Do you have traffic stats for either site? The sites have a clear objective in regard to CTA (donations), but pleasant to look at doesn't mean better conversions. In fact, pretty can equate to fewer conversions.

I agree there is a little too much going on in the relayforlife, but I'm not sure a hero image is your answer. Interestingly, I've just posted another comment in regard to full screen heroes getting in the way of objectives, and I think the nudm site is starting to follow that path.

If you were to show both sites to users, give them 5 seconds to look at the screens, and then report the site purpose to you, which one would fare better? "Sign up for an event" or "Support a participant" are much more clear about what the intention is, and they allow someone to immediately begin that process. The relayforlife site is not doing everything wrong, be sure to keep what's good.

That said, yes, clean up the site. Remove the purple glowing background and requisite, distracting, pointless slider, but be sure to keep the objectives in tact.

If anything, make the interaction via forms more prominent. Do not replace the CTA with a pretty picture, instead remove the heavily redudnant "learn about us" content. The design currently seems worried that people don't know who you are, but the multiple avenues to find that is just making it confusing. Your homepage purpose should be condensed into a single sentence, at best, and primarily communicated via your actions. Purpose -about us- should be apparent in the content construct, and build via digestable chunks of information, not explicitly and sporadically spelled out like an unorganized instruction booklet.

(This is really turning into a critique post more than a need help post, but I wanted to encourage usage of this thread.)