Team 4 – NAHS Fundraising Project

Posted on by carey598spr19

Project Description:

Our team chose the Naperville Area Humane Society as our non-profit organization to focus our fundraising effort. Admittedly, we were really ambitious with our goals at the start our project (more on that later!) but ultimately narrowed our focus toward achievable goals given our timeline. Our group focused on the following Events:

Go Fund Me Campaign

Raffle Event

Mini-Golf Tournament

We identified our strategic audience for each event to ensure we were targeting the right donors and then used many of the PM best practices to drive the events to completion. Ultimately, we were able to meet our fundraising and participation goals for each event with the bulk of our donations coming from our Go Fund Me campaigns. Overall, we were able to raise a little over $1,100 dollars for the Naperville Area Humane Society!

Charity Description:

The Naperville Area Humane Society is a no-kill animal shelter for cats and dogs that services the Naperville and surrounding area. The Naperville Area Humane Society is dedicated to making sure every animal can find a home, and receive the care they need to live a happy and healthy life. Their mission is promote the humane treatment of companion animals and create lasting human-animal bonds. They deliver services to the community that reflect integrity, respect, compassion and joy for all people and animals.

Project Goals:

The above table shows the matrix we created to grade our efforts with each event in our project scope. We decided to weight our success from “Goal Partially Met” – “Goal Exceeded” and then we determined a dollar range for each of the buckets in the matrix. The purple highlighted boxes represent the actual range we achieved for each event. We raised a little over $1,100 across the three events = GOAL MET!!

Lessons Learned:

We mentioned earlier that we started off with huge ambitions and many ideas on how we could make a difference and raise money. This made it difficult for our team of five to make decisions and move the project forward early on. There was quite a bit scope creep early on and when we compared our ideas to the project timeline, we were able to plan more realistically with the time available to complete each event.

Advice to Future Teams:

First, don’t forget to have fun with your projects – You’re helping to make a difference and that’s awesome!

A detailed risk mitigation plan is very important because there will be things out of your control that may negatively impact your project – Your risk mitigation plan will literally help you weather the storm! Identify everything that could possibly go wrong and you’ll put your team in a position to meet your goals.

We had a big team and it was important to send summaries of meeting minutes and deliverables, after every meeting, to ensure the entire team was on the same page and up to speed on next steps. Even on smaller teams we found that this was an effective way to avoid confusion and keep the project teams aligned with the project status and on-time with deliverables.

 

The Knights of Nutrition – Feed My Starving Children

Posted on by connie598spr19

Project Description:

 

For our project, we chose to work with Feed My Starving Children (FMSC) located in Schaumburg, IL. In order to support and raise awareness for FMSC we coordinated an online fundraiser, as well as a food-packing event. Our food-packing event was held on May 31st, 2019 at the FMSC location in Schaumburg from 12-2pm. Our goal for the event was to have 40 volunteers and raise $1,000. The event was a great success and we were able to pack enough meals to feed 102 children for a year. Prior to the event, we created an online donation page through the FMSC website in an attempt to raise our goal of $1,000. We were able to raise a total of $1,222 through Facebook and the FMSC donation webpage. We also were able to secure a $1,000 matching contribution donation from Robert Bosch Power Tools.

Description of Charity:

 

Feed My Staving Children is a non-profit organization founded in 1987 that provides volunteers the opportunity to pack dry ingredients, vitamins and minerals into individual bags. These meals will reach people around the world and help feed and save the lives of many people. Feed My Starving Children’s mission is, “Feeding God’s starving children hungry in body and spirit.” Through donations received from individuals, they are able to purchase the ingredients for their meals.

Goals:

 

  • Raise $1,000
  • Secure Bosch matching contribution
  • Recruit 40 volunteers

Results:

 

  • Raised $2,222
  • Bosch matching contribution of $1,000
  • Recruited 45 volunteers

Lessons Learned:

 

There were many lessons learned throughout this project. The most important were organization and effective communication with your team. These were very important to us because we were a small team and needed to be organized in order to successfully complete this project. We quickly learned that it was necessary to communicate via multiple methods of communication. A combination of emails, texts and in person meetings were necessary to keep us on track with all the project deliverables.  We also realized that organization was important to ensure all members were on the same page.

