THON Bans Canvassing for Fundraising Efforts

posted April 13, 2019 in CommRadio, News by Rachel Darata

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa.- THON announced this week that it would ban fundraising that requires students to travel outside of State College.
Although canning was already banned, students were able to participate in canvassing, where they travel door-to-door in their hometowns or other places outside of State College to raise money. The organization now took steps to further ban any travelling outside of State College to fundraise.

Katie Moran, a member of THON’s Operations Committee, said this rule change presented a challenge for her committee.

“We think it was harder to raise money this year because of that, like my OPP committee was [going to] go on a canvassing trip, but we never actually got to so it’s a lot harder for us to raise money and like help out in that way,” Moran said.

Students traveling on canvassing trips got into three separate car accidents in the fall.

Penn State student Emily Coffee said that there are pros and cons to banning out of town travel.

“I feel like it’s smart, because you can’t put a price on a life, but at the same time, it’s taking a lot away from our fundraising totals,” Coffee said. “It was a lot higher when we had canning and canvassing year-round.”

Student Caroline Cahill said that for THON orgs, it could be difficult to raise as much money.

“I was in Eclipse, a THON org, and one of our main ways to fundraise was from canvassing, so I think it’ll be hard to make up for all that money,” Cahill said.

For other students, the inability to travel out of town to raise money isn’t as much of a concern.

Penn State student Robert DiLaura said he doesn’t think the rule change will have a huge impact on the overall operation of student organizations that raise money for THON.

“I think it’ll impact maybe just the amount of money they will raise,” DiLaura said. “I really don’t think it will have a huge impact on a lot of the things that a lot of THON orgs will do.”

THON 2019 raised around $10.6 million to fight childhood cancer, which is a jump from 2018’s total of around $10.1 million.

 

 

Rachel Darata is a freshman majoring in telecommunications. To contact her, email rjd5743@psu.edu.