"Trick-or-Treat" for United Way

One of the many benefits of being a public relations student is our involvement in event planning, management and execution. A fine example of this perk would be our class’s recent efforts in a campus wide United Way Fundraiser campaign. We designed and carried out a Halloween-themed event that raised $1,200 for the organization.

The public relations program has previous involvement with the United Way, involvement that has created several successful fundraising events in the past. Due to this prior relationship the program and the organization have developed, we were once again approached by the United Way to tackle another fundraiser event. As part of our Public Relations for Non-Profit Organizations course, our class began the process of deciding what type of event we wished to initiate.

The process began with a roundtable brainstorming sessions. Each and every classmate was encouraged to spout off ideas that could be transformed into a theme for the campaign. Our professor, Kerry Ramsay, was the scribe and she made sure that all ideas were recorded. The point being that, in the beginning we couldn’t afford to discount any ideas, as who was to say where an idea could take us. We tossed around a multitude of exciting concepts and brilliant ideas that comprised our master list. Eventually, we exhausted our individual concepts and moved into the reflection stage. Individually, we were to all review our favourite suggestions, we were to sleep on our thoughts and bring back our digested feelings back to the roundtable under a more practical light.

We moved through the reflection stage quickly, as we all seemed to agree on keeping our event simple and timely. Keeping our theme suitable to the season led us to the decision to incorporate Halloween. After some more brainstorming under the seasonal inspiration, we dreamt up, “Trick-or-Treat” for the United Way. Now that the theme had been constructed, we moved from conception into the planning stages.

The date for our event, Tuesday October 28, 2008, was predetermined by Kerry and the Organization. As it turned, that week was full of other United Way focused fundraising efforts which made it feel appropriate, as if we were a part of something larger than our own endeavours.

Up to this point we had decided that for $2 a donor would get the chance to trick-or-treat for United Way, providing them with an opportunity to win a prize or at least the satisfaction of donating to a great cause. Due to the fact that the date (October 28, 2008) and location (Loyalist Campus) were already decided upon, our class moved onto things like promotions, collecting materials, finding sponsors to donate prizes and the overall logistics of the event as none of these things had been worked out yet.

Each and every one of us in the program are different, we all have our strengths, our weaknesses and our original characteristics that make us the diverse group that we are. Kerry knew from the beginning that she could not just assign us tasks and expect that they would all get finished in a satisfactory way. She was aware that not all of us had much or any event exposure in the past and wanted to make this as much of a learning experience as well. So she took an approach that seemed to work extremely well, she asked for volunteers to begin the event planning process. Once a volunteer piped up, she then paired that person with another who was interested in accomplishing the task.

We had groups tackle public service announcements, news releases, media interviews, mass e-mail construction, promotions, poster and banner creation to name a few. Individually, we were all expected to use our resources and/or charm to get out into the community and collect prizes for the event. Over the weeks prior to the fundraiser we returned to our roundtable discussions to hash out logistical points, i.e. how we were going to create a trick-or-treat experience, where were we to get candy and bags from, who wants to do what and our plan of attack to collect donations. As a team we worked out the details and all stepped up at different times to ensure we had resources and accomplished all necessary tasks. It soon came time to switch our mentalities from preparation to execution.

Before we knew it, October 28th was here. We all arrived at 7:30 in the am, some of us decked out in costumes, others sporting Untied Way t-shirts. We paired up, leaving two classmates in headquarters to take on the role of accountants, prize managers and decorators. The rest of us spread out through the campus to unfold awareness of the organization with the goal of $1,000 in mind to offer them at the end of the day.

Some of us remained stationary, we had tables set up in the pub and in the cafeteria, and others roamed hitting up students and faculty campus wide. Students and faculty were greeted inside the front doors by the smiling faces of myself and Kyle Mackenzie, we spread the vibes through the warming sounds of his guitar, silly jingles and positive messages accepting donations of any size. Our team also included a princess, a matador, a tigress, Waldo and more.

Our costumes shaped an incredible presence throughout the school which created a buzz that motivated the Loyalist community to donate generously. We energetically promoted United Way and our trick-or-treat game until 2 pm when our grand total of $1,200 was announced; amazing for a group of twenty in less than five hours.

As a group we felt very proud of our contributions to the United Way. Even though our bodies felt a little drained at the end, we were still full off positive energy. Our class felt rewarded and excited about what our next endeavors in event management might be.