Advice to Future Teams:

 

Our advice to future teams would be to have fun, trust your team members, start the project as soon as possible and do not be afraid to deviate from your initial plan. There are many deliverables and tasks that need to be completed, but if you start early enough and work well with your team members, your project results will be great.

 

The Women’s Treatment Center Clothing Room Project

Posted on by chris598spr19

Project Description

For our project we wanted to update the clothing room at the Women’s Treatment Center in Chicago, Illinois. The clothing room is where all of the clothing donations are stored. The women can get clothing for themselves or their children in this room. Our update included new paint, new shelves, new clothing rods, a new folding table, a new door sign, and plaques for the shelving. Due to the expenses of this project, we needed to raise a significant amount of funds, so fundraising was done before the building was able to start.

Description of Charity

The Women’s Treatment Center helps women who are recovering from addiction. Some of the services that this center offers are medical detox, parenting classes, an emergency nursery, a CPS certified pre-K, housing, and career training. The fact that the women can live with their children (up to 5 years old) in this center is one of the reasons it is unique.

Results

For our project, we had various goals set during our project proposal. These goals included raising $1000 from donations, getting corporate donation matching up to $1000, raise awareness of the organization through fundraising, recruit at least two volunteers to help, install new shelving and clothing rods, and complete the work within one 8 hour day. We had two stretch goals, which included painting the room and adding a new sorting table.

We were able to achieve all of the goals that we set. We raised slightly over $2000 in donations, which more than doubled our goal. Bosch agreed to match $1000 of those donations. We had more than 50 shares on our GoFundMe page which means there was awareness driven. For our paint day we had one volunteer, and for our build day we had three volunteers. This also doubled our goal of two volunteers. We did complete the painting in one day (4 hours) and the building within one day (6 hours). Due to the stretch paint goal completed, we did use two days rather than one, but the original build day scope was within our timeframe of one day. We were also able to purchase a new sorting table due to the extra funds raised.

Lessons Learned

There were many lessons learned through this process. The most important lesson from this project was looking at all of the possible risks associated. The day before the build and the day of the build we had some issues arise and were able to overcome all of them to successfully complete the project in the given timeline.

Next, assigning specific tasks with deadlines is extremely important. Just having a list of tasks and roles assigned is not enough. Setting deadlines allows you to determine your critical path to ensure everything is complete by the project deadline.

Finally, I think it is important to enjoy yourself during the project. This was one of the assigned goals but we realized that if we were not having fun and enjoying what we were doing then we would not be motivated to complete the project and hit our stretch goals.

Advice to Future Teams

The most important piece of advice I can give is to get started early. This is something we were told in class #1. Luckily, we started right away raising money and not waiting for class deliverables to get started. This allowed us to raise much more money than expected.

Next, having weekly update meetings to ensure tasks are moving forward. If you just discuss verbally and do not have a living document then it is easy to forget necessary tasks.

The last piece of advice is to run through the user journey with your group a few times to write down anything you might miss. In doing this, we remembered many critical things like moving carts, garbage bags, and specialty tools.

Photos

Before

 

Paint Day

 

Complete Project!

Free Street Theater

Posted on by ivelina598spr19

Our team chose to support Free Street Theater, a Chicago-based non-profit theater company that has been in the city for 50 years. After a few calls and discussions, we decided to support their marketing. With a team of only 4 full-time members, Free Street needed a lot of help with marketing, communication and strategy. We focused on 3 main goals: supporting their May 2019 youth play, creating an electronic press kit (EPK) and strategizing around their 50th anniversary event (50-in-50 which was comprised of 50 performances in each of the 50 wards in Chicago).

