A Review
As the 2023 season has now closed, I wanted to take a quick look back at our season and what we achieved together in our community.
How we Relay - We Play, We DJ, We Relay!
We are an electronic music community team that come together for the RFL season to raise money to help the fight against cancer. Club Owners, Managers, DJs, Hosts, Sponsors, we raise money just doing what we love every day.
The 2023 Team
▶ 27 Clubs/Hangouts
▶ 14 Creators/Sponsors
All of the following contributed to the Team ES 2023 season in some way; they placed a donations kiosk at their space, some organised dedicated fundraising events of their own or joined the community-wide ones, some supported events by donating gifts for official Relay vendors and raffles. Everyone played a part.
Clubs & Hangouts: Electro Space, Nightmare City, BallerHalle, Ministry of Trance 2, The Drip Dance Club, Aqua Lounge, Ripple Effect, Flow Club, Cube24, Dvalinn Hangout, Club Omega, Club Zero, The Distillery, Nyctophilia, Sirius Estates, Wish, Planet 13, El Pueblo, Moonshiner, Cemento, Psycircle, The After Hours Club, Soundsation, Gates if Dawn, House of Legends, Palazzo Park, Lounge House Club
Creators & Service Providers: IDJStream, Normandy, Spaceberry, What's That Noise Gestures, Hysteria, Afterparty, Nomad, Mad Rat Industries, Varali, Achluophobia, Unstable, Astara, Wendigo, Crypteque
The 2023 Events
We held 17 dedicated fundraising events spanning across 22 days. A total of 181 hours of Team ES organised dedicated fundraising. Just 2 of those events were centrally organised, the rest were individually managed events by you in your spaces.
This year, our second year as a community team, I asked, I suggested, I encouraged you to arrange and manage your own events and 9 of this year's venues did just that, in addition to Electro Space 💜
You can see all the events and the totals' raised on the Team Event page.
I am here to guide, facilitate, and push you sometimes yes, I know I do, with the ultimate goal of each of us designing our own Relay calendar of events, truly embedding Relay culture into our communities for these 4 months of the year, partying with a purpose in our fight against cancer in our world, in support of lives affected by it today and for our future.
Additional Events
We also joined other events. We DJed at Fantasy Faire 2023 for the 4th year and for the first time, we had a camp and main stage set at Relaystock organised by the Relay Rockers Team. Relaystock, we hope to be back, loved it!
Fundraising
2023 Team ES Total
L$: 1,535,276 USD: $6,141
2023 American Cancer Society Total
L$: 118,083,265 USD: $472,333
Relay for Life of Second Life Community Fundraising Award - USD$ 5 million milestone
A staggering USD$ 5 milllion has been raised by Relay for Life of Second Life communities since SL Relay began 18 years ago. This milestone was hit in April this year
Team Achievements
Team Fundraising Badges
- Platinum, Jade, Sapphire, Ruby, Topaz
Topaz Fundraising Team Award (1.5million L$)
- 10th highest fundraising team of 2023
Spirit of Relay 2023 Team Award
- nominated by the Relay community
Team Campsite - Cancer Education Achievement
- recognised for including cancer education in the Team's campsite build
Team Campsite - Thematic Achievement
- recognised for building a campsite that represents this year's theme
Wow, what a season! Look what we did!!
My Personal Relay
For me personally, I felt I was able to be much more part of the wider Relay community, a community of 180 teams this season. Not always easy as life is busy and time is limited but this is something I want to do more of. I was asked to be part of a Relay Rap panel and even DJ at the 'We do not want to go home party' at the end of Relay weekend. A pleasure and an honour although I usually shy away, this year I grew some balls and did it! I also managed 11 laps of the Relay Track on Relay weekend which is 10 more than last year moving up from Turtle to Rabbit.
I was there for both opening and closing ceremonies, that I missed last year because I stupidly arranged our DJ Relay 2022 on the same weekend so I had to watch from afar. It was a real celebration and I was in awe at it all.
