Sigma Phi Epsilon’s sister sorority—Alpha Delta Pi—hosted their spring philanthropy, Touchdown and Tabs, whose beneficiary was Ronald McDonald House: a charitable organization that helps fund families boarding costs when a family member has cancer and must travel to receive their treatment. This philanthropy extends from March 2 to March 4 and involves 22 greek organizations on campus, all of whom participate in events that earn them points. The organization with the most points by the end of the fourth wins the philanthropy. This spring VA Kappa came out on top.
The first event was a percentage night at Chipotle and Tropical Smoothie, where a portion of the money spent on food would go towards RMH. After every purchase, one would place their receipt into a jar, with a jar for each respective organization. Each receipt would translate to five points. After this first event we were in seventh place with 300 points, with the organization in the lead having more than 700 points. We had some ground to make up.
On Tuesday things really started picking up. There was a flag football tournament hosted at Oak Lane Community, where each win a team would earn they would receive points. Final placings would yield more points to teams that placed in first, second and third. Unfortunately we were eliminated in the first round after Sigma Tau Gamma scored a last second touchdown. The crushing defeat hurt our chance at getting more points. We may have lost that battle, but the war was far from over.
Luckily we had a secret weapon, Ronald Mcdonald House collects can tabs and this was worked into ADPi’s philanthropy. For each pound of can tabs an organization would donate, it would yield 100 points. We had collected about 14lbs of can tabs through various means, which yielded us 1400 points, skyrocketing ourselves into first. However, this put a large target on our backs, as we had a 900 point lead over the organization in second, Alpha Gamma Rho.
It all came down to the final night. There was a crowdchange fundraiser where one dollar would translate to one point. However, in the last 12 hours there was a “Flash Donation Challenge” where one dollar would translate to five points. As soon as this was announced, donations came pouring in from other organizations in an attempt to beat us in the final hours of the philanthropy. It was not looking great at that time, as some organizations had donated upwards of $700 in an attempt to eclipse our point total.
However, we had come too far to lose everything on the final night. In our group chat, our external philanthropy chair, Robert Hodge, started to rally the troops. I even got personally invested in it by declaring if we won the philanthropy I would complete the Benny’s Challenge, which involves eating an entire 28” meat pizza in one sitting. In the last three hours of the flash challenge, the donations started coming in. People donated what they could, with some people donating $5, and some donations going from the $50 to $100 range. Then, as things started to get close at the end, the brother’s used some of the extra budget money to drop a $300 donation at the end to seal our win in the spring philanthropy.
At 12:01am on March 5, the dust settled and the final points were counted. In the end we had worked together as a brotherhood to raise over $1,100 to a great cause to help families impacted by cancer. I could not be more proud to be a part of this brotherhood, as seeing us all band together at the end to not only take action to win something, but to make a difference to families that need it most.
And now I have to eat an entire Benny’s Pizza, topped with 3lbs of meat, wish me luck.