Team Face the Future Foundation / Potbelly

The assigned objective was to create, plan and execute a fund raising project for a designated charity.  Our team chose to support the Face The Future Foundation (FTFF).  FTFF is a non-profit organization supporting the University of Illinois Craniofacial Center.  The Craniofacial Center is one of the oldest and largest facilities in the world dedicated to the treatment of infants, children, adolescents and adults with cleft lip and palate and other congenital craniofacial conditions. 

Our team partnered with Potbelly Sandwich Works, specifically the store located at 1459 W. Taylor Street.  This location is steps away from the UIC campus and the Craniofacial Center. Potbelly pledged to donate 25% of sales during one evening’s dinner service (5-8pm).  The event was held on Thursday, August 2.  Our team recruited friends, FTFF board members and Craniofacial Center staff to attend the event.  Team members offered free shakes to entice people on the street to attend the event and learn more about FTFF. 

Our team chose to partner with these organizations because of existing relationships.  Kacie is a member of the FTFF junior board.  Kacie’s relationship facilitated faster and more effective communication with FTFF.  Dan works for Potbelly in the marketing department.  Dan leveraged Potbelly’s promotional resources and communicated with store leadership.

In addition to holding the Potbelly event, our team sought to leverage our personal and professional networks to raise funds.  Team members used word-of-mouth, email and social media to drive people to the FTFF website to donate.  Several team members sold Potbelly cookies to co-workers, family and friends.  One team member held a company-sponsored “Wear Your Jeans to Work Day” to raise funds.

Our team raised $2,588.75, more than any other group in the class.  Our team initially projected $200 as our fund-raising goal.  However, that amount was solely revenue from Potbelly.  After adding donations, we revised our goal to $1,000.  We were able to far exceed our goal.  We also were able to spread awareness of FTFF to hundreds of individual we touched in our campaign.

In our initial proposal, we estimated we would raise $212.50 through our partnership with Potbelly.  Our actual total was $251.75, an 18% increase over the estimated total.  It is clear that our event drove additional traffic to the Potbelly.  We were able to bring more than 15 friends and co-workers to the event.  Potbelly was very happy with our event, their first fund raiser.

Advice for future teams

Make sure you follow your plans and do not lose sight of your objectives.  Our team did not use our implementation plan well enough.  We each took our own assigned tasks and completed the tasks, but did not integrate our tasks into the larger project or interface with other team members enough.  We would also recommend appointing a true project manager to facilitate collaboration and communication.  Because of the size of our team, certain messages were not communicated uniformly or well enough.  Irini blogged about the value of a communication plan – your team may benefit from that exercise.

Lessons Learned

Test everything!  Be prepared for technology challenges!  One challenge we faced was the FTFF website.  The website was difficult to navigate for some users.  This led to frustrated people not able to donate and a lot of last minute headaches for the team.  This problem was not on our risk management plan and we did not anticipate this issue.  In retrospect, our team should have thought this through as technology issues are common.  We should have tested the website in advance.

Beware of scope creep.  Given that our team had 7 members, we needed to raise a substantial amount of money for this project to be successful.  Our team needed to raise funds beyond the $251.75 generated by Potbelly.  However, as we added new branches to our fund raising plan (cookie sales, online donations, day-of cash donations, work sponsored event) it was difficult to manage everything.  Our team lost sight of the initial objective to some degree and it was difficult to be on top of everything.

More is not always merrier.  It was clear that this project could have been managed with fewer people.  The extra people allowed our team to raise an impressive $2,588.75.  However, the project could have been managed more effectively.  Our team attempted to divide the project tasks evenly, but this was not possible and not efficient.  Rather than have one person handle a task well, in some cases, we divided the task further and allocated the work to two people.  The result was not cohesive.

 

 

4 thoughts on “Team Face the Future Foundation / Potbelly

  1. This is a great project and I have done one very similar in High School. We did it at Caribou Coffee and were giving one of there new products to sell. We also set a goal to get to around $200 and that was about what we ended up donating, to see your numbers was very exciting and shows that it can be done. Good work!

  2. I really enjoyed reading this article about your success with the fundraising event. I have volunteered at a nonprofit organization for six years and grown to really enjoy participating in service projects. It is difficult to plan and execute perfectly but in the end, you have still helped society. Hearing that you went from a projected goal of $200 to actually raising $2,588.75 is just amazing. I would love to try planning an event similar to this some day.

  3. I am a University of Illinois alumni and I thought the idea of partnering with a business that appealed to a demographic that I understand would be wise. I will take the advice offered to appoint a “true project manager” as my group will also face challenges remaining as effective with a large number of people. Perhaps the takeaway that the tasks should remain cohesive with clear accountability will aid us in operating in more than one location. It looks like the event was fun and that the real challenge was when you faced opening up more avenues to raise money. Great job and congratulations on your accomplishments!

  4. We’ve only just started, and I can also testify to the importance of a project manager. Tom is our project manager, and I have a feeling just watching him work will be one of the valuable experiences of this whole program. He has already started getting us centered around a common task and purpose. I look forward to working with him.

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