Free Street Theater (FST) is committed to building community through performances, facilitating difficult conversations and being accessible to anyone, anywhere. One of their main focuses is on creating a safe space for youth and compensating them for their efforts in producing and acting in performances. They have two main locations but also use community areas as their stage.

Free Street produces youth shows throughout the year including teens and young adults. Their May 2019 youth play was titled Parched, and spoke to water justice, pollution and theft. The teens that were part of the play exposed injustices and discussed the power of water and the privilege behind it. Team 1 assisted with supporting donations for FST through seeking donations and creating a pledge card. FST is also celebrating their 50th anniversary in June of 2019. They already established an event to celebrate this occasion when we joined: 50-in-50. They will hold 50 performances within all 50 wards in Chicago on June 23rd. Team 1 supported them with a communication strategy leading up to the event. Lastly, FST was in need of an EPK for various reasons. This is a helpful document to have for future grant-asks, public relations, article writing and donations. This press kit is ultimately their website scaled down to less than 10 pages of a PDF. Our help was needed in various tasks for each of the areas above.

Our project objective was to increase the ease and frequency in which the charity could receive donations and social media followers at their events. The ease of donating was a huge success by creating a “pledge card” which could be included as an insert in the program for any Free Street Theater event. This card was a simple and intuitive layout which gave 2 options for donating. First one could fill in the basic information (name and contact info) to be followed up with at another time since there was often a line by the ticket counter and people might be in a hurry to get home after the shows. Second we had a QR code which links directly to the charity’s donation page. In addition to collecting donations the card also has the reminders to check the Free Street Theater social media pages and a section to advertise the next upcoming event. While donations can be highly variable, we were told that on average plays usually raise about $250 per night that it runs accounting for both ticket sales and good will donations. Our goal was to raise the stakes and we were shooting for helping them reach double their average collections. The play was actually sold out in the last weekend it was running (with 20 people turned away because of lack of seats), so it was extended an additional weekend.

Our original success matrix was ambitious and we didn’t consider that with 50 in 50 being several weeks after the conclusion of our class, we may not be able to see a measurable change in the social media relations. Instead we changed the matrix to account for timely delivery on the community ward map and EPK since FST was requesting this a prerequisite for some other activities like choosing the locations for the 50 different performances.

 

Success Matrix
Increased donations at plays & other
Current plays $250
Success $350
Stretch Goal $500
Actual $3,131

 

Usually there are 2 plays for a weekend and they would run 3-4 weekends in a row. That means an average play gets $1500-2000. We wanted to bump this measurably, and we also got more bullish on the stretch goal when we learned that Bosch would be matching donations up to $1000 which made doubling their average seem achievable. Total donations raised by the play + Bosch’s match + outside donations were $3,131.

 

Community Map
Success Complete on time
Stretch Goal Accepted and every ward listed with at least the alderman contact info and 1 community area
Actual COMPLETED

 

The community map was underestimated and ended up taking many hours longer than anticipated. Because of this we did not complete the map in time before it was shared with presenting teams. None the less, it’s being treated as a living document so anyone can add or modify fields, so it should hopefully prove useful in the future as well.

 

EPK
Success Accepted by FST and per spec.
Stretch Goal Accepted and complete by target date (5/28)
Actual COMPLETED

 

The EPK was much more critical to have a document that was refined and represented the brand of Free Street Theater. We got a template of guidelines that should also be followed in order to keep a more consistent image with the website.

 

Two or three lessons learned about managing projects

            Something we learned early on was that we needed to have a schedule of our own deadlines. We had a lot of moving pieces throughout the project, with deadlines for class assignments as well as deadlines to the organization. We created our work breakdown structure and included as many details as possible. We kept a secondary file with our personal responsibilities and team deadlines. This helped us throughout the quarter.

Another thing we learned early on in the project was when you’re working with a charity on a project that is more in-depth than just hosting an event or getting donations, you have to set clear expectations on what you want to learn. We were given a lot of different tasks that didn’t necessarily align with what our goals were. We quickly reevaluated and aligned on deliverables that had multiple uses (i.e. electronic press kit, pledge card, community map).

