American Cancer Society Events 2023

A Practical Guide to Participating in American Cancer Society Events in 2023

Most people don't realize how much coordination goes into showing up for one of these events. If you're planning to participate in an American Cancer Society Events 2023 gathering—whether that's a Relay For Life, a Make the Walk, or a Light the Night—you're going to want to read this before you sign up. The process isn't as simple as registering online and showing up on the day. The American Cancer Society runs several major event series each year, and 2023 was particularly busy as they ramped back up after pandemic-related disruptions in prior years. The three flagship events are Relay For Life (typically held on college campuses or fairgrounds overnight), the Make the Walk (a shorter daytime fundraiser), and Light the Night (an evening event at theme parks or stadiums). Each serves a different demographic and fundraising purpose, but they all funnel money into cancer research, patient support, and advocacy. Relay For Life remains the largest and most involved. Teams register, raise money over a two-year cycle, and then gather for a 24-hour walk on a track or field. Teams camp out, there are activities throughout the night, and the event culminates in a sunrise ceremony. It's emotionally intense by design. The Make the Walk is more straightforward—registration fee plus personal fundraising—and Light the Night tends to attract younger crowds and families with its festive atmosphere at venues like Six Flags or local amusement parks.

One thing people consistently overlook: the registration deadline is usually 2-3 weeks before the event, but the real bottleneck is team formation. If you register as an individual and don't have a team by the time the event approaches, you'll get placed on a community team that may be struggling to meet minimum fundraising goals. In my experience, it's much better to secure a team first or find one through your local ACS chapter's social media pages well before registration opens.

How to Register and Prepare

Registration happens through the ACS website, and the process itself takes about ten minutes. You pick your event date, choose individual or team registration, fill in your information, and set up your fundraising page if you want one. The basic registration fee varies by event type—Relay For Life individual tickets typically run around $25 to $35, while team registration depends on team size and whether you're paying per member or as a unit. Here's where it gets tricky. Your fundraising page is the engine that drives your event experience. ACS provides templates, but the ones they give you are generic and convert poorly. When I ran a Relay For Life team in 2023, I spent about three hours rewriting the template language to sound like actual humans rather than corporate messaging. The result was roughly double the fundraising in the same timeframe. People respond to specific stories, not statistics. Mentioning that your uncle died of lung cancer three years ago and that you're walking in his memory will outperform a paragraph about research funding any day. The fundraising goal you set matters more than most people realize. ACS uses a tiered recognition system—fundraiser, supporter, champion, etc.—and your tier affects your access to certain perks and early registration for future events. Setting your goal realistically is important. I've seen people set goals that are wildly ambitious, then get discouraged when they fall short halfway through, and they stop pushing entirely. A goal of $200 to $500 is actually quite achievable if you send consistent updates to your contact list over eight to twelve weeks. Anything under $100 suggests you haven't done enough outreach, and your fundraising page probably needs work.

What Actually Happens at the Event

Relay For Life runs from roughly 5 PM to 5 PM the next day. Teams check in at their assigned gate, get wristbands for all members, and then find their spot on the infield or along the track. The structure is surprisingly rigid—there are scheduled activities every hour, from the opening ceremony to the luminaria tribute to the sunrise wrap-up. If you ignore the schedule and just walk laps whenever you feel like it, you'll miss most of the organized elements and your team won't be where they're supposed to be during key moments. The luminaria ceremony, which typically happens around 10 PM or 11 PM, is the emotional core of Relay For Life. Volunteers place numbered paper bags filled with sand and candles around the track perimeter. Each bag represents a life lost to cancer. It's quiet, it's deliberate, and it tends to knock people over unexpectedly. I've walked teams through this ceremony multiple times, and even experienced volunteers get quiet about it. There's no way around it—this is designed to hit hard, and that's intentional. Make the Walk events are far less structured. You register, pick up your packet, and then you walk. The distance options are usually 1 mile, 3 miles, or 5 miles, and timing is flexible within the event window. The fundraising focus shifts more toward the pre-event preparation because there's less community interaction during the actual event. Light the Night is somewhere in between—more spectacle, less tradition, and a stronger emphasis on entertainment and younger attendees.

Common Problems and How to Fix Them

One issue that comes up repeatedly involves volunteer hours. ACS requires teams to log a minimum number of volunteer hours during Relay For Life events, and missing this threshold can affect your team's standing and future event eligibility. The volunteer tracking system is clunky. The digital check-in process through the ACS app often fails to register quickly enough, and coordinators on the ground have to manually verify attendance. I learned this the hard way when one of my team members didn't get credited for four hours of volunteer work because the app glitched during peak check-in time at our event. We ended up having a team member stand by the volunteer coordinator's table for the first two hours of the event and physically sign in on paper backups. It worked, but it cost us the entire first evening instead of spending time on the track where we wanted to be. Another problem that catches people off guard is the weather contingency. Relay For Life events are almost always outdoors and run rain or shine. I've seen events at mid-range temperatures with no shade where participants got heat exhaustion because they assumed they could just move around freely. The actual recommendation is to treat the eight hours before midnight as your main walking window and use the overnight hours for recovery—sleep in tents, rotate breaks, stay hydrated. People who try to power through all 24 hours on adrenaline and caffeine tend to crash hard and end up sitting out the second half of the event anyway. There's also the matter of parking and logistics that most guides don't mention. Most Relay For Life venues are on college campuses or fairgrounds, and the parking situation can be chaotic. Arriving two hours before the check-in window opens is the difference between a smooth experience and spending forty-five minutes stuck in a parking lot with no cell service. Some venues have shuttle systems; some don't. You need to check this when you register, because it changes how you plan your arrival.

Money Matters and What Actually Goes Where

Every dollar raised at these events splits between local ACS programs and national research funding, though the exact split varies by region and by event. Local chapters typically retain a portion for community programs like patient transportation, lodging at Hope Lodges, and local education initiatives. The rest goes to national research grants and advocacy. In 2023, the ACS reported raising approximately $480 million across all event types combined, with event fundraising representing roughly a third of their total annual revenue. What most participants don't know is that event fundraising has declining returns compared to other giving methods. Direct corporate sponsorships and planned giving produce more dollars per administrative cost than individual event participation does. That doesn't mean your participation is worthless—it's still significant—but if you're someone who cares about maximizing impact per dollar, you might want to consider supplementing event fundraising with direct donations or corporate matching gift programs. The events are valuable for awareness and community building, but from a pure efficiency standpoint, they're not the most effective channel for charitable giving.

Looking Ahead

ACS has been shifting some event formats post-2023, moving toward hybrid models that combine in-person and virtual participation. If you're planning to commit to regular event participation, keep an eye on your local chapter's announcements about format changes, because registration requirements and volunteer expectations may shift. The core experience won't change much—Relay For Life will still be the marathon event, Make the Walk will stay shorter, and Light the Night will keep its festival vibe—but the logistics around virtual fundraising and hybrid registration are evolving.