Uplifting our communities

Uplifting our communities

At the start of a new year, we often search for ways to improve ourselves. It may seem counterintuitive, but the best way to improve is often by improving those around us. By making our family, friends and local community better off, we not only improve our environment, we also make ourselves feel better.

When asked in a recent interview if he had concerns about AI destroying meaning for humans, Jeff Bezos replied “no” and explained that if we only get meaning by being the best in the world at something then very few of us will have meaning in our lives. Jeff shared that he thinks “Meaning comes from relationships, how you’re uplifting people, which can be very local. If you’re uplifting your brother, your sister, your kids, your friends and the people in your community, you’re going to get meaning from that.” (Watch Jeff explain it here).

As Jeff shares, uplifting our communities is a great way to get meaning. While criticizing can be easier, uplifting feels more meaningful. Even better, by sharing our positivity, others are more likely to return similarly uplifting vibes.

How do we uplift our communities? There are many ways to do it and no single way is better than another. Yet, if we seek to maximize the amount that we uplift our communities for our limited time, money and energy that we have to give, I believe community races are one of the best ways (and maybe even the best).

Why do I believe that races are such a great way to uplift our communities?

To help me explain, I’ll propose a new term - Return of Meaning (ROM) - that attempts to quantify the amount of meaning that we receive from the money, time and energy that we invest into something. It is similar to the business acronym ROI (Return on Investment), but ROM attempts to more holistically quantify meaning without being limited to money.

I believe organizing a race has a high ROM, which is why it is a great way to uplift our communities. The reason I believe a race has a high ROM is that it does 3 uplifting things at the same time:

1. Races brings people together

2. Races get people active

3. Races raise money for great causes

Uplifting our communities though one of these would feel meaningful, but doing all 3 together triples the meaning that we receive from a similar investment.

Even better, races have the opportunity to grow, so their impact can generate more meaning from a similar amount of money, time and energy in future years.

While organizing a race is not always easy, it is a rare opportunity to uplift our communities in a high ROM way. As you search for ways to improve in 2025, maybe races can help.

— Ian

Grow your race with beautiful emails

While the world celebrated the “most wonderful time of the year” team Run The Day was hard at work delivering a new way for you to deliver wonderful emails. Now you can:

• Create beautiful emails with your race logo and race colors

• Get inspired with templates for marketing and logistic emails that are loaded directly in your platform

• Understand the marketing tactics that work best by easily tracking opens, clicks, registrations and more analytics in Run The Day

• Remove my goofy face from the bottom of your emails 🙂 

Simplify your race with RTD’s technology

If you would like to simplify race logistics, listen to Run The Day customers discuss Run The Day’s race day technology.