One of the largest annual university fundraising events, USC’s Relay For Life recently wrapped up their yearlong donation cycle Friday and revealed their total: $164,136.42 — all of which is sent to the American Cancer Society to fund research.
First of all, we want to commend both those who worked on setting up the Relay and those who participated in it.
The Relay event did something that only most well put together philanthropic enterprises can pull off: not only collecting donations, but also honoring both cancer survivors and those lost.
If you can see the people who your money is going to help, the more likely you are to feel less like an anonymous money supply than a participant in an important struggle.
Case in point: during the “survivor lap,” when cancer survivors took the inaugural lap around the track, put human faces on the proceedings and gave a concrete reason for the event.
For this — and the sheer amount of donations they managed to scrounge up — Relay For Life deserves praise.
Even so, we believe that there ways to improve the already decent turnout, the most pressing of which distancing the event from USC Dance Marathon, which took place last month.
USCDM, which raised over $500,000 to fight cancer this year, is the biggest fundraising imitative on campus by some measure. And, like Relay For Life, USCDM operates all year and culminates in a single event. In USCDM’s case, that was a dance marathon that lasted 14 hours and a smorgasbord of events designed to get every last cent possible to the cause. Needless to say, the events have their similarities.
Because Relay For Life happened less than a month after the philanthropic outpouring USCDM produced in its participants, it may well be that the energy (and wallets) of those who normally donate to cancer research haven’t quite recovered yet.
Don’t get us wrong, $165,136.42 is certainly an impressive sum by any standard. Nevertheless, we believe that USCDM and Relay both would benefit by operating in different semesters, giving those prone to donate some breathing space before each event.
Relay shouldn’t have to live in the shadow of USCDM. Distancing the two would provide both with the attention (and donations) they deserves.