 

Advice for future teams doing similar projects

            Our advice is to think outside of the box. You don’t have to do a typical event or fundraiser. We wanted to help in an area where we could drive future change rather than in-the-moment change. A lot of non-profits don’t have the bandwidth for a lot of marketing they would like to help gain traction and ultimately get more donations. Our support would be used in future events such as grant writing, press releases and events/performances.

Fantastic 4 Feeding My Starving Children

Posted on by larsa598fall18

Project

Our team planned a volunteer event, and an online fundraiser for Feed My Starving Children charity located in Schaumburg, IL. Our project held the volunteer event on Saturday, November 3rd, 2018 with a goal of recruiting 20 total volunteers. We set a fundraiser monetary goal at $500. We wanted to spread awareness through donations for those that could not volunteer their time; we also wanted volunteers in hopes that they could continue to volunteer on their own once they saw how much donating their time impacted the charity, and helped feed the starving children around the world.

Charity

Founded in 1987, Feed My Starving Children (FMSC) is a Christian non-profit that provides nutritionally complete meals specifically formulated for malnourished children. Their mission is to feed God’s starving children who are hungry in body and spirit. Their process is simple, which is raising donations to acquire meal ingredients, and recruiting volunteers to hand-pack the meals. Meals are donated to FMSC food partners around the world, where kids are fed and lives are saved!

Analysis of Success

Goals Actual Results
Raise $500 in online donations $700 total of 23 donors
Recruit 20 volunteers for the event 20 showed up to actual event
Raise awareness : Reach 500 people Emailed: 75 people

Text: To close friends and family: 61 people

Volunteer event 20 people

Total: 165

 

Project cost: $60 for 4 group T-shirts. We didn’t incur additional costs because the charity provided fundraiser site and our volunteers paid for their own transportation.

Overall we were able to raise $700 in online donations, and we had 20 volunteers show up on our event day. Our volunteers packed 6,981 meals that will feed 19 children for a year. We were able to spread awareness through social media by reaching out a platform of over 2000 people; however, there was no way of properly tracking all the views, and analyzing the full extent of our impact. Therefore, we didn’t include social media in our actual results. We utilized our own social media platforms, as well as, communicated to friends and colleagues via email and text. We personally called or told our friends and family about our event in person, and asked them to spread the word. As a team we felt that we achieved our goals and successfully spread awareness.

Lessons Learned

There were two lessons we learned from this project; the importance of effective communication and delegation of tasks. Communications via text and in class meetings were not sufficient enough for us to manage our project effectively. We found that scheduling meetings outside of class time, as well as, conference calls at least once a week were more productive for us. Delegation of task was another lesson we learned. Had we utilized the work breakdown structure and assigned tasks properly at the very beginning, we would have most likely raised more funds.

Advice

Communicating on a regular basis to track progress and meeting outside of class is important to ensure the project is executed in timely manner. Don’t be afraid to ask for help from professional and personal networks. Our networks helped us recruit additional volunteers, raise funds, and reach wider audience to spread awareness.

 

The Glass Slipper Project

Posted on by hannah598fall18

Project Description

Team 5 hosted an event for the Glass Slipper Project on Saturday, November 3rd from 2pm to 5pm at T.G.I. Friday’s to raise money and awareness for The Glass Slipper Project. During the event, guests were able to eat, socialize and learn more about the Glass Slipper Project. The team collected prom dresses, shoes, purses, jewelry and money to benefit the charity.

Charity

The Glass Slipper Project is a non-profit organization that was founded in 1999 and is based in Chicago, Illinois. The organization collects new and almost new formal dresses and accessories and provides them to girls with junior and/or senior status in high school. Since its inception, The Glass Slipper Project has helped over 20,000 young women attend their proms! Students shop for a free outfit, aided by more than 500 volunteer personal shoppers, with alterations available on-site.

