Participant Fundraising Best Practices from the 2024 Dance Marathon Participant Activation Award finalists!
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.
Registering participants for your Dance Marathon event is just the first step to achieving successful peer-to-peer fundraising. 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. Read more about the finalists for the 2024 Participant Activation Award below!
Congratulations to Dance Marathon at Florida State University for being selected as the 2024 winner of the Participant Activation Award. You can read more about how their focus on education in the fall semester and effective use of team captains set them up for peer-to-peer fundraising success here: DM at FSU Receives 2024 Participant Activation Award.
DragonTHON at Drexel University
DragonTHON knew they need to focus on increasing campus participation in 2023-2024. As a relatively new organization on campus, they knew they would need to continue to work hard to establish themselves on campus and gain trust and credibility amongst existing student organizations – that’s where they turned their attention to restructuring their team captain program.
DragonTHON worked throughout the fall semester to recruit team captains by reaching out to organizations directly and finding a mutually convenient time for Dance Marathon Representatives to present directly to the organization about their mission and how they could get involved. As each organization learned about Dance Marathon and the opportunity to grow their involvement, they shared with them the ability to partner with Miracle Kids from their local hospital, and they were instantly engaged. This relationship between teams and Miracle Kids was essential for team engagement. This allowed the teams to directly see the impact funds raised were having on children’s lives and inspired participation throughout the year. To support fundraising, they also created team specific bingo boards and fundraising pushes based on the kid they were partnered with.
These year-round relationships between organizations and families allowed for engagement and activation to blossom this year and they are proud to share that they increased registered participants by 70 individuals, and main event attendance was up year-over-year by 100%.
HuskyTHON at the University of Connecticut
Recognizing the important role that dancers play in their final fundraising total, HuskyTHON knew that to set a new fundraising record they would need to prioritize participant activation. To motivate their participants to begin their fundraising journey, they focused on improving their cause connection year-round by expanding their two registration weeks, “Zero to Hero Day”, and check-in week.
Capitalizing on the fact that participants were most likely to engage in fundraising closer to the marathon, they focused on participant activation in the final 19 days of the year leading up to the event. This focus, including expanding their “Zero to Hero Day” to a stretch of 19 days, concluded at the start of HuskyTHON’s Night Of. During this time, anyone who donated to a “$0 Dancer” was awarded a $5 Dunkin’ gift card. They also improved their check-in week to segment communication and prioritize helping our participants hit their minimums. To achieve this, they developed a texting communication plan to individually steward those who experienced great fundraising success, those who were close to their next milestone, and those who were struggling to fundraise. During this time the Management Team visited clubs and organizations to discuss HuskyTHON, cause connection, and fundraising tips to help motivate the members of each organization. These efforts proved successful in their fundraising total for the week of over $212,000!
Congratulations on your excellent participant activation results, HuskyTHON!
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.