Awesome Experience Raising Money by Lucy Reising
Awesome Experience Raising Money by Lucy Reising
Sure I can help you set that up! I put my phone down with a smile after reading the text that confirmed a 50/50 raffle at my church’s youth-run spaghetti supper. This event garners attention from roughly 1,000 people in the area and is a great way for my church’s youth to raise money. I am involved in this, and also my high school’s Dance Marathon organization, which raises money for Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis. I decided, to raise money and awareness, to have a 50/50 raffle to benefit this cause. After contacting my youth leader, she said that it was a great idea and she’d be happy to help. I set off to work out the small details. I got my mom and several of my friends to help me in my effort of selling tickets to people at the supper. This would entail going around to the tables people were eating at, explain the event, and try to sell the tickets. I also made a cute poster board that explained what dance marathon was, and what we do to help the kids. I got the tickets ready, explained everything to my mom and the day of the event, we garnered 131 dollars, which meant 61 of it would go to the hospital. I was kind of sad, since I wished we had gotten more, but any money I raised was money and went towards the total I was working for.
I turned in the money at school, and when I went back to church the next week, something odd happened. People came up and started talking to me about their family and how they had been affected by Riley Hospital. Some people even handed me checks and said they wanted to help my mission. These people saw what I was doing and wanted to help me achieve my goals. This made me happy, as I did not expect this type of feedback from the community. Even though I did not get the monetary turnout I wanted, I got word spread about our organization’s mission. Publicity is the key to success with Dance Marathon. The more people who know about what I do is better, because they will potentially tell other people. Even though Dance Marathon raises a lot of money for Riley Hospital, sometimes it isn’t about the money, it is about the experience. People who have a good time are more likely to come back.
When I told my teacher sponsor about what happened with my church, she congratulated my efforts and said that sometimes publicity and knowledge is better than money. I love being complimented for my work, and this made me happy knowing that I had helped out, even though the monetary reward was small. I also learned that putting effort into something also has unexpected consequences. This also made the members of my church look at me in a different light and now I have a special connection with some members, as they have family members or friends that attended Riley Hospital.
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Contributed by Lucy Reising
December 30, 2015