Tag Philanthropy

Dance of the Year

Michael 6 Comments

Happy Not Really Presidents Day. Yeah, yeah, I sound like a broken record (under 30s ask a real adult) but there is no such holiday. Never was. Should never will be. I guess the United Kingdom celebrates the Queen’s birthday but does anybody else set aside time for the collective past chief executives whoever they may be. Neither do we. Today is Washington’s Birthday (although it really isn’t, that’s Feb. 22) because he did a bunch of stuff that got this USA started. The other 44 are just hangers on.

If you want a good discount on a car, mattress, or living room furniture, today is your day. If you want to relive my in-depth look at the weirdos who have occupied 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., check out last year’s post. If you want to really celebrate something special, keep reading.

Today is, in addition to a federal holiday, the day after Thon. Thon is the Penn State IFC/Panhellenic Dance Marathon, a year-long fund raising effort to combat childhood cancer. The money raised is donated to Four Diamonds at Penn State Children’s Hospital. How much? Since 1977 THON has raised more than $157 million for Four Diamonds. The Four Diamonds fund offsets the costs of the pediatric cancer care not covered by insurance and provides other services such as specialty care for the mental, emotional, and spiritual needs of the children and their families. Research and medical support are also funded by Four Diamonds.

Maybe today should be a federal holiday because of Thon and other student groups across the country. Surely there are other similarly focused almost adults, but Thon is the poster child for these poster children. The largest student run philanthropic organization in the world, Thon has over 16,500 student volunteers participating in the year-long effort and more than 700 dancers took to the floor for this weekend’s 46 hour marathon.

For years, starting every fall, “canners” would fan out across Pennsylvania and beyond collecting coins at business entrances, sporting and cultural events, and traffic intersections. Mini-Thons, alumni, business partners, and “Friends of Thon” have helped but the physical canvassing raised a huge percentage of the total donations. This year was the first when due to safety concerns, canning was officially banned. Instead crowd funding and THONvelopes replaced the corner canners presence. And still they added to the “over $157 million.”

THON2019They’ve raised over $157 million. How much more? Add another $10,621,683.76 from this weekend. That’s short of the $13.4 million record from 2013, and far far less than say the $700 million donated to St. Jude’s Hospital last year but Thon’s overhead is probably a little less also. And you can’t argue that is still quite a total for a bunch of kids just helping out another bunch of kids.

So if you have a few minutes between mattress shopping and you’d like to justify your day off with something worthy of celebration to celebrate, now you do.

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Photo by Patrick Spurlock | Onward State

Just Causes Just Because

Michael Leave a comment

About this time of year the local newspapers run a story or two about a young citizen making like a mature adult as he or she completes a senior project and raises a few dollars for a local charity.  Such is the case of a teen local to us who raised about $1500 for the Save Darfur effort, joining millions since 2003 who have poured millions of dollars into the lobbying effort to solicit U.S. intervention.

So it was a pleasant morning when She of We read about a local college student joining the Push America’s Journey of Hope effort to raise $600,000 for Americans with disabilities and He of We read an article about a sixteen year old high school sophomore starting her own effort to raise $8,000 for a local homeless shelter. 

What makes these pleasant?  These kids had no program to make, no project to complete, and knew of what they were getting into.  It’s possible that a high school senior knows about the atrocities of Darfur.  Plug in a liberal social studies teacher and it’s even probable.  It’s equally possible that a high school senior knows the money doesn’t go to on the ground efforts in Darfur but to professional lobbyists in Washington to try to convince Congress to provide support from the national coffers.  But for a high school sophomore to just decide to ask her fellow studies for money for a homeless shelter that’s a good dozen miles from her suburban home “just because” is quite remarkable.  Equally remarkable is for a young man to take an entire summer off from gainful employment or youthful enjoyment to ride a bicycle across the country to raise money for disabled Americans a mile at a time.

Giving money, time, and energy is nothing new for the young.  Often it’s because of their energy and time that youthful philanthropy can far outraise established charities.  For example, Penn State University’s annual Thon dance marathon, the largest student run philanthropy in the world, raised over $10.5 million dollars this year for research to combat pediatric cancer.

Whether measured in millions, the hundreds of thousands, or the thousands of dollars a quarter at a time, these children and young adults show they have the maturity that is missing in so much “professional” fundraising efforts of good cause from fighting genocide to rebuilding from natural disasters.  The problem with professional philanthropy like Safe Darfur, Katrina Fundraising, and Tsunami Relief Organization is that so much of the effort has been built around the administration of the money raised that a lot goes to the professionals and a little to the philanthropy.

It seems that the fundraisers that ask for a quarter at a time make more of that money, if not all of that money go to the people whose pictures are on the donation cans.  Maybe the professionals should step aside and like the young people take over.  They’re going to eventually.  Let them start helping those who really need our help. 

Maybe then we’ll have something more interesting for them to take over.

Now, that’s what we think.  Really.  How ‘bout you?