This past Saturday, I had an opportunity to volunteer at the 29th Annual Lombardi Gala that is hosted by Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center to raise funds for cancer research, education, and treatments. The event was held in Washington Hilton near Dupont Circle. There were about 800 attendees including Washington area leaders such as political officials, sports figures, CEO's, and others.
The Gala started with a cocktail reception and a silent auction in one of the largest meeting spaces, Columbia Hall. The auction featured hundreds of items donated by local businesses and individuals. I was assigned to the Jewelry and Fashion section at the auction to assist guests with bidding procedures and other questions.
The second part of the Gala is the dinner in the Ballroom followed with raffle drawing, awards and dance. My role was to deliver packages to the bid winners, and also thank them for their support since all of the proceeds benefit the Lombardi Cancer Center for their research programs.
My observations:
Overall, it was a great experience for me because this is my first time volunteering at such a big scale event. The event planners/organizers are all very professional with many years of experiences working for the Lombardi Gala. At this kind of large events, there were so many details I found to be something new for me to learn. They did a great job recruiting volunteers and holding orientations and trainings for us so we were able to be very knowledgeable and helpful to the guests at the auction. we also had opportunity to socialize with some new friends at the volunteer dinner before the gala.
The event was pretty successful as they received great amount of donations from the guests, and the guests had great time meeting their old and new friends, and networking with many profesionals at the auction and dinner.
It was generally a great learning experience for me. I would love to go back to join the volunteer team again next year if I have the chance. One thing I think that they could improve for next year is that better transition. Starting this year, they decided to use bidding website called BiddingForGood on individual guests' mobile devices for the bidding process instead of the traditional paper bidding. Even though volunteers at each auction section were trained to know how to use the website and help guests with the bidding process, plus there were 5 bidding concierge with laptops set up to assist guests with registration and bidding process, some guests were frustrated by this new form of bidding method as a lot of them were so used to the old process in paper, and some guests had to spend a long time with account registration, they had problems figuring out the current bid, etc.. Therefore I think what they could have done better for this year's gala is to have both paper bidding and mobile bidding available at the auction to provide convenience for the guests, have volunteers to introduce the new movie bidding method to the guests at the auction this year, and next year change it to only mobile bidding, and guests should be able to be more familiar with the new method at next year's gala.
In addition, the event was sponsored by Lexus, Lexus did a great job putting their brand out at the event as they had three cars displayed at the events, also tv screens with Lexus commercials on.
The volunteers also were lucky to get a gift bag from them as appreciation.
No comments:
Post a Comment