Relay weekend this year was so important to me because I missed most of it last year. I kept the calendar free all week, to party at the campsite, to celebrate with the community. Everything stopped. I stopped managing ES, I stopped bossing everyone about and I got to spend time with the Relay community. The campsites were fantastic, the energy was amazing and it makes me want to fight harder. Thank you to those who joined me. I hope more of us can downtools and celebrate and remember in this way at the Relay track next year.
What Happens Now?
Keep your Donations Kiosk all year round
The 2023 Open 'Team' season ended on 30th June and donation kiosks are reset to zero for the closed season. All donations collected during closed season benefit the American Cancer Society and for those that choose to keep a kiosk at their space, you will see just one donations total.
As we continue to embed a Relay for Life culture into our spaces, I would love to see each of us have a donations kiosk at our landing points all year round, so our communities are used to seeing them and can donate when they want. Cancer does not stop in closed season.
Strides
Making Strides against Breast Cancer is a separate fundraising effort as we go PINK in October.
Last year Electro Space and Club Omega came together and we raised L$92,600.
There are dedicated donation kiosks you can have in your space throughout October and this year, we are already talking about a Strides Tour across some of our spaces so if you want to be involved, news on this will be coming soon.
As Halloween is also in October, this will likely take place in early October.
Team ES Relay Roles
There are roles that people can play in our team that would be a great help to our fundraising effort. I can't do it all, as much as I try, and I don't want to let people down so any help in the following areas would be amazing;
Relay Champions
As we look to the 2024 season, and considering the Team has grown, it would be so beneficial if each club could nominate a Relay Champion to help us coordinate our season.
Do you have a member of your team who would like to represent your space as a Relay Champion for next season? Somebody who can be a point of contact, represent your community, champion the cause and loves to plan and manage events.
More on this soon but please do start thinking, firstly if you would like to be a part of our Relay season again and if so, who is your Champion?
Sponsor/Designer Liaison
In 2023, our club community team was joined by creators, designers, service providers, some of which sponsor our club spaces. Others are friends who wanted to join the effort. This is an area that I just can't manage well. I do not know enough about the merchant space in SL.
Imagine for example, if each Relay event had presence from 1 or 2 of our designer friends with Relay vendor or raffle boards. I know some of our events did this year but it was not coordinated well and in some cases, quite last minute.
So this role would be perfect for someone who is in this space already; a designer, a creator, a blogger maybe. Someone who can champion the cause, rally the designers together, to encourage them run their own Relay events with special items at stores and presence at club events. Do we have someone in our community that wants to pull all this together next season and even help grow our team in this area?
Event Promoter/Blogger
Again, I am doing this myself and I do my best but look how late this post is even!
Any help to promote our events and our Team would be amazing so if you are passionate about what we do and would like to represent the Team in this way, please do get in touch with some ideas of how you could support.
Martin aka Mr Memories is our official Team ES photographer and will continue to capture our memories at our events.
Feedback/Ideas
There is always so much more in my head but that's enough for now :)
If anyone has any feedback or ideas for next season, that they wish to share, please do get in touch. Also please let us know if you would like to take part in our Stride activities and Relay next year. You can do that here or just message me.
In the next few days, I will send out the Team Fundraising Award for your spaces should you wish to display it.
Thank you so much again to everyone who was part of our Relay this year. I hope we can come together again for Strides and for the 2024 Relay season, life permitting.
We are partying anyway and sometimes we also party for Relay, because it matters, we matter. 💜
Party On Team ES 💜
Here are a few pictures from Relay Weekend that I managed to take whilst absorbing the wonder of it all but there are many more on the ACS in FB page - see link below.
We Play, We DJ, We Relay!
We are an electronic music community team that come together for the RFL season to raise money to help the fight against cancer. Club Owners, Managers, DJs, Hosts, Sponsors, we raise money just doing what we love every day.
The key to fundraising success is togetherness, a community pulling together as one in the fight against cancer. We see this year after year with Relay for Life teams so be part of something and make a difference; it matters.
Team ES RFL Commitee
Recki Laville (ES) - Team Lead
Martin Matin - Team Events Photographer
Links
Team ES Page on ACS web
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