It’s All About the Fundraising!

Since the start of the AIDS Walk Atlanta fund-raising for our English class, I have tried a few of the strategies that my group and me thought up in our Fundraising Plan paper. My first attempt seemed to be the easiest of the strategies so I gave it a try right away. I went around to my friends in my dorm and asked them for small donations: spare change and dollar bills. After this, I decided to try an online strategy. I set up a Facebook group with links to all of my group members web pages asking for donations.

The time management side of the actual fund-raising hasn’t presented that much of a problem. Because the people I have received money from live in my dorm, I simply walked around asking them around six o’clock, the time that most people start getting ready to go to dinner or to a lab class. This makes it easy for them to grab change and go out the door. The online efforts aren’t at all time constraining. It took about ten minutes to make the group, and now I simply check up on the group every once in a while to see if there has been any progress. Our original goal was $700, meaning each group member would be responsible for around $120. We believe this is still feasible, because one group member has already raised over $100.

One of our fund-raising ideas that we have altered was hosting a dinner for a whole dorm. We have learned that we should take an approach that causes us not to spend any money at all. So instead, we have proposed a Pot Luck dinner where anyone who brings a dish doesn’t have to pay, but any other people who plan to eat the food must pay a cover charge of about $5. We decided this would bring in a lot of hungry college students who are sick of dining hall food and miss home cooked food. We hope to print free fliers and sign up sheets from the library, saving even more of our money and resources.

Fundraising for me has always been a kind of awkward activity. I haven’t figured out why yet, but this project has been really easy for me. I have no problem going around and asking people do donate to this cause. It could be because it is for a grade or because I know that the money is going somewhere worthy. Either way, I haven’t faced too many challenges, except getting the word out to non-college students. However, parent’s weekend and football games provide a lot of adults who are willing to help college students who are supporting a worthy cause.