March 21, 2022
Written by Donovan Luo and Edited by Stephanie Sun
In the beginning, Building Bridges struggled to find a foothold as a non profit organization with little funding and many expenses. In order to cover the miscellaneous expenses of registering as a 501(c)(3) non profit and building a website, the Building Bridges Lambert Chapter held an ice cream fundraiser from March 11 - 18, 2022. In just one week, our extraordinary volunteers were able to raise over $500, and, while the profits were mainly used to pay for club and organizational expenses, the fundraiser shows the potential for Building Bridges to raise money for charity as an organization.
The students at Building Bridges’ Lambert Chapter spent weeks deciding how to raise money, coordinating with administrators, allotting time to pick up the ice cream, and clearing out spaces to store the ice cream, in preparation for the fundraiser. Through preparing for the fundraiser, the students learned how to better coordinate with one another as well as develop critical thinking and communication skills. Our members worked tirelessly to find a space where we could sell ice cream as well as deciding how to most effectively make money for our cause.
In the morning, the students brought in a freezer as well as all the ice cream they would sell and stored it in a freezer in the culinary kitchen. Then, just before lunch, the students rushed to set up a booth in the main hallway and retrieved the ice cream. During this process of moving ice cream, our students realized that if they brought all the ice cream to the booth, ultimately the ones that weren’t sold would melt. In order to solve this problem, fellow members skipped their lunch in order to periodically bring more ice cream to the booth. Throughout the lunch period some of our members would maintain the booth while others would walk around the hallways, persuading their fellow students to buy some ice cream. As the week came to a close, our members decided to offer discounts to students in order to sell more ice cream. In the end, the students that participated in the fundraiser came out as more confident, business smart, and quick thinking. The fundraiser allowed our students to build their social skills and persuasion skills through the selling of ice cream. Additionally, throughout the whole fundraiser our students made use of their critical thinking skills in order to solve a variety of problems such as the ones mentioned earlier.
As a large non profit organization this was one of Building Bridges’ first fundraisers. We’re incredibly proud of all our new members for taking on this monumental task. Despite their inexperience, our members succeeded and passed our goal of $300 by raising over $500. Not only did this particular fundraiser demonstrate the capability of Building Bridges to raise money for a greater good, it also gave young, developing students to immerse themselves in work which will benefit their community. Because of this, Building Bridges was able to pay for Lambert club fees and non profit fees, allowing the chapter to participate in Lambert recruiting events to further grow the organization with the support of the Lambert faculty.
In the future, Building Bridges hopes to expand its scope of operations and hold more fundraisers to support communities around Georgia and beyond. With multiple chapters in high schools all around Georgia, Building Bridges is confident that it will be able to help local communities and raise awareness for problems that surround us everyday.
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