The Rumpshaker 5K

Last month marked the 5th Annual Rumpshaker 5K – a family-friendly street race in Birmingham, Alabama. Each year, thousands turn out to pound the pavement in honor of the late Lisa Martz, a well-known Birmingham resident who battled colon cancer for nearly four years before sadly passing away in 2007. Inspired by her bravery and perseverance, friends and family of Martz founded Rumpshaker, Inc. – an organization designed to educate and raise awareness about colon cancer (check out their inflatable colon!).

Rumpshaker Inc. hopes to honor Martz’s memory by advocating for those living with colon cancer today, and encouraging regular screenings for those at-risk. Their message is simple: take a day to save your life.

This year, because the Rumpshaker 5K fell on Easter weekend, the team incorporated a “Bunny Hop” 1 Mile race before the 5K in addition to a whole slew of Easter-themed activities and games.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, a day like this calls for a lot of helping hands. This year’s Rumpshaker 5K signed up over 150 volunteers for the big event. “Prior to using VolunteerLocal, we used a different volunteer module which was more complicated for both our volunteer manager and our volunteers,” says Amanda Vandegrift, President of Rumpshaker, Inc. and Race Director for the Rumpshaker 5K. “Volunteers had trouble navigating [the old system] and the manager had to maintain separate records for emailing and communicating with the volunteers.”

This year, Vandegrift and her team made the switch to VolunteerLocal. “The set-up was easy and it allowed us to give a lot of information to our potential volunteers on a nice and organized site,” she says. “We could easily see how many volunteer spots were open for each volunteer job and we could easily track and communicate with our volunteers.”
Vandegrift adds, “one of the features we liked the most was the confirmation email that was sent to our volunteers when they signed up.” Want to learn more? Visit their website.
Photos courtesy of the Rumpshaker 5K

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