This year, USCDM raised a stupefying amount of money for the Palmetto Health Children’s Hospital: $501,528.
By doing so, they reached their stated public goal of $500,000 and blew last year’s take — $318,649 — out of the water.
Before anything else, we want to commend everyone who participated in USCDM for carrying out a real public good, both on the dance floor and off. During the Main Event and the year of continuous fundraising leading up to it, they have shown that (per the Alesso song) they can certainly be heroes.
But it wasn’t just the number of people involved or their willingness to pester friends and family to wallet-dive for sick kids; this year’s impressive take also has a lot to do with how the overall fundraising was organized.
Perhaps the most important change was announcing a public goal of $500,000 at the beginning of the fundraising period. In years past, Dance Marathon was considered a success by continually surpassing the previous year’s record.
This time, they’ve shown that they can set and fulfill the kind of goal that might have seemed improbable, if not impossible. (Remember, before this year, they had yet to break $350,000, let alone a sum $150,000 more than that.)
The urgency to meet this high standard bled into this year’s main event, turning that ceremony from a 24-hour celebration to a 14-hour continuous push towards the end goal.
Safe to say, USCDM hit its target this year because everyone involved made sure that every single second of the Main Event was devoted to the larger cause, not simply having a good time (although there was plenty of that, too.)
The sheer number of ways participants were encouraged to contribute — from donating to get certain people out of “jail” to earning a medal for $80 a participant personally raised — made sure that the twin goals of having fun and fundraising were intertwined.
By setting a high public goal and using every second of the Main Event to reach them, USCDM has proven that it's capable of achieving far more than it has in previous years.
We hope that they carry these lessons into next year’s USCDM crew to even greater success.