HuskyTHON at the University of Connecticut Receives 2020 Participant Stewardship Award
HuskyTHON at the University of Connecticut was awarded the Participant Stewardship Award at Dance Marathon Leadership Conference 2020. The Participant Stewardship Award is presented to a program that has demonstrated outstanding participant recognition and retention efforts, or who has made the largest strides in this area over the past year.
Stewardship lies at the heart of many things that HuskyTHON does throughout the year. In the Fall, HuskyTHON hosts a stewardship centered recruitment week. Each day of the week a different type of participant is celebrated and invited to join their movement. Over the course of the week, HuskyTHON provides incentives and tokens of appreciation to the different audiences that make up their program.
Two weeks before their main event, HuskyTHON hosts a Participant Appreciation Week (PAW). This was a week for the program to focus, not on fundraising, but on celebration of the amazing impact that all of their different constituencies had over the past year. Every day, the program set up a table on campus for different groups of their participants to stop by and pick up thank you goodies, as well as hosted banquets in the evening for the group that was being honored that day. At each banquet and Miracle Family spoke and thanked the participants for their impact. After PAW, HuskyTHON had their largest push day of the year, and observed a 31% increase in participant fundraising engagement year-over-year, in part, they believe, due to their stewardship efforts in the previous week. 
In addition to these large week-long campaigns, HuskyTHON runs a social media campaign focused on featuring their committee members that draws strong engagement. They also have a “Marathon Milestones” fundraising incentive program that celebrates participants for their individual fundraising.
Miracle Network Dance Marathon is an international movement, involving over 400 colleges, universities and K-12 schools across North America that fundraise for their local Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals. Since its inception in 1991, Miracle Network Dance Marathon has raised more than $300 million–ensuring that no child or family fights pediatric illness or injury alone.
Learn more about Miracle Network Dance Marathon: