How AACR Doubled Their Event Capacity Without Adding Headcount

Background

The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) is one of the most respected scientific organizations in the world. With more than 54,000 members, including laboratory researchers, clinicians, population scientists, and patient advocates across 130 countries, AACR exists to accelerate progress against cancer through science, education, and collaboration.

At the center of that mission is a robust calendar of annual conferences, educational workshops, and networking events that bring the global cancer research community together. These aren't just meetings. They're the moments where breakthroughs get shared, collaborations are formed, and the next generation of research gets funded.

Behind every one of those events is Lauren, Senior Director of Meetings, and her lean sourcing team responsible for finding, vetting, negotiating, and booking the right hotel for every single one.

The Challenge: A 20-Year-Old Platform Holding a World-Class Organization Back

For years, AACR relied on an aging event management platform to handle their hotel sourcing. The platform was a generalist tool -- not built for the nuanced, high-volume demands of group hotel sourcing -- and it showed.

Tracking the status of active RFPs required constant manual effort. Historical proposals were buried or inaccessible, making it difficult to reference past bookings or benchmark against previous events. Customer support was slow and inconsistent, leaving Lauren's team to troubleshoot on their own when things went wrong.

Beyond the operational headaches, the platform's pricing was a persistent pain point for a nonprofit organization that scrutinizes every line of its budget. They were paying for a tool that wasn't delivering the ROI they needed -- and they knew it.

The downstream effect was significant. Lauren and her team were spending a disproportionate amount of time on low-value tasks: manually following up with hotels that hadn't responded, building comparison documents from scratch, and trying to maintain visibility into where each RFP stood at any given moment. Time that should have gone toward strategy, negotiation, and stakeholder relationships was getting swallowed up by process.

"Before Hopskip, keeping track of everything was a constant challenge. We were spending so much time on the mechanics of sourcing that it was hard to focus on what we were actually trying to accomplish: putting on great events for our members."

‍- Lauren, Senior Director of Meetings, AACR

The Solution: Modern Hotel Sourcing Built for the Way Teams Actually Work

AACR found Hopskip at exactly the right moment. Purpose-built for group hotel sourcing, Hopskip offered everything their old platform couldn't, and did it at a price point designed to work for nonprofit organizations.

From day one, the platform gave Lauren's team real-time visibility into every active RFP across the organization. No more status-chasing. No more siloed inboxes. Every proposal, every hotel response, every update -- visible to the entire team in one centralized place.

One feature stood out immediately: Hopskip's ability to automatically filter out hotel proposals that didn't meet AACR's predefined requirements. Rather than wading through every response and manually ruling out properties that were over budget, underequipped, or in the wrong location, the team could instantly focus on the proposals that were actually worth evaluating. It sounds simple, but it fundamentally changed how the team spent their time.

Hopskip also gave AACR access to a network of qualified hotels actively competing for their business -- meaning faster response times, better proposals, and stronger negotiating leverage going into every booking.

The Results

2x Event Capacity -- Same Team, Same Budget

The most striking outcome of AACR's move to Hopskip was scale. By streamlining their sourcing workflow, Lauren's team was able to manage twice the number of meetings without adding headcount or increasing operational costs. The platform absorbed the administrative burden that had previously capped their capacity, freeing the team to take on more events and extend AACR's reach across the cancer research community.

For a nonprofit whose mission depends on bringing people together, the ability to host more events isn't just an operational win -- it's a direct acceleration of their purpose.

100% Visibility Into Every RFP Across the Team

With Hopskip, AACR gained complete, real-time visibility into every proposal and RFP across the organization. Team members could see exactly where each sourcing process stood at any given moment -- no more duplicate outreach, no more miscommunication, no more proposals falling through the cracks.

This transparency didn't just reduce errors. It fundamentally changed how the team collaborated, enabling faster decision-making and a more coordinated approach to every event.

More Time for the Work That Actually Matters

With the mechanics of sourcing handled efficiently, Lauren and her team reclaimed time they hadn't had in years. That time went back into the work that moves the needle: refining event strategy, building stronger relationships with hotel partners, negotiating better terms, and ensuring that every AACR event delivered an exceptional experience for attendees.

Less time sourcing. More time leading.

Why AACR Chose Hopskip Over Other Hotel Sourcing Platforms

For a nonprofit organization with a demanding event calendar and a lean team, the right hotel sourcing platform needed to check three boxes: it had to be purpose-built for sourcing, easy enough for a small team to use without a steep learning curve, and priced fairly for a nonprofit budget.

Hopskip checked all three. Unlike all-in-one event management platforms that treat sourcing as one module among dozens, Hopskip is built exclusively for group hotel sourcing -- which means every feature, every workflow, and every update is designed with meeting planners in mind. The result is a tool that feels intuitive from day one and keeps getting better the more you use it.

Source Hotels Smarter. Start Free Today.

AACR's story is one of many. Thousands of meeting planners, from boutique agencies to global associations, are using Hopskip to source hotels faster, win better proposals, and get hours back in their week.

Ready to Ditch the Chaos?

See what Hopskip can do for your event sourcing process. Start for free today or book a demo and discover why teams like Meeting Encore are never going back to Excel.