The Glass Slipper Project was founded by Dorian Carter, Katherine Goldberg Shaw and Rachel Hart Klayman, with assistance from Julie Ann Sklaver. While Chicago Public Schools and private donors provide support for its operations, it is volunteer run and has no paid staff.

Analysis of Success

Team 5 had the following goals to measure success:

  • Collect at least 30 dresses & accessories from the following list:
    • Unused makeup
    • Sparkly jewelry (earrings, bracelets, necklaces)
    • Small, dressy purses
    • Dressy shoes and sandals
    • New or gently used formal dresses
  • Have at least 40 people attend the event
  • Have a board member from the Glass Slipper Project attend our event
  • Raise awareness for the Glass Slipper Project
  • Get 1 person to sign up to volunteer during prom season
  • Raise $750 in monetary donations for the Glass Slipper Project

We were able to achieve 3 of our 6 goals. We exceeded our both of our donation goals. We collected the following items for the Glass Slipper Project: 60 formal dresses, 10 pairs of shoes, 40 pieces of sparkly jewelry, 3 small, dressy purses and 5 makeup kits. We also collected $835 in monetary donations. We were also able to raise awareness for the charity. During our event, several members of the T.G.I. Friday’s staff, as well as other dining customers, stopped by to pick up flyers  and asked where they can drop off dresses in the future. While we had a great event, we did not exceed our attendee goal, did not have a board member from the Glass Slipper Project attend our event and did not get a volunteer to sign up. Overall, we had about 35 people attend our event.

Lessons Learned

We learned the following lessons throughout the planning of our event:

  1. Communication – We first learned that communication is key. You have to stay in constant contact with everyone that is involved with your event – especially your other group members!
  2. Marketing Your Event – We also learned how important it is to make sure you have your marketing material done as soon as possible and that you send out your invites early. This way people are aware of your event and hopefully they are free to attend.
  3. Stay Organized – Make sure you have your implementation plan and risk management plan done early. These tools are crucial to the success of the event. The implementation plan helps you stay organized and keeps everyone on task. The risk management helps you prepare for anything that could go wrong with your event.

Advice for Future Teams

Our advice for future teams would be to make sure you stay on top of getting everything done in a timely manner. Get in contact with the charity and the venue people early. When you talk to anyone, make sure that you get everything in writing.

Photos of the Event

Impacting Futures with the Boys and Girls Club

Posted on by billy598fall18

THE PROJECT

Team 1 planned and implemented a fundraising event for the Boys and Girls Club. The project was designed around two components: a fundraiser held at Vapiano located at 222 S Riverside and an online portal created to accept donations prior to and after the fundraising event.  Tickets to the fundraiser were sold for $30 which provided guests with an open bar of beer and wine as well as pizza from 4:30 pm to 7:30 pm on Wednesday November 7, 2018.  At the event we raffled off five separate signed sports memorabilia.   Raffle tickets were available to guests at $20 for an arm’s length.  Attendees also had the opportunity to sign up for volunteer opportunities with the Boys and Girls Club.  For those who could not attend the event, the online portal provided an opportunity to support the organization in whatever monetary amount they were comfortable with.

THE CHARITY

The Boys and Girls Club provides children “emotional, educational, physical, and cultural resources that allow them to enjoy their childhood and eventually thrive in adulthood.” With an emphasis on kids from low-income neighborhoods and areas of high risk of violence, the Boys and Girls Club provides mentoring as well as educational and character development programs. We partnered with the local Elgin chapter as well as the national organization with proceed from the fundraising event supporting the local chapter and the online portal supporting the national organization.

ANALYSIS OF SUCCESS

Our team had four main goals and objectives:

  1. Raise at least $1,000 for the charity
  2. Attendee goal of 40 people
  3. Awareness goal of registering 3 new volunteers
  4. No negative publicity or negative experience for charity or attendees

We were able to achieve 3 of our 4 objectives.  We exceeded both our fundraising and attendee goal.  In total we raised $3,135 for the charity, $2,605 of which came exclusively from our online donation portal.  44 people attended our event which, net of expenses, raised an additional $530.  Through both components we were able to provide a great experience for those who attended the event as well as great publicity for the Boys and Girls Club.

