13 Years Later, over 700,000 dollars in donations
On March 5th, the Delta Chi chapter of Kappa Sigma hosted the 13th annual Charity Classic Bowl. This event was yet again a huge success on and off of the field. On the football field the men of Kappa Sigma defeated the Sigma Chi chapter by a score of 9-2. The major accomplishment came off of the field though. As a whole we were able to present an astounding $50,000 to the Fisher House and the Magnolia Speech School. Magnolia Speech School helps children improve their listening and improve their life. By helping deaf and language impaired children learn to listen and develop spoken language, Magnolia prepares children to enter the mainstream of society without the need for interpreters. Through advanced technology, intensive therapy and individualized auditory-oral classroom instruction, the children are given the opportunity to reach their full potential to live independent lives in our listening and speaking world. Since September 1956, Magnolia Speech School has successfully operated as a private non-profit program with parents paying tuition to cover a portion of the costs and the remaining costs covered by generous donations from the community. With the abundance of money we were also able to donate money to the Fisher House. The Fisher House™ program is a unique private-public partnership that supports America's military in their time of need. The program recognizes the special sacrifices of our men and women in uniform and the hardships of military service by meeting a humanitarian need beyond that normally provided by the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs. Because members of the military and their families are stationed worldwide and must often travel great distances for specialized medical care, Fisher House™ Foundation donates "comfort homes," built on the grounds of major military and VA medical centers. These homes enable family members to be close to a loved one at the most stressful times during the hospitalization for an unexpected illness, disease, or injury. The chapter as a whole was able to raise money individually to meet our demanding goal and we can only look forward to next year's Charity Classic Bowl.
This was an extensive and well planned event thanks to our Charity Classic team. John Carpenter did a great of putting together a team of men that would be responsible and smart when it came to managing our resources for this event. We held a BBQ dinner one night to help raise money for the funding of the event so there would not be expenses and all the money raised could go straight to Fisher House. Not to mention the Ad packet that was created to produce revenue for the event. Every member of the chapter was required to sell $400 dollars of ad's. That is upwards of 50,000 dollars alone. The ad packet also served as a tangible necessity to the game. It provided people with something to look through and enjoy; take home and keep as a token of our appreciation for supporting us.
To spread the word we used many techniques such as social devices, posters, t-shirts, and word of mouth. The great thing about the new generation is that news travels at an astounding rate. With the help of Social media devices such as Twitter and Facebook, we were able to generate a lot of recognition and positive feedback about the event. T-shirts are always a great to for marketing. They allow people to be walking billboards and really display the event on campus. Also, we made posters using a great football movie as the basis of our poster. They were very eye catching and demanded some respect due to the serious tone of the poster. We were very pleased with the finished product.
As a whole we could not have expected such a great turn out for this event. We raised upwards of $50,000 dollars and we feel like that is quite an accomplishment! Even though the weather on game day was miserable with reports of heavy showers and high gusts of wind reaching thirty miles per hour, there was a great number of fans and supports at the game. We had a great turn out with respect to the weather and we feel like we did the best we could with what we had that day. The seven dollar admission proved to be a great idea and most every sorority was in attendance. A combination of a great turn out coupled with the large sum of money that we were able to raise for such a deserving cause is exactly what we hoped for when we started this event. That is enough for us to declare the Charity Classic a big success in our book.
This event could not have been possible without the help off all the members in the fraternity. We had many people help out on the numerous and tedious tasks that to often go unnoticed. Members and pledges were working the concession stand, taking up money at the gate, handing out Ad packets, walking guests to their seats with umbrellas, gathering water for both teams, moving chains, helping spot the field, escorting the maids on and off the field, and making sure that all the needs of the players were attended to. Obviously this was a large scale production that took the whole fraternity working as one unit. As far as percentage goes, I believe that it was documented that 80 percent of the chapter was in attendance at this event helping and serving while others may have been enjoying the game from the stands.
All of the money generated went to benefiting Fisher House and the Magnolia Speech School. As earlier stated, this two organizations were very deserving for the money that we raised. Fisher House builds The Fisher House™ program is a unique private-public partnership that supports America's military in their time of need. Because members of the military and their families are stationed worldwide and must often travel great distances for specialized medical care, Fisher House™ Foundation donates "comfort homes," built on the grounds of major military and VA medical centers. As for Magnolia Speech School, they help children improve their listening and improve their life. By helping deaf and language impaired children learn to listen and develop spoken language, Magnolia prepares children to enter the mainstream of society without the need for interpreters.
The total amounts donated to each organization are as follows:
$12,500 - Keesler Air Force Base Fisher House
$12,500 - National Fisher House
$25,000 - Magnolia Speech School
