South Fayette’s Mini-THON fundraiser the ‘cool’ thing to do
Students reveal at the school’s Mini-THON event this past April the amount raised of $100,481.
Bailey Pardee, left, Delaney Terling, middle, and Jordan Head, right, attended the Mini-THON Leadership Summit.
During the first year of South Fayette High School’s Mini-THON fundraiser in 2012, the group raised $3,000.
Five years later, that figure is above $100,000. With fundraising throughout the year and an overnight event in April to reveal the total, the Mini-THON, according to the program’s advisor Brandon Flannery, is the “cool” thing to do at South Fayette.
“It’s the most popular event in the school,” Flannery said about the event that drew about 600 South Fayette students. “We’re pretty proud of that and what it stands for. The fact that that is something that is ‘cool,’ is great.”
Mini-THON is a statewide fundraiser that acts in conjunction with Penn State University’s annual THON fundraiser. The money goes to Four Diamonds, a charitable organization at Penn State Children’s Hospital. Four Diamonds funds pediatric cancer research, as well as ease some of the costs for patients and their families.
“It’s kind of hard not to support a cause like that,” said Flannery, who is entering his 11th year as a teacher at South Fayette.
Three student leaders and three faculty members of South Fayette’s fundraiser attended the Mini-THON Leadership Summit in Hershey Aug. 4. More than 1,000 people attended the summit to share ideas, motivate each other and reveal the total amount made from the 265 fundraisers – $6,461,295.
Of the nearly 10 awards handed out to individual schools, South Fayette’s Mini-THON won an Excellence in Social Media award.
“That was a really cool experience because the kids get fired up,” Flannery said. “It gets them in that frame of mind that it’s not just something that takes place in April. If we’re going to have sustained success, the hard work has to start now.”
After South Fayette’s first year with a Mini-THON fundraiser, Flannery implemented one of his business classes to bolster the project. The 20 to 30 students in Flannery’s Honors Management and Marketing Applications act as the workers underneath student government’s management. They sell sponsorship packages to local businesses and assist in the coordination and execution of the event in April.
In the second year, the group raised $23,000, and that number has risen ever since, include more than $100,000 this past school year.
“It’s all kind of project based learning,” said Flannery, chairperson of the business and technology department at South Fayette. “They get real-world experience; they deal with real dollars; they deal with real people. It was a win-win for everybody.”
One of the eight student government chairs of Mini-THON, junior Delaney Terling, has participated in the fundraiser since her freshman year.
While more than half the money is raised through the donor drive, which students promote an online portal where family, friends and community members can donate to the cause, the rest is raised through events.
Terling said events can be anything, but the group has hosted car washes, restaurant nights and raffles. This past year, a raffle for Pittsburgh Pirates season tickets raised $16,000. Terling and the other students spend much of their free time throughout the year, especially as the event approaches in April, on Mini-THON.
“It’s definitely an all year kind of thing,” Terling said. “Balancing Mini-THON and other school activities is very hard because Mini-THON is very time consuming. The entire month, all of the days leading up to the event, we’re meeting every day. We have something planned leading up to the event every month.”
Then, in April, the group hosts the Mini-THON program, which is a 12-hour, overnight event. Along with revealing the total amount raised at the event, Flannery said the event hosts games, raffles, face painters, dancing and many other activities for the nearly 600 students who attended this past year.
“When I was in high school, I didn’t really want to spend 12 hours at my school with my teachers overnight and be excited about it,” Flannery said. “They’re just a phenomenal group. Ever since I’ve been here, it’s been tremendous to witness this community and the way that they kind of rally behind causes like this.”
For Flannery, Mini-THON is one of the highlights of his career as an educator.
“It’s been one of the most rewarding and gratifying parts of my career being able to see these kids put this work in. It’s a really cool thing as a teacher to see them take ownership of it and run with it and then when it’s all said and done we’ve been lucky enough to have some success,” Flannery said.
“It’s a gratifying moment when they can kind of see the fruits of their labor and see that hard work actually does pay off and that the stuff that they do does really make a difference. I don’t really think there’s anything better as a teacher that you’d want.”
Terling doesn’t quite know why Mini-THON is so popular at South Fayette, but she’s glad it is.
“Everybody just wants to help,” she said. “It just speaks volume to the type of community we have and how everyone’s involved and everyone wants to help out and give back.”