While we had hoped to register 3 new volunteers at the event, we were unsuccessful in doing so.  However, we had 78 individuals donate through the online portal which brought them directly to the organization’s website.  Despite not achieving this specific goal, we believe we were still able to do a good job of raising awareness of the benefits of the organization.

LESSONS LEARNED

Two key lessons we learned by planning and implementing this project were the importance of having a risk management plan and a thorough work breakdown structure.  Despite how simple your event may seem, taking the time to identify all potential risks, whether they seem likely or not, as well as contingencies for those risks will make it much easier when something inevitably does not go according to plan. In addition, while it may seem unnecessary, creating a work breakdown structure to a very detailed level will allow you to identify any gaps in your planning before those gaps turn into problems.  Having a brainstorming session and sticky notes is very effective way to begin the process.

ADVICE

Leverage your own networks and do not be afraid to ask for help or participation.  We originally believed the bulk of our donation would come from the fundraising event and not the online portal, but we were surprised to have the opposite happen.  By leveraging each team member’s network of friends, colleagues, and family we were able to have over 100 participants between donations online and at the fundraising event.  When you leverage your network do not be afraid to ask for donations or attendance.  Everyone has a desire to help those in their own network and you will be amazed at how many people want to see your event succeed.  All you have to do is ask.

EVENT PICTURES

Ellie Burns Foundation

Posted on by jon598fall18

Team 2 Ellie Burns Foundation

Our team coordinated a funding raising event at Healy’s Westside Pub to help raise funds for the Ellie Burns Foundation. We obtained a donated package with bar management to donate food for 3 hours as well as provide a keg of beer. We will charge a cover charge at the door of $20 for the meal and drink package. During the event we will socialize and help spread the word about the Burns Foundation while also participating in silent auction and a raffle for an iWatch.

The charity is the Ellie Burns Foundation, a local organization with fundraisers mainly occurring in the North Shore and greater Chicago Land Area. The organization also has ties to Miami University in Ohio where one of our team members obtained his undergraduate degree. The purpose of the charity is to fund scholarships for High School students to promote leadership and education through outdoor activities. The proceeds from our event were to help fund a trip to Tanzania for two students.

We defined success in this event through the following achievements:

  • Plan well and execute well. Set reasonable expectations, communicate frequently and work effectively as a team
  • Meet or exceed projected revenue/profit expectations of $500 from the fundraising events
    • <$500 – “Successful”
    • $501-$1000 – “Very Successful”
    • $1000+ – “Extremely Successful”
  • Raise awareness among co-workers, students, working professionals and friends/families
  • Reach out to individuals/organizations via direct phone calls, emails, social media, etc
  • Establish ongoing commitments to the cause/ongoing online donations
  • Have lots of fun!

We are happy to report that all these objectives were fulfilled by the end of the event and we were able to raise over $1500.

Two lessons we learned from this are in the invitation process and plan implementation. In term of inviting guests, some arrivals we thought for sure would show up did not and people that we mentioned this to in passing not only showed up but contributed greatly. The lesson learned was to let the entire masses know of your event regardless of their relationship to you. The second lesson was to have back up plans to any downturns. The party went off without a hitch but we were prepared for low attendance and weather impacts.

Our advice to future team members would be to choose a charity that you are already involved with our have a passion for. The whole process will hardly feel like work at all.

