Organization, Flexibility, and Fun!

Posted on November 20, 2009 by redcrossyouth

A successful fundraiser that took place on September 15th at Vanderbilt University was an event aptly named “Get Wet.”

A brand new fundraising committee had just been established, and we wanted to do something creative and fun to raise money for the Measles Initiative. Everybody loves water balloon fights, but they can be so chaotic, so we decided to introduce some new rules by incorporating “Capture the Flag” into the waterfight! We corresponded heavily through email during the summer and looked for ideas on the web. As soon as school started in the fall, we started getting everything ready.

We had some difficulty in finding a venue for the preferred dates, but after a lawn was reserved, we focused on publicizing the event. The officers and committee members helped put up banners and fliers. We made also a facebook group and sent out emails to leaders of service organizations. Since students start joining new clubs in the fall, we thought that “Get Wet” would be a great bonding activity for new for club members. We asked clubs to form teams of 10 to play and even people who did not want to play could donate a few dollars to just eat and watch the games. We provided food and drinks for a low cost.

We ordered hundreds of water balloons and spent three days filling them up and storing them in buckets. Thankfully, very few of them popped! We called various businesses for gift cards to use as prizes, and I was surprised at how generous they were. We were able to give out cool coupons and gift cards to the winners.

On the day of the event, the weather wasn’t optimal and there were other events going on around campus. Nevertheless, we had a great time playing with water balloons. Since most teams had fewer than 10 people, we integrated them. It ended up being one huge team playing against another, and the team that won two out of three games was declared the winner. We had some water balloons left after the games were over, and a free for all water fight ensued We raised a couple hundred dollars for the Measles Initiative, which is sponsored by the American Red Cross and UNICEF, along with other non-profit organizations. Each dollar we raised will go towards providing one measles vaccine! ‘Get Wet’ was our first big fundraising event, and we learned a lot about how to plan fundraisers and utilize the three themes: Organization, Flexibility, and Fun!