Dance Marathon at Florida State University Receives 2024 Participant Activation Award
Miracle Network Dance Marathon recognized top performing Dance Marathon programs at Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals’ Ignite: Peer-to-Peer Leadership Conference held in Kansas City, MO from July 18-21.
The Participant Activation Award recognizes a Dance Marathon program that uses strategic planning and communication to recruit, inspire, educate, and motivate your participants to become active peer-to-peer fundraisers within your organization. Congratulations to the 2024 Participant Activation Award winner, Dance Marathon at Florida State University!
This year Dance Marathon at FSU made an intentional effort to provide participants with a strong education on their beneficiaries and fundraising throughout the fall semester. These efforts included dancer interest meetings, dancer general body meetings and how-to-fundraise workshops that taught dancers more about the cause and gave them the opportunity to learn fundraising basics including how to make a fundraising ask and utilize DonorDrive.
Segmented participant communication was also a key strategy for the program ensuring that participants both current and lapsed were receiving communication that was relevant and timely for their participation. In addition, DM at FSU has established an excellent Delegate (team captain) program. Delegates played an active and engaged role in sharing information back to their participants and organizations. Delegates were supported in their roles through “plans of action” developed alongside the DM at FSU team that outlined communications and calls to action to increase their organizations involvement and fundraising.
They saw their focus on recruitment and education in the fall semester pay off through their fundraising efforts in the spring. Creating urgency in fundraising, they utilized their spring fundraising push, Leave Your Legacy, and their Dancer Dedication Week to encourage dancers to earn the opportunity to attend their main event. Ensuring participants were given the tools, resources, encouragement and support in fundraising they needed to succeed – DM at FSU saw a 30K increase in participant fundraising during Dancer Dedication week, representing a 55% increase in fundraising year-over-year.
Congratulations to DM at FSU!
Miracle Network Dance Marathon is a national movement, involving over 400 colleges, universities and K-12 schools across the United States that fundraise for their local member hospital of Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals. Students involved in a campus’s dance marathon organization spend a year gaining leadership, teamwork, and nonprofit business experience while raising funds and awareness for their local Children’s Miracle Network Hospital. The year culminates with a final dance marathon event on each campus, where students get to meet patient families treated at their local hospital, participate in games and dancing, enjoy entertainment, and reveal their annual fundraising total. Miracle Network Dance Marathon programs have collectively raised more than $350 million since 1991.