philanthropy

[DJ@epsilon]

Hello!!!! I am a member of Epsilon chapter at Alpha Xi Delta and was wondering if anyone had any good ideas for philanthropy projects. We currently do a annual spaghetti dinner but are looking at expanding upon that. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!!!
TFJ
DJ

[fuzzie]

Hi DJ! Well, what we did was called the quarter mile. The goal was to get a quarter of a mile of quarters lined up end to end. I think this ends up being somewhere around $4000. We would begin collecting money about a month beforehand. We would basically go door to door asking for donations. It has been going on for so long that the people are generally not surprised to see us and are pretty generous. We also send letters to busineses which will generally donate some money also. We then get all of this money changed into Quarters. We spend a whole day on the main street trough the town lining up these quarters which then gets us more donations because people would stop to see what we were doing and generally donate a little something. We would also get some donations from our family members and other Greek and non-Greek organizations on campus.

I am an alum now, so I'm no longer doing all of this, but I recently got a newsletter from my chapter and they are going to add a carnival to raise money and the alums are sending donations this year also. I'll have to let you know how this works out for them. I believe the carnival is this coming Sunday and the Quarter Mile is during the following week.

Oh, yeah...and with the door to door donations we generally take out an ad in the local paper to advertise this is coming up so people know when to expect us and some people just send us money. The community was very generous

I hope that was a little bit helpful for you. If I can come up with any other ideas, I'll let you know. Good luck with the philanthropy.

Xi love,
Mindy

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"Would you not like to be sitting on top of the world with your legs hanging free?" -- Dave Matthews

[AlphaXiGirl]

Fuzzie,

That is such a cool idea. I love it... I may have to share it with my chapter.

[DJ@epsilon]

Hi Mindy!!! Thanks again for all of your helpful ideas. It sounds like that would be a great philanthropy event to look at doing. Thanks again! DJ

[G8Ralphaxi]

My chapter (Zeta Omicron at University of Florida) had, IMHO, the most fun philanthrophy ever...

The Men of UF Calendar!!!

We would give applications to all the fraternities - GDIs could try out too. The application had questions on it (everything from major, ideal date, favorite song, etc.) and they submitted a picture too.

Then we took all the pictures and had "penny voting" in the main campus square - each guy's picture had a cup by it and his name and sponsoring organization. People would come by and put $ in the cup of the guy they liked best, etc.

The top 26 guys from penny voting got to be in the Men of UF Pageant. We reserved a club/bar and had several rounds.

Round 1 - Intro, guys in khakis, white shirts, basic stuff: name, age, major, fraternity, etc.

Round 2 - formalwear, the guys answer the mushy questions: ideal girl, date, etc.

Round 3 - personality round. If a guy played a sport, he could use his uniform. we had a premed guy come out in scrubs and then say he "wanted to play doctor with some Alpha Xi's" , a law student came out in a judge's robe, etc. One guy was the diet coke guy from the commercials - dressed like a construction worker, came out, ripped off his shirt, and popped open a can of diet coke.

Round 4 - boxers/swimsuit round. fun for obvious reasons.

In between rounds, we had music playing and all the greeks there would socialize. Lots of fun.

The judges were usually our house mom, one of the greek deans, the photographer we hired to take the pics for the actual calendar, and the Panhellenic president. THey picked 12 guys + 1 alternate and they were announced at the end as the "men of UF" for the year.

It takes a LOT of planning but it's not as hard as it seems if you split up duties.

Need to solicit free stuff!
We got free radio ads and used the club free too. Listed them as sponsors on the T shirts.

This makes a LOT of $$$ for your philanthropy too. We made $ several ways:
1. Application fee ($25/guy or $35 for two I think)
2. Penny voting money
3. Pageant admissions - everyone (except our sisters and the actual contestants and judges) was charged $5.
4. T-shirt sales
5. Selling ads - one large ad on the back of the calendar for our main sponsor and then also ads across the bottom of each month's page.

In 2000 we gave over $2000 to Boggy Creek Gang Camp (a local camp for terminally and critically ill kids), plus a $2000 grant from Nationals. So that's over $4000!!!

...plus the added bonus of having all those guys coming by the house to get or turn in applications! We also always had the winners all over for dinner at least once.

Definitely a good time!

G8Ralphaxi
Zeta Omicron
University of Florida
Spring 1997
TFJ LITBOS LWL

[fuzzie]

The AGD's on our campus do pretty much the same thing. It's the Mr. IUP pagent. We wanted to do something like that, but we already have a Mr. IUP and a Miss IUP each sponsored by a sorority on campus. They are great fun, though.

[AXiDAngel]

GR8alphaxi-

Thank you so much for your idea of the Men of UF calander, now my chapter wants to do a Men of Fresno State Calander. They all thought it was the greatest idea ever. We are hoping this will help get Alpha Xi Delta's name out on campus. I let you know our results!

TFJ

[Fuzzie906]

I know that the term "Fuzzies" is mostly and Ohio thing... but every year my university holds a fuzzie football tournament... it's become a really big to do and all the chapters on campus participate... it's a fun day of flag football and then the top teams in men, women and coed get trophys... we sell t-shirts and have the local or campous radio station there...
our AOPi's do a bowling for roses... and like our philantrophy we charge 30$ a team.... most chapters have money set aside for these event's pi phi's do a basketball tournament and phi psi's do phi psi 500 it's a tricycle race.... phi sigma sigma does a rock-a-thon night of sitting in rocking chairs.... ummm panhell and IFC do a night in a box teams build a box and take turns spending the night in them

hopefully sxome of those can help emails me if interested in details
xi love and mine
valerie