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HuskyTHON and QTHON Represent Connecticut Children’s Medical Center at Dance Marathon Leadership Conference

This past weekend, students from HuskyTHON at the University of Connecticut and QTHON at Quinnipiac University joined over 950 passionate Dance Marathon student leaders, university administrators, and hospital foundation staff members at the 2018 Miracle Network Dance Marathon Leadership Conference in Indianapolis, IN.

While at the conference, both HuskyTHON and QTHON were recognized for sharing some of their own successes from the 2017-2018 academic year. Each program was able to surpass their respective fundraising goal by engaging more participants. QTHON raised $265,431.79, and HuskyTHON hit $1 million for the first time.

The recognition did not end there – Miracle Network Dance Marathon recognized HuskyTHON with two awards throughout the weekend.

Extra Comma Club Award

The Extra Comma Club Award is presented to Miracle Network Dance Marathon programs during the year in which they over $1 million annually for the first time, thus adding an extra comma to their fundraising total. In 2018, HuskyTHON raised a total of $1,021,485.37. This total was a 22% increase over their previous year’s total and makes them the 9th highest fundraising Miracle Network Dance Marathon program in the nation. This past year, they had 2,471 participants fundraise, contributing 93% of the overall fundraising total.

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Digital Media Award

The digital media award recognizes a Dance Marathon program that best utilizes digital media to bring the mission of their organization to life, whether it be to highlight a campaign, educate and engage their audiences, or tell a story. The success of HuskyTHON meeting their impressive $1 million goal was mainly due in part to their strategic utilization of various digital media outlets. The outlets proved to be vital in spreading awareness and generating involvement at the University of Connecticut as well as their surrounding community.

Their goal was not only to raise $1 million, but also to revamp their digital media assets to reflect those of a million dollar non-profit program. HuskyTHON began their journey to $1 million by creating a promotional video showing how significant a million dollars is to their miracle kids and families. By asking questions such as “how big is a million?” and “what would you do with a million dollars?” to some of their donors, doctors, miracle kids, and participants, they were able to add a human element to their sizable monetary goal and a face to their cause.

Throughout the year, HuskyTHON utilized their social media channels to post content that their followers would be excited to share, helping them to broaden their reach and increase awareness about their organization. HuskyTHON also created a new website, hoping to have a site that was more user-friendly and interconnected with other digital media assets. The website was designed with the purpose of acting as a central hub for all HuskyTHON-related information. It was able to connect with other digital media accounts such as the HuskyTHON app and real-time updates of its calendar feature. Their app utilizes push notifications to keep app users, their participants, up to date on all things HuskyTHON.

These new changes to HuskyTHON’s digital media presence led to new audiences wanting to interact with the organization. On multiple occasions, local news teams were present to cover HuskyTHON’s events. It even attracted rapper Drake to express his support for HuskyTHON on Instagram.

DMLC was a weekend full of celebrating last year’s successes and brainstorming for the upcoming year. We are very excited to see what HuskyTHON and QTHON set out to accomplish For The Kids!