Quote:
Originally Posted by 33girl
IMO we should jettison national philanthropies and go back to letting chapters pick their own. Not onliy could they pick things where they actually give time instead of endlessly trying to figure out how to raise money, in the event they DID have to raise money, it's a lot easier to get people in the community to support a local effort. This is why the Penn State Dance Marathon does so well - everyone local knows where the money is going and has no problem donating. Our chapter always got the "why are you raising money for some school in Lancaster? Our schools HERE need money."
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A Kappa can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that KKG allows chapters and alumni associations to choose their own philanthropies along with having a national philanthropy (Reading is Fundamental) that lends itself well to local planning and involvement.
As for philanthopies that involve giving time instead of raising money, that's how we do it. Our national philanthropy, the Mills Music Mission*, focuses on giving time and talent in the local community and involves little if any fundraising -- perhaps enough to buy flowers or gifts for nursing home or hospital residents.
* The Mills Music Mission is named for Sinfonia's founder, Ossian Everett Mills. By the 1880s, Mills had begun visiting the residents of the Boston hospitals on Easter and Christmas, and continued doing so for nearly thirty years (near his death in 1920). Mills was always accompanied by students from the New England Conservatory, some of whom would sing or play instruments and some of whom would have gathered flowers from churches after Christmas or Easter services to give to those in the hospitals. These visits became known as Mills' "Flower Missions." A report in the Conservatory's
Quarterly the spring before Sinfonia was founded said:
Easter Sunday witnessed again the beautiful charity that a favored few of the Conservatory students are privileged to dispense, in the annual visit to the city hospitals with flowers and music. About 50,000 flowers were given away, or some fifteen bushels, - enough to supply each patient with a generous cluster. There were pathetic scenes as the flower girls went from cot to cot, for many of the patients were from the streets, poor and discouraged as well as sick, and a kind word, except from their attendants, or a gift of anything so suggestive of beautiful sentiment as a flower, was almost a faded memory with them.
So, our national philanthropy is to go -- as chapter brothers, alumni associations or other gatherings of Sinfonians -- to hospitals, nursing homes, retirement homes or the like -- to give the gifts of music and of flowers, stuffed animals or other tangible tokens of caring to the residents.
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