  

Team 4 – Lincoln Park Community Shelter

Posted on by liz598fall18

Project Description

Our project’s objective was intended to generate direct revenue, as well as in-kind donations, and also provide a service for a worthy cause. The project scope included the following deliverables:

  • Service Event – Planned, cooked, and served breakfast for the Interim Housing Community on the morning of Friday, October 19th. We needed to arrive at 6:30am with our meal plan and groceries for 20-30 Lincoln Park residents. We also had to clean-up afterwards.
  • Fundraising Event
    • Payment in Kind: Received donations of supplies,40 items, needed by selected charity
      • Advertised to neighbors, friends, family and co-workers
      • Utilized social media, email, phone calls, and in person meetings
    • Monetary Revenue: Receive donations of $450
      • Advertised to neighbors, friends, family and co-workers
      • Utilized social media, email, phone calls, and in person meetings

The project milestones included securing the date for the service event.  The entire projected was expected to be completed by November 9, 2018.  The project met our must objectives to be safe, legal, and comply with University policies.

Charity Description

The selected charity is a local organization and is Lincoln Park Community Services (LPCS). LPCS is a social services agency focused on addressing homelessness in Chicagoland. LPCS is a not-for-profit Illinois corporation founded in 1984. Their mission statement is, “LPCS brings communities together to empower individuals facing homelessness and poverty to secure stable housing and make sustainable life changes.” Today, their Interim Housing Community program offers 24 hour services and improved living and program space for up to 35 guests. The goals of the program are to provide a safe place to eat and sleep and help individuals return to self-sufficiency. LPCS is mostly privately funded, with great support from donations throughout the community.

Our contact was the Director of Community Engagement. There are no formal clearances or applications since this is a one-time event and temporary endeavor with our group. This was confirmed by the Director of Community Engagement. However, if we were repeating volunteers there would be a more formal screening process we would need to complete prior to our service.

This charity has the resources for our community service project and has made available those resources in exchange for volunteer time and willingness to raise funds. Lincoln Park Community Services has the kitchen and shelter space we will use for preparing, cooking, and serving food. In addition, LPCS will supply materials such as dishes, cookware, and utensils that will be needed. Most importantly, they also have the workers in addition to volunteers that have served this community for many years. Since there is a great need in Lincoln Park there were plenty of patrons to serve.

Objectives and Success

Original Project Objectives

Most Likely Case

Service Event: Successful completion with 2 additional volunteers

Monetary Event: $450 in donations

Payment-in-Kind Donations: 40 items with $3 average per item ($120 total)

These were divided into individual sub-goals; Raising $112.50 and collecting 10 items per person. This case was the project team’s goal

Best Case: 3 volunteers attend; $600 in donations ($150 per person); and 60 items (15 per person).

Worst Case: 0 volunteers attend, $350 in donations ($87.50 per person) and 20 items (5 per person)

Original Budget

Revenues Costs           Service Event Costs Fundraising
Monetary $500
Payment in Kind 40 items
Groceries 80
Boxes 0
Advertising 0
Total $450 + 40 items 80 0
Net Income (40 items x $3) $490

 

After further discussions with the Director of Community Engagement, there was little space at the shelter for items and cash donations would be more valued. As such, the project team slightly tweaked the scope of the project to exclude payment-in-kind and increase monetary donations by $120.

Actual Results

The overall project was a success as each goal was met. The service event was completed with uproarious applause from the patrons and two additional volunteers did come to help.  The team generated $760 in monetary donations with $150 in grocery expenses resulting in a net income of $610.  This exceeded the team’s net income goal of $490.

Lessons Learned

  1. Project scope – Be aware of taking on too much. Also, it is important to be adaptable. After having discussions with the charity’s director of event coordination it became apparent that one of our objective’=s didn’t align with one of their primary goals. As such, we were willing to revise the project scope after learning new information.
  2. Assign tasks – It is important to assign even the smallest tasks to individuals. This ensures accountability as well as the task being completed in a timely fashion. Until the task was assigned, we learned there was not a high likelihood it would be completed.
  3. Risk Management – It is important to think of all potential risks for the project. Of course, you will not be able to come up with all risks but spending a reasonable amount of time on this is important. There were a couple times when our risk management plan helped us. For example, we were concerned about the groceries being delivered; not only the logistics but in a timely fashion. As such, we utilized our contingency which was to have Instacart deliver directly to the location. This did increase expenses so we had to raise additional monetary donations to cover the increased costs.

