I do weddings, showers, retreats, conferences, VBS, birthdays and even a memorial and funeral or two. But an all school fundraiser? A Jog-A-Thon?
This I have
never done before. But life isn't fulfilling unless you do something new right?
So I put on my first all school event + it was a fundraiser which upped the stress level since it involved money. So guess who did all the admin stuff? Yep.. I was so anal about tracking every penny that I had to do it all. Next time I r-e-a-l-ly need to delegate but since it was my first time and I pretty much didn't know if it would flourish or flounder, I needed to have control. So if it went sour they can blame it all on me!
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| The kids ran in 2 sessions: K-3 and 4-8 graders. Above are the 4-8 graders. |
A Jog-A-Thon is kind of like coordinating a wedding. Instead of focusing on the bride and groom you focus on your guests. Instead seating all your guests, your guests just run around and around for 30 minutes.
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| 4th graders coming around the bend... Hannah is on the far right |
The bride, groom, musicians, pastor, scripture reader, candlelighters
are all your parent volunteers each having specific tasks to do at a
specific time: lap talliers, drink stationers, tabulators, BBQers,
snack distributors, balloon blowers etc..
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| 7th graders around the bend and Emily getting smooshed by her friends |
As for the mother and father of the bride and groom, it's the principal and administrators that you keep happy showing them that you have everything under control. Basically you keep them away from everything, don't give them a task. All they need to do is to be there and look happy!
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| 2nd graders : my niece, Marissa (in the red and black striped shirt) staying strong |
As for the gifts, well.. our school goal was a lofty $10,000. That is a ton of money for a 160 student body. But God showered us with His blessings and we exceeded our goal and raised over $15,000!
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| The Drink Station.. some kids just stood there and drank and drank and drank. We almost went through 600 cups in 30 minutes by the K-3 kids |
I would have been happy with $5,000 since the previous month we just finished raising funds for Mission Month for a school in Guatemala. It is asking a lot of the parents who are already shelling out a ton of tuition money to attend KHA to give more money to their school.
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| Parent Lap Talliers: Hannah is getting her tally from her Auntie Matthea (Goo-Jeh) |
So I was so blown away by their generosity when we exceeded our goal to raise funds for our PE/Athletic Dept.
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| Hannah is very light on her feet and apparently very fast, I was told by her PE teacher |
Not only did we have great kids and generous parents but we also separately received over $1,400 in parent donations for raffle prizes, a souvenir water bottle for each participant, snacks, etc.....
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| Emily and her good friend Caryn |
...and I had over 20 parent volunteers helping me through this one-month
event with the majority of them running the day-of event. It could not
have been a success without them. I am sure of it!
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| Each student had a lap card pinned on their back to track their laps |
This event proved and
solidified the importance of parental involvement in our children's
school. Since starting POPS (Partnership of Parents and School.. aka our
version of the PTA) this year at KHA, I knew that if we pulled together
parents to be personally involved in their child's school, great things
will happen! And it did!
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| My co-horts: Brad Monk, PE Teacher/Athletic Director (the money was all for him to spend!) and Cynthia Chambers, Director of Student Affairs... my boss at least for this event |
Now because I was in charge of this event didn't mean that my girls didn't have to work hard to raise funds either.
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| Emily ran 20 laps (2.5 miles) and Hannah ran 19 laps (2.4 miles) |
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| Class Competition Chart: Hannah's 4th grade class won for the highest average per student and Emily's class won for highest amount per class. |
In fact they worked super hard and I have many of you readers to thank for your generous donations in supporting them.
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| Our money thermometer tracker |
Hannah raised the most funds out of the whole school with $718 and won the Amazon Kindle Fire. Emily won one of the bonus raffles prizes: a $50 Target gift card. She raised $681. (The 2nd highest)
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| Happy Winners |
And no, the majority of the monies were not donated by us. You kidding me? I must have logged over 150 hours on this event alone! Basically 'working' full time for a month for no pay!
Next year, they want to do another Jog-A-Thon this time to raise funds for our Music and Arts Program. UGH! I'm tired already thinking about it!
Many thanks go to Ralph Anderson for the gorgeous pictures of the event!
So I put on my first all school event + it was a fundraiser which upped the stress level since it involved money. So guess who did all the admin stuff? Yep.. I was so anal about tracking every penny that I had to do it all. Next time I r-e-a-l-ly need to delegate but since it was my first time and I pretty much didn't know if it would flourish or flounder, I needed to have control. So if it went sour they can blame it all on me!