Badger 4 Life campaign launched to raise money for athletic programs
Chad Copeland
The Badger 4 Life Giving Challenge has launched at the Johnson campus.
The campaign works through the platform Give Campus to raise money for the athletic department for things like equipment, travel costs and uniforms. Donors can donate to the team of their choice, or to the athletic department. At the end, all the money that goes to the athletic department will be split evenly among all the teams. The goal is to reach 150 donors by the time it ends at midnight on Dec. 2.
As of Nov. 14, the campaign has raised $3,278 with 91 donors. Out of the 91 donors, 24% are alumni, 17% are students, 6% are parents, 21% are faculty and staff and 20% are friends.
According to the site’s heat map, many of the donors come from Vermont with 45.
Pennsylvania comes in second with 16 donors, and third is California with six. Many donors come from the New England or the Mid-Atlantic regions.
On the site, you can see who has the most donors within each program and how much money they have raised. People who donate can also be advocates and make personal plea videos to encourage others to donate. Another feature is the ability to challenge others to donate by matching donations.
Chad Copeland, assistant athletic director for communications, has been behind the scenes operating this project. He mentioned that one of his first tasks when he arrived here a year ago was to work on development and fundraising.
Looking for ideas, he got one with help from Elaine Harvey, the former assistant athletic director for communications at Johnson. She was the assistant director for development and communications at Wellesley College and she ran a campaign through Give Campus on their campus. Copeland saw the success she had and was interested in the possibilities of the platform on the Johnson campus.
“It’s through social media, and it’s very hands-on and engaging because of the videos it offers and the different things it can do with social media,” he said. “It just reaches people we wouldn’t be able to reach with phone calls and normal steps that we do for raising money through our alumni. That was intriguing to me and I thought that it would be good to try to launch here.”
With Johnson and NVU-Lyndon’s athletic departments competing in the President’s Cup, Copeland thought they use the fundraiser as some healthy competition between the two campuses.
As of Nov. 14, Lyndon has raised $7,884 through the help of 163 donors.
“Within the campaign, there is an overarching campaign called Support Your Sport,” he said. Within that, there is a two-tier two-campaign in Once A Hornet Always A Hornet and Badger 4 Life. Between the two fundraisers, we want 300 donors.”
The battle has been getting a bit more competitive in the latter half of the campaign, as Lyndon’s slogan is to “Bury the Badgers” in order to get the edge between the two campuses.
Copeland cannot stress enough that participation will be the key to success with this campaign.
“To be fully successful at this, we need buy-in from student-athletes so that we can reach their networks, and that’s through sharing through social media. They need to be proactive by creating personal pleas and advocating for the campaign. I think we are on the right track. Outreach to alumni will be strong going forward within the next week or two.”
If you wish to donate, go to givecampus.com and search “Badger 4 Life.”
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