SJU Dance Marathon continues despite low turnout

The SJU Dance Marathon held its third annual event on Nov. 10, raising $7,570.60 for the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP).

The Miracle Network Dance Marathon was hosted in O’Pake Recreation Center to raise money and awareness for the CHOP Cancer Center and Greatest Need Fund.

Although the Dance Marathon is in its third year at St. Joe’s, the event had a smaller turnout than the previous year. In its first year, the event raised over $27,000. In 2017, the total was over $20,000.

“We’re kind of in a transition year, so this was an experimental process,” said Ali Kloiber ’19, director of operations for Dance Marathon. “This was our first year going without our founder.”

Court Simmons ’17 brought the Dance Marathon to St. Joe’s because of her sister’s treatment at the CHOP Cancer Center. She said it was a difficult process to get the event rolling.

“It was really difficult to get people involved initially because no one knew what Dance Marathon was,” Simmons said. “It helped that people were able to recognize CHOP, and everyone wants to help kids with cancer. We just needed to explain to them why it was important to extend themselves to this other thing.”

Simmons said that most of the recruitment process was through word-of-mouth.

“It was very much grassroots, going up to people one-on-one and saying let’s register together right now,” Simmons said. “We didn’t have the ability to say we have 3,000 followers on Instagram and people already know us and love us. We had to show everyone who we were.”

After building a team of people, Simmons then had to plan the event, bringing on new obstacles.

“Once we got into planning, we realized it’s really hard to get food for 200 people,” Simmons said. “It was really important to us that every dollar that we raised went directly to the cause, so there was no operating budget. We had to really improvise.”

The current Dance Marathon team has gone through a similar process, according to Marlaina Hahn ’19, director of finance.

“One of the really neat things about our event is that all of the money goes directly to the kids,” Hahn said. “None of it is taken out to buy any of the supplies that we have here. Everything comes as a donation from someone, whether it be the university, or a student organization donating their time, or the pizza shop donating pizza. It’s truly incredible how you can get a community, not  just St. Joe’s, but the local community to get behind something like this.”

Among the donations were pizza, drinks and raffle prizes, including restaurant gift cards and a Keurig coffee maker. Hairdressers also provided their services for hair donations.

The Dance Marathon board also collaborated with campus DJs, the dance team and the City Belles for entertainment during the event.

While the contributions by both the St. Joe’s and surrounding communities were appreciated, Kloiber said the executive board hopes to expand those relationships to get a better turnout in the future.

“While not everything may have gone in the way that we would have hoped for, we’re using this as a building block, because it’s basically starting at nothing again,” Kloiber said. “We started from the bottom two years ago, and we’re starting back because we’re trying to rebuild some of those relationships.”

The Executive board members said they are still optimistic about this year’s event and the future of the organization, despite a smaller turnout.

“At the end of the day, it’s a couple more thousand dollars to CHOP,” Hahn said. “We may not reach our goal by the end of the night, but it’s more money for the kids. You’d be surprised what $100 could do for the kids at CHOP, let alone a couple thousand.”

Simmons said it was hard to leave the organization when she graduated, but she nonetheless was impressed with the work that the new members have done.

“I’m so proud of what the exec team has done, because most of the team now was not on the original board,” Simmons said. “They didn’t understand all the forceful work we had to do in the beginning but still have managed to have their own love and passion for it.”

At the same time, Simmons said she hopes the organization can overcome this year’s obstacles and connect with other groups on campus.

“It’s really important to me that everyone on campus understands that we’re not in competition with anyone,” Simmons said. “It’s such an amazing cause, and it could be more amazing if you get more people to get involved in a multitude of ways.”