Advice for Future Project Teams

Our team would advise the group to book the event location and time as soon as possible. There is only a short time for the class and this is the hardest thing to try and coordinate.  Once the location and time is decided then it is important to complete a work breakdown structure.  If you do not complete this then you will not realize all the small details that will be required in order to successfully complete your project.   Lastly, communication is key.  If you are having issues with your specific task or role, it’s important to speak up to your project manager so they can help resolve it or allocate more resources if possible.

Pictures of Volunteer Event

Team RWB Bag Toss

Posted on by daniel598s18

Project Description
Our team decided to host a charity fundraiser Bag Toss Tournament in order to raise awareness in our local communities regarding Team Red, White, and Blue (Team RWB). The event was hosted at American Legion Post 973 in Ravenswood over the Memorial Day weekend. Entrance into the tournament was $10 per participant/ $20 per team, with the winning team receiving a $50 prize and the rest going to the charity. During the event we raised additional funds through a 50/50 raffle. Prior to the event we set up a direct link to Team RWB’s website to collect online donations.

Charity
Team Red, White, and Blue is a non-profit Veterans organization that seeks to enrich the lives of American veterans by connecting them to their community through physical and social activity. Members participate in weekly/bi-weekly local events aimed to promote physical exercise as well as providing a social and support network. Some of the events include but are not limited to running, cycling and other fitness type actives.

Analysis of Success
Our goal was to raise funds for and awareness of Team RWB. Team RWB is the largest veterans organization in the United States though not many vets know about the outreach of this organization. We measured our success in term of how much monetary support we raised. Our initial goal was $500 given the short time frame in which to raise the funds and reviewing what other Team RWB teams have accomplished with previous online donations. Due to the amount of online giving we raised our goal to $1,000. We exceed our modified goal by raising $1,179. Our team is currently the highest grossing online donation team on the RWB website.

Lessons Learned
During the execution of the project, Team Geronimo concurs our primary lessons learned are ensuring the project plan had built in contingencies, delegation / accountability of tasks to meet the overall objective, and communication protocol. The following is a breakdown of each lesson learned:
● P-A-C-E. – This is a military acronym for Primary, Alternate, Contingency and Emergency. the two critical areas to focus on early in the planning process are Charity selection and the venue to host the event. As a group, we focused on one charity and as it turned out the charity was great to work with and supported us throughout the processes. If the selected charity did not work out, we would have needed to scramble to identify and coordinate another charity with little time to spare. Next, securing a venue was paramount. We had a venue picked early and were in negotiations about dates but ultimately didn’t work out. We had to restart our search for a second venue a couple weeks into the planning process. Our second attempt at finding a venue applied the PACE plan and took on a multi-prong approach with three venues to choose from. If we had to do it over, we would have approached multiple venues in parallel at on onset of the project.
● Delegation / Accountability – As a large team of seven, it was important to us to outline tasks assign owners for various major deliverables. We learned quickly, first couple of weeks, we needed a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and responsibility matrix to clearly communicate who was responsible for what. We completed the WBS and the responsibility matrix within a couple of weeks of starting the project. Both documents were refined over time and served as team tools to track accountability.
● Communication – Again, with having a large team, communication becomes very important in order to keep the plans moving forward. We operated with three forms of communication: WhatsApp group chat for day to day communications, group emails for longer conversations and attachments, and Google Docs where we kept all our deliverables. In hindsight we should have also developed a communications plan early in the process to document frequency and which channel was used. We learned quickly and that helped. We could have avoided a few miss-steps in the beginning and end of the project with communication if a comms plan was developed early.

Advice
Set realistic expectations for your project, but don’t be afraid to reach for higher goals
Networking is key, so invite everyone you know
Don’t be afraid to ask for volunteers/donations, etc. The worst they can say is no.
At times when the project becomes stressful, keep in mind that this is a learning experience and you are bringing real support to a worthy cause.