Special Event Best Practices from the 2024 Dance Marathon Special Event 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.
Special events can serve as effective recruitment, engagement, and fundraising initiatives to support your Dance Marathon organization. The Special Event Award recognizes a Dance Marathon program that has implemented an effective special event that accomplishes one or more of the following: Brings a new audience into your organization, increases fundraising or contributes to the total through event revenue, and/or engages currently registered participants. Read more about the finalist for the 2024 Special Event award below!
Congratulations to LoboTHON at the University of New Mexico for being selected as the winner of the 2024 special event award. You can read more about their Pickleball Tournament that raised over $7,000 here: LoboTHON at the University of New Mexico Receives 2024 Special Event Award.
Pitt Dance Marathon at the University of Pittsburgh
PDM’s annual Fashion Show is consistently a campus-wide favorite, and this year it was extra special as the Fashion Show kicked off their spring Push Day! This year, PDM’s goals for the Fashion Show were to create an exciting environment for their Miracle Kids, increase campus engagement, promote the Push Day, and share their cause with Pitt’s campus.
Throughout the event thirteen families joined together to walk the stage with members of Pitt’s campus community – including student athletes, leaders of other student organizations, representatives from their Greek Life, and members of PDM staff.
In between the three rounds of the fashion show, PDM’s morale team performed a sneak peek of their morale dance for the year. The crowd enjoyed the glimpse into their main event and cheered on the hard work of the morale team. Additionally, during rounds two and three, they promoted their spring Push Day by having a ten-minute fundraising push! This served as a style of “in-event fundraising” ask and kickoff to their fundraising push which would span that evening and the following day.
With over 200 individuals in attendance, the fashion show served as an effective opportunity to further engage the community, fundraise, and empower their Miracle Kids as they walked the runway. Congratulations PDM!
UGA Miracle at the University of Georgia
Annually, UGA Miracle hosts a Back-to-School Bash event that serves as a committee recruitment event for the upcoming year. Hosted in a centrally located space on campus with a lot of foot traffic, the Back-To-School bash is an opportunity for new students on campus and returning upperclassmen to learn more about the opportunity to serve as a committee member within UGA Miracle!
This event was promoted well before it occurred in August, with UGA Miracle members speaking during new student orientation sessions and tabling throughout campus the week leading up to the bash. At the event, each member of the executive board hosts a station with a game, and a trifold about their committee and the roles and responsibilities of those serving on the committee throughout the year.
The event began with a family story and had a lineup of three bands who provided entertainment to attendees. The event also featured food, carnival games and more, drawing in over 600 student attendees! To ensure attendees were learning about UGA Miracle and the respective committees, each person received a punch card upon arrival at the event – and with each booth they visited, they received a punch on their card. Once they received enough punches, they were able to join the food line.
This event was extremely successful for UGA Miracle, allowing them to surpass their goal for committee applications, with many of them submitted on the evening of the bash or sighting the Back-to-School Bash as the reason for their application. Congratulations, UGA Miracle!
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.