I had always assumed that the people I saw canning here lived in Pittsburgh and were home for the weekend and could stay at their parents' house.

that's sort of true.

there are four designated canning weekends a year. 2 first semester and 2 second semester before THON. those are the only weekends you're allowed to go canning for THON.

people host the trips at their houses. some trips have 15 people, other trips have 4, it just depends on how many people the host wants to have at their house.

also, the trips aren't limited to pennsylvania. my sorority had trips to virginia, delaware, connecticut and new jersey. it just depends on who wants to have a trip.

Do the math. 4 figures for a 50 member organization is not that lucrative. That works out to $20 per member. McDonalds in my area pays about $8/hour x 8 hours x 50 members = $3200 for each day of work.

I wanted to go back to the comment about competition. At USC, the competition is VERY high between sororities. I think that it is sad sometimes that people lose sight of what it's about, but in the long run if two or three (or more) sororities are so gung-ho about competing with each other, and then their way of competing is by raising thousands of dollars for charity, let them do it! I observed the same thing at University of Tennessee... It helps boost the number. I wish USC's fraternities would impose a fine on members who don't participate. Our fraternity participation is SLACK. We have two fraternities that make sure there are guys there, and the rest of the fraternities we're lucky enough to have one or two guys show. I hope they were able to change that this year, though.

Be careful with your cans
 

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Thieves Steal Donations For Sick Kids
* Rutgers University Students Raised $8,000

Feb 15, 2005 12:21 pm US/Eastern
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. (AP) A setback for Rutgers University students trying to raise money for children battling cancer.
Authorities say thieves walked away with eight thousand dollars from a university office, much of it in coins.
The burglars carted away a safe containing four thousand, and at least six water jugs containing coins.
The dean of fraternity and sorority affairs for the school says the Rutgers students are “just devastated by this.”
The money was meant for the Institute for Children with Cancer and Blood Disorders, affiliated with Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick.
Last year the fund-raising event that runs from September to late March raised 190-thousand dollars for the institute.

Correct me if I am wrong., Canning, is that getting canned foods for Charity?

LXA has the largest canned food drive in the world. Yet again, several times a year, each Chapter does Charity events for other Charitys.

Unless every member is not working part time jobs, it is hard to get out and do. Oh, even night classes interfere as it were.

But unless there is a lengthy time frame, fining members is a bove and beyond the call.

At our House Corp. meeting a member suggested that each Board member give $50.00 to be on the Board. I was livid.

In the last 2 years, I have donated @ $500.00 worth of items for our Auction not counting giving @ $2000.00 for New House building fund or waht I have bought in the auctions.

Ever wonder how and why it is hard to get New Members?

um, no Tom, canning has nothing to do with canned food. If you read the articles and comments you would understand that.

Canning involves decorating coffee cans (or other cans) and standing in intersections (usually... I guess some go to busy events or somewhere else busy) to ask for money for the charity

I've seen them canning for Thon near Harrisburg (where my parents live.) Also, they came door to door in my neighborhood. Sadly, I didn't have any money to give them. But, since I have moved to West Chester, I have seen them there and in the surrounding suburbs (i.e. Downingtown.) Both places, they stood in unsafe areas (right near a highway and the dividing pad between a two lane highway.)

I have a hard time believing that standing on a street with a can nets you $3K. How many people is this? How many different locations?

I've driven by canners many a times, and I rarely see anyone give any money, and if they do, it's only a few cents.

It's not really that much to bring in. I helped can before football games before Dance Marathon here a couple times, and we usually pulled in about $50-100 per person. Keeping in mind that our Dance Marathon is not nearly as large or well-known as Penn State's, and that we probably had fewer people out canning and for a shorter period of time, I don't think it would be a stretch to bring in $3000 in one weekend.

Give that you could bring in $50-100 per person for two hours' work, I'd say that canning was a little more lucrative than working at McDonald's. ;)

good for them if they can do it... just seems unrealistic. But if it works, great.

3000/10 people = 300 in one weekend= 150 per day from morning until sundown. Maybe 10-12 dollars an hour?

Like I said, if it works great, but that's a lot of time that could be spent otherwise volunteering for a cause, plus it's very unsafe. I tend to favor event-type fundraising or something other than random begging :(

If you read this whole thread, you can see the wide range of opinion concerning canning. Take out those from PSU, and the spectrum isn't quite so wide. Throw in that those canning usually wear their letters, and you can see many greeks who aren't happy to see their letters involved with canning.

But, it's going to happen. People will can, and those held captive by a stop light will either feel guilty and donate or ignore the canners in annoyance.

I read this and I'm not surprised. PSUSigKap touched on this earlier about how SAE ran into problems a couple years back. If I remember, they had been accused of stealing from their THON budget, something like that. Considering that, I'm not surprised that they are doing every thing possible to make sure people go out and can.

As for canning itself, I went canning this past weekend for Campus Crusade. We went to a supermarket in NJ for about 5 hrs and we raised little over $600 there. We had alumni come up to us and give us money, kids give us little bits of change to people telling us to move out of their way. We weren't obnoxious about it; we had our signs and our cans, we politely asked people and we had a little bit of fun on a chilly Feb. Saturday. Altogether, with 10 people, we raised little over $1100.

Canning is something that has to be experienced to really understand. Canning is the backbone of THON and has helped us raise over $30 million over the past 30+ years. I'm proud to have canned and to have raised money for THON.

http://www.thon.org/

I'm surprised canning brings in that much money for you all. You guys sound hard core about it. We've always just stuck the cans in the office and told people to place them about businesses. Since this year is my first year as an alumnus, I was curious as to how much money comes from the alumni. We're in our 7th year, so our alumni aren't that old yet (i.e. still making under the $50,000 mark as a general rule) but I was curious as to how much support you all get from the alumni who give every year. That's got to contribute somehow to the numbers raising a bit. I know I gave $150 this year as a first year alumnus, but I plan on giving more each year, so hopefully when our marathon hits the 25 year mark I'll be giving thousands of dollars (hopefully I'll be able to afford it!) Also, you have more sponsorships, more dancers, and more in-between events. Call me a skeptic, but I just find it hard to believe that canning brings in the majority of the money.

MadMax, I did do the math. Even though my GLO and most of the others that "can" are 50+ member organizations, we would typically only send 10-15 members for at most a 5 hour stint making about $2000 on an average day.

That breaks down to about $26 and some change per member per hour. That is rounding down though with the total figure on average.

Most people who stopped to donate are very generous. Ten and twenty dollar bills were not uncommon. But we were usually canning in a very upper middle class area that is very supportive of its nearby children's hospital.

I really like canning and support the practice when I can. It can only be done now outside of buisnesses though- at least in Indiana.