Auburn Dance Marathon, now in their sixth year of raising money and awareness for the Children's Miracle Network, has released their yearly fundraising goal.
Setting their goal at $658,000, AUDM hopes to surpass last year’s total of $541,832.06 by more than $100,000. The dollar amount isn’t random, however, as AUDM executives chose it to keep with their “cause connection.”
“The number we chose is cause-connected and represents the number of pediatric surgeries performed at our hospital, the Children’s Hospital at Columbus Regional at Midtown Medical Center, during the 2017 fiscal year with a few zeroes attached to the end," said AUDM President Tiffany Thompson.
According to AUDM Vice President of Marketing Victoria Jackson, while the goal number was in part decided on by the yearly fiscal requirement of dance marathon, it was the focus on the patients receiving the money that really helped the executive team land on something.
“We were kind of on the fence about it for a while, there was a lot of debate because Nationals keeps us at a standard of increasing at least 20 percent every year at least, so we had to take that into consideration, but we really wanted to keep the cause consideration,” Jackson said. “It turns out 658 pediatric surgeries were conducted at our hospital last year alone; everything kind of fell into place, and it was just too perfect to pass up.”
AUDM hosts benefit nights, fundraising push days and other events throughout the year to raise money toward the set goal. The 14-hour dance marathon will be held Feb. 10, 2018.
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