online. Their team members can register online."
Donations will also be taken online. One advantage to donating over the internet is that a credit card can be used. And Smith said people from all across the county as well as in other parts of the world can make a donation to the overall event, to a specific team or to a specific team member.
"If you're in the military, and you're in Iraq and can get on a computer, you can donate to the Relay," Smith said.
The Cancer Society will send each donor a tax receipt.
Visitors to the site will be able to see who the top money-raising teams are and also who the top money-raising individuals are. There is also a running total of donations made. As of Monday, that total stood at $54,853.
"Wayne County's got 365 team members registered online right now," said Smith.
A team's web page may contain pictures, information on its fundraising events, money raised so far, the number of members on the team and the team's goal.
A team member's web page may contain a picture of the team member, information about him or her, his corporate sponsors, his goal and money raised to-date. On one side of the page is an honor roll with names of those who have donated to that team member. There is also a place for a visitor to that page to make a personal donation to that team member.
"It's a new program," said Smith. "Anyone can sign up online for the Relay. You can edit the site and put messages on the message board, including upcoming fundraisers for your team."
Smith said the online registration will help the Cancer Society with a lot of tracking of reports. "It wouldn't surprise me if next year we are totally online," he said.