Learning to Roar: My Student Journey Planning the Sustainable Safari Fundraiser
Learning to Roar: My Student Journey Planning the Sustainable Safari Fundraiser
By: Victor Alamillo
The invaluable skills I learned working on the most successful Colorado PRSSA fundraiser ever.
This summer I had the opportunity to be the Fundraiser Coordinator for the CU PRSSA chapter. In my role, I collaborated with the PRSA Colorado chapter to create a fundraising event to help send chapter members to the PRSSA National Conference and PRSA ICON this fall. Initially, I thought the experience would be easygoing and minimal work; however, as the planning process continued, I quickly learned how many steps are required to create a successful event.
My first task was to find a topic to focus on for the fundraising event. As a part of Generation Z, I am passionate about raising awareness of environmental issues and pushing myself to expand my knowledge on sustainability. For the fundraiser, I wanted an event where PR professionals could learn more about sustainability and how to communicate new initiatives for their organizations. Therefore, I planned to have a panel discussion with speakers from different industries for the day of the fundraiser. I wanted the panel to allow communicators to learn about the work being done in government, higher education and legislative spaces.
I decided to go with safari as the theme for this year’s fundraiser because I was aiming to take PR practitioners on an exploration of the different sides of sustainability. With the theme decided, I wanted to tie in the safari aspect with the topic of sustainability. I decided to make the different sponsorship levels named after safari animals that were going extinct due to climate change or habitat loss.
For the sponsorship levels, I leveraged different perks such as social media shoutouts, recognition in AV slides on the day of the event, ad in the program, etc. In total, there were seven different packages, with three being personal sponsorships starting at $20 and going up to $75. Once I had the different packages planned, I began reaching out to PR agencies listed on the Denver PR Blog.
As sponsors began to respond to my email, I started crafting social media posts with their logos. I wanted to keep everything cohesive and tie each sponsor to their level. Therefore, I made the background image of each sponsor’s social media post correlate to the animal of their donation level.
Creating the program and signage for the day of the event took a lot of learning. I had never used Adobe InDesign, but having the experience of struggling to learn the application allowed me to add another skill to my set. I found this to be rewarding especially since I’m honing in on my skills to prepare for the workforce.
The initial goal of the fundraiser was to raise $3,000 for the CU PRSSA chapter. Thankfully, we surpassed our goal and raised over $9,000 for our chapter, making this year’s fundraiser the most successful to date.
The CU PRSSA chapter would like to thank everyone for their support and contribution to this year’s fundraiser. I could not have accomplished any of this without the help of Jane Dvorak, Jason Evans and Kimberly Stern. I am excited and cannot wait to attend PRSSA National and PRSA ICON this fall alongside my chapter members.
