Recognizing the 2024 Dance Marathon Peer-to-Peer Fundraising 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.
The Peer-To-Peer fundraising award recognizes a Dance Marathon program that has implemented effective strategies and initiatives to grow participant fundraising. Read more about the 2024 finalists for the Peer-To-Peer Fundraising award below!
Congratulations to VOLthon at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville for being selected as the winner of the 2024 peer-to-peer fundraising award. You can read more about how VOLthon made strategic shifts to their fundraising timing and calls to action in the blog post here: VOLthon at the University of Tennessee Receives 2024 Peer-To-Peer Fundraising Award.
Terp Thon at The University of Maryland
Terp Thon implemented a variety of creative fundraising avenues to support both their internal and external team in their peer-to-peer fundraising efforts in the past year. This included hosting a “dollar raffle” at every full team meeting – the dollar raffle is an opportunity where if you donated a dollar, your name would be entered into the raffle, and one individual would receive all the funds collected during the raffle into their DonorDrive page. These raffles could help anyone with either kickstarting their fundraising or boosting what they had already done.
They also implemented a fun challenge with their internal team called “Director Dares,” which took place during their Days of Miracles. If committees were able to fundraise certain amounts, they could select one of multiple dares for that level which both their branch director and the executive director would need to complete. Committees could earn multiple dares by fundraising at multiple levels. This sparked committee engagement and helped promote fundraising at a time when things were slowing down during a push.
Finally, they also engaged general participants by hosting color wars during the four weeks leading up to their final Dance Marathon event. During color wars, participants are placed on a color team and can participate in various activities to earn points, including fundraising as every dollar raised counted as a point. If your color team had the most points at the end of the Dance Marathon, then they would go on stage and receive the spirit stick. This helped get their participants fundraising because they were involved before the Dance Marathon event began.
RaiseRED at The University of Louisville
Inspired by the Sprint Model and the idea of creating urgency in fundraising, raiseRED made a strategic change to adjust their fall and spring fundraising pushes from a week-long push to a 36-hour fundraising push and experienced incredible success. While their fall fundraising result held steady with significantly less days, their Commonwealth Cup fundraising push saw an increase in dancer participation and a $25,000 P2P fundraising increase in 3 fewer days!
In addition to the timing change, they also added a fundraising HQ throughout the day that was open to all dancers and leadership to ask Executive Board members questions or even grab a bite to eat. This was paired with an afternoon “Fundraising Party” with fundraising programming activities, along with free incentives and food for dancers. Along with a huge success in the fundraising dollar amount remaining consistent with previous years, dancers and leadership members felt less burnt out and more hopeful for the remainder of the year.
Congratulations Terp Thon and raiseRED on your peer-to-peer fundraising successes!
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.