EagleTHON, a student organization at the University of Southern Mississippi, recently held its annual fundraising dance marathon event.
Despite the fundraiser becoming a virtual event due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it raised $52,863.84, which is most ever raised by the group. The money raised by the fundraiser goes to the Children's Miracle Network Hospitals.
Emily Holmes, director of the Office of Leadership and Student Involvement, praised the organization’s resiliency as many student groups were forced to cancel their various fundraisers.
“We were really proud of them for really thinking outside of the box,” Holmes said. “A lot of our organizations have an event that they plan for at the end of the year and were kind of forced to go home and just didn't do anything. I think the great thing about (EagleTHON) is that instead of saying ‘we'll try again next year’ is how resilient and creative they were to come up with a way to do it virtually that was still successful as it was.”
In past years, the event was held in Reed Green Coliseum and lasts between 8-10 hours with different activities planned each hour, which was the original plan for the 2020 event. However, according to Kayley Safley, EagleTHON’s vice president for campus outreach, the group had to quickly scratch months of planning after the university announced it would no longer have student activities on campus due to the pandemic.
“I distinctly remember the day before we thought what was going to be a two-week spring break and getting the news that we were not going to have activities on campus,” Safley said. “That’s when we thought EagleTHON was potentially canceled, or it’ll be different than all the hard work we had previously put in to plan thus far."
What resulted was the EagleTHON becoming a two-day virtual event that was driven by social media outreach.
“Everything was different,” Safley said. “Putting it on social media was very different than what we would have done in person. We normally shout out miracle families and things like that, but instead, we had to post more videos, and in a lot of ways, it got more faculty, staff and students involved.”
During the event, EagleTHON posted Miracle Stories on its social media accounts, which were videos that highlighted stories of children who were helped by the Batson Children’s Hospital.
Those videos also thanked the hospital and challenged participants to help raise money. The event also had participants upload TikTok dances on Instagram stories while tagging the EagleTHON Instagram account.
Participants also competed in Power Hours, in which people posted videos of dances for dance-offs. Donors donated money to cast their votes to pick the winner.
Holmes explained that a large part of the group’s success was due to the senior class since many of those students were part of the first-ever EagleTHON on the Southern Miss campus.
“Since the group is four years old, many of these students worked with the group in its first year and were kind of chartering members of the organization,” Holmes said. “They were kind of able to see it through. That helped them in this final year, especially with having to rethink having to do something virtually. They were so invested in it for those several years that they didn't want to give up and were able to come up with this new way to be just as successful or even more successful than they were in the past.”
While Safley credits the hard work that the event coordinators put in, she explained that the pandemic created some of the event’s success since the EagleTHON made even more connections than it would have under normal circumstances.
“I credit that we worked hard, but I think a new light was kind of shed when the pandemic came across,” Safley said. “It’s a health-related pandemic, and so these hospitals are affected by that. Our leadership really rallied together to find the community, and I think that’s something people are seeking for right now in the pandemic is community and connection.
“I think us striving to take the seeds of our normal EagleTHON also allowed us to make new connections and opportunities that may not have been there if it was a regular EagleTHON. I think we’ll always have the ‘what if’ if we were able to host the dance marathon, but I know we found success in a time that was very unlikely.”
