Philanthropy Events

[PiLove]

I was wondering what kind of philanthropy events involving other fraternities and/or sororities work the best? Feel free to share your own success stories.

[ASUADPi]

When I was at U of A, we did an event called Legendary Legs. What we did was went to fraternity houses and seranaded the men in hopes that they would join the "competition". The winner would get a round trip ticket to some destination. Anyways, the men who participated we would take pictures of their legs. Then we set up a table on the mall, each picture was taped to the front of a Ronald McDonald House (it was a paper house that the girls must have gotten from RMH to collect donations). Also on the picture would be the fraternity the "legs" represented.

How the competition worked was that when people "voted" they had to vote with money. I'm not quite sure (cause I don't remember) but I believe coins were negative points and dollars were positive points. Obviously you can decide which you want it to be. But whatever you decide make sure you "post" it because then people will know. We had people purposely put coins in certain men's boxes because they didn't like their legs. Either way we were getting money for RMH.

This is the very basic idea of the philanthropy. If there is any other questions I can answer about it feel free to ask.

Bri

[adpiucf]

SOCIAL PHILANTHROPY
Pair up with a fraternity or a sorority for a weekend social! You can spend the day painting a mural with underprivileged children, raking leaves at a park, picking up trash for a beach clean-up, etc. Follow it up with a picnic! Assign buddies and order t-shirts! This is a great way to accumulate service hours and extend your social calendar. Also, if you pair up with a non-Greek women's club, this is a great informal way to meet PNM's and have a COR event!

Always remember whenever you hold any sort of service event, your chapter Reporter should send out a press release to the Adelphean and the school newspaper. The Alum Relations Chair should send a letter to your alum. Brag! It will gain additional exposure for your chapter.

FUNDRAISERS
The best events are ones that are well-marketed and promoted to the community. Remember that your goals for a philanthropy event are two-fold:

1) promoting awareness of RMHC Charities
2) Raising funds for RMHC Charities that will be donated to the Alpha Delta Pi Foundation and earmarked for RMHC (this way your chapter receives formal "Credit" and is eligible for special recognition from ADPi)

There should be an event committee headed by the Philantrhopy Chair. Each person on the committee should serve a purpose:
- Venue Chair (researches and books venue, and is responsible for day-of-event dealings with the venue)
- Operations Chair (is responsible for drafting event rules and making sure everything is order on the day of the event; even putting out chairs, having awards on hand, etc)
- Marketing Chair (promotes event to students, local media, radio stations, flyers, newspaper ads, banners, posters at the event, etc.)
- Community Sponsor Chair (enlists sponsorships in the community by having a formal letter, maintaining a list of sponsors to contact, followup with sponsors, getting checks to the Treasurer, setting goals for the amount of money raised through sponsorship, etc)
- Alumnae Relations Chair (invites local alumnae to come out to the event, donate money or time to the event, etc.)
- Philanthropy Chair (RMHC liasion, oversees committee and all aspects of event planning)
- Event Coaches (each group participating in your event should have co-coaches to help them fill out paperwork, train them, run them through practices, enlist chapter support from your chapter and the participant's organization, etc.)

The commitee chairs should recruit chapter members to work with them as sub-committees, and it should be mandatory that each chapter member serve on a Philanthropy sub-committee for your big event each year.

Invite someone from RMHC to your event and give them a chance to address the audience. They can provide handouts on RMHC, and signage.

Events that always go over well are the ones where you include the sororities AND fraternities, as well as nonGreek groups. Think of a co-ed Lip Sync, Greek Olympics, Athletic Event, etc., and attach a second promotion-oriented component. In addition to the "day-of" event, make part of the "points" include the group making a sign or banner, promoting the event in the community (free Publicity for you! Imagine XYZ fraternity getting a public service announcement on TV promoting your event! They get points toward winning the event and you get increased exposure). Charge a fee for entering the event. You might also charge admission for people to attend the event. (Give them a small gift for attending, like a small pin with the RMH logo). You can also hold a raffle or silent auction at the event with sponsor-donated items like a university school bookstore scholarship, RMH T-shirts, Event T-Shirts, Dinner for 2 at Red Lobster, etc.

- Event Follow-up
Make sure to donate any money through the Alpha Delta Pi Foundation. They will donate it to RMHC and you will receive ADPi philanthropy credit-- this is how we track our service hours and monies donated.

- Submit a story to the school newspaper and the Adelphean! Brag about your accomplishment and get the word out! Also send a newsletter to the alumnae-- they may want to donate more money to RMHC and you can add this to your event totals.

- Lion's Share Challenge
Remember, we now have a "signature" program-- with a logo and everything! You can do what you like within the program -- just make sure to use that logo and read the usage rules involving the logo. The idea is that pretty soon, in a few years, Greeks on campus will hear "Lion's Share Challenge" and immediately think of ADPi and RMH!

ETA: Events should always be in good taste. You are not only representing ADPi, you are also representing your university and RMHC! Keep this in mind when you brainstorm--- you want your event to be fun, but you also want people to walk away knowing what RMHC is. So skip the all-male hot bodies wet t-shirt contest, and go for something that is fun and has some semi-educational component.

[nauadpi]

My chapter for a while was doing Rock-N-Bowl... It was fun, because you really don't need athletic skills to bowl (most of the other chapters on campus liked all athletic events)... The other advantage was we would give out prizes to the best, worst and funniest bowlers... so it turned out to be very laid back... The other thing that we loved about it, was that we worked hard to get groups other than fraternities and sororities to sign up teams... One year we had the rodeo club sign up a team... It was great that way cause we got our name out there more...

[EXiADPi]

This year Epsilon Xi is forgoing Rock n bowl because we don't make any money and having a twister tournament this year. I am excited because I kick butt at twister and it will be fun to watch the boys do twister.

[TN-TX ADPi]

We have Teeter Totter with Alpha Gamma Rho. We have (and I have NO idea where they came from ) 2 gigantic see-saws and the rules are there has to be one boy and one girl on each side at all times. This is a 12 hour event! We made money by each member of both orgs collecting at least a $20 donation. The money is split between both groups philanthropies. But it is tons of fun!!! We sometimes do this in the Wal-Mart parking lot to get donations, too.
We have a Christmas party with Pi Kappa Alpha for underpriviledged children. We get a list of names from Human Services, I think- but each child is "adopted" by several members- we buy them gifts, then have a Christmas party at the Pike house, complete with caroling and Santa. It's always a lot of fun.
I just think the most important thing is to keep it fun and laid back- and remember why you're doing whatever event you're doing.

[honeychile]

The two favorite ones that my chapter did were the "mixer" at the local Juvenile Detention Center (which I've talked ad nausem about) and making gingerbread houses at RMH. We used the kits for the gingerbread houses, took a lot of extra candies, then let the kids get creative! Sometimes the houses looked better than others, but that wasn't the idea - it was seeing these kids (and their families) who were stuck out of town near the holidays, playing with icing & candy and generally having a good time! Oh, we took a lot of Baby Wipes or other such cleaners so we left the kids almost as clean as when we got there...

And let me cosign what adpiucf said: TAKE PHOTOS!!!!! SEND THEM TO THE ADELPHEAN!!!!! EO is NOT full of mind readers, and they just love to see y'all in action! And what could be more fun than ADPis in action while having a great time?!