Don't take this the wrong way, but you probably actually don't want to model yours after Penn State. Yes, there's is by far the most successful, but you also have to realize that they've spent over 25 years building it up to the greatness that it is today. Reading the history is a good idea, but also try and look at schools who haven't been doing it at long, and are still successful. UT's a good one... they raise a lot of money, but have only been doing it for about 8 years. Also, and I'm biased, but I can let you know how we run ours at U of S. Carolina. Mainly because that's the one that I'm familiar with. Unless you're just a miracle school and have sponsors coming out of the woodwork, you aren't going to raise millions of dollars like Penn State, so it might be a little disheartening to model yourselves after them at first. Try to look at websites of Dance Marathons at schools comparative to yours. For the first year, though, you're probably looking at about 100 participants and $50,000.... generalizing, of course. CMN also has a "getting started" video that they show schools who are thinking about starting it. We have a copy if you can't get your hands on one, but they should just send it to you. It shows how most schools model their Dance Marathon.
Some basics: Penn state uses fraternities paired with sororities, and it's a competition for who wins.
Other schools do it this way: You teach a line dance that the morale captains make up. The participants are responsible for raising a certain amount of money. Here, they raise $150. This year at UT, they raised $175... but a couple of them also said that this was a bit high. The event is held in celebration of the students who raised the money. They learn the line dance, stay up all night... A lot of starter schools do it for 12 hours... We do ours for 24, most do theirs for 36, and a couple (Penn State being one) do it for 48 hours.
I really have way too much information to put down here. It takes a LOT of planning. We have 30 people on our exec and about 40 morale captains... UT has about the same amount of people on exec and I think 60 or 70 on morale. Don't put the date within 6 months of when you start planning... We start planning in April for a February event, but we really push hard starting in October.
Go visit some websites, though. Ours is
www.sa.sc.edu/dancemarathon It shows a little about the Letter Writing campaign, too... which is DEFINITELY a good idea that we stole from UT. There's also a national convention in the summer that you can get ideas from. Also, check out UGA and UT's websites as well... I don't know the url's off the top of my head, but theirs are very informative, and different in ways.
If you decide that you like the way Penn State does it better, that's great, and no skin off my nose, but I really would suggest looking at the things they do and scaling down your first year a bit.... I think you'll find that it takes a lot more planning than you expect. And of course, I'm always here to chat about it!
PS-I looked at the Hope College site, and it does actually look like a good one to model after. They actually raised almost as much as us, but they still aren't a huge power house Dance Marathon like Penn State, so it's a good school to aim for first year.
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