{"id":2051,"date":"2013-03-25T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-03-25T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/?p=2051"},"modified":"2024-05-08T17:46:48","modified_gmt":"2024-05-08T17:46:48","slug":"sundance-association-case-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/blog\/sundance-association-case-study\/","title":{"rendered":"Sundance Association Case Study"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cUsing CauseVox, we were able to raise more than twice as much than we usually do offline.\u201d\u00a0 – Sundance Organizer<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

You might be surprised to hear that the Bay Area has an appetite for Country-Western dance.\u00a0 You\u2019ll definitely<\/em> be surprised to hear, however, that this desire has been strong enough to sustain an active Country-Western dance organization for nearly 15 years!<\/p>\n

Line-Dancing for a Cause<\/h2>\n

Sundance Saloon<\/a> is a semiweekly LGBT-friendly Country-Western dance night that takes place at a spacious club on Barneveld Avenue in San Francisco.\u00a0 The crowd is welcoming, and events<\/a> include plenty of open instruction for newcomers.\u00a0 But these dance nights are just an appetizer for the main event.<\/p>\n

Each year, Sundance Association (the organizer behind these events) puts on a Country Two-Step Dance-a-Thon where participants boot-scoot the night away!\u00a0 The goal at the Dance-a-Thon isn\u2019t just to have a good time, though.\u00a0 The event is a wonderful fundraiser, not just for Sundance, but also for two great causes:<\/p>\n

The first is the AIDS Emergency Fund<\/strong>, which provides emergency financial assistance to people facing the challenges of living with debilitating HIV, AIDS, and breast cancer.\u00a0 For over 20 years, the AEF has provided a helping hand to people in crisis.<\/p>\n

The second is the Positive Resource Center<\/strong>, which offers free confidential disability benefits counseling and employment services for HIV-infected persons who are able to return to work.\u00a0 Once the challenge of overcoming illness is somewhat under control, people find themselves suddenly thrown back into the workforce, and the transition is rarely smooth.\u00a0 The PRC helps people as they attempt to re-integrate.<\/p>\n

Traditional Fundraising<\/h2>\n

In the past five years, Sundance Association has relied on its all-volunteer staff to make its Dance-a-Thon happen and ensure that it was a fundraising success.\u00a0 Here\u2019s the kicker:\u00a0 the event was organized and funds were solicited almost entirely offline<\/em>!<\/p>\n

Participants were recruited to collect pledges, and hung\/distributed flyers, chatted up the friends, and generally did things the way they did in the good \u2018ol days.\u00a0 Sundance also created newsletters and sent them out to their snail mail list.\u00a0 In essence, everything was done manually.\u00a0 People sent in checks, which had to be processed, and accepting credit cards required donors to mail in a paper form.<\/p>\n

These efforts were effective and generally raised about $4K each year.\u00a0 But one of Sundance\u2019s main organizers had also heard that some organizations were having success fundraising online.\u00a0 Thinking it couldn\u2019t hurt to open a new channel, off he went to Google \u2026<\/p>\n

Sundance finds CauseVox and raises over $10,000!<\/h2>\n

Sundance researched some of the other fundraising platforms available, but was drawn to CauseVox in part because it looked \u201ceasy to use\u201d and appeared \u201cwell organized.\u201d (Editor\u2019s note:\u00a0 Nice!\u00a0 Simplicity is our thing!).\u00a0 They signed up, did some test pages, and then launched their campaign. Here is Sundance\u2019s CauseVox page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, unlike many others, Sundance didn\u2019t hit social media heavily but instead relied mainly on traditional methods to direct people to participant\u2019s fundraising pages.\u00a0 Sundance did find, however, that it was a lot easier to gather their network together via email and send them to participant\u2019s pages.\u00a0 The group also found that administration was a lot easier now that payments were processed and accounted for automatically.<\/p>\n

As with many campaigns, interest was moderate in the beginning.\u00a0 In the final week, however, the total funds raised went from $2K to $10K as the usual deadline-day surge of excitement gripped the supporters!<\/p>\n

Sundance and its network then went out and danced their dang (cowboy) booties off.<\/p>\n

The Lessons<\/h2>\n

If anything, Sundance learned that various supporters could be reached through various channels.\u00a0 Some prefer traditional face-to-face methods, while others are ready to click their way through a campaign.\u00a0 CauseVox simply allowed Sundance to open a new channel and reach some supporters in a new way, and to add some new ones that were found online.<\/p>\n

For the organizers, the main benefit of CauseVox was the ease of administration.\u00a0 They said that, when all was considered, Sundance would \u201cBe sure to use CauseVox again next year!\u201d<\/p>\n

Sundance:\u00a0 We\u2019ll be here waiting!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cUsing CauseVox, we were able to raise more than twice as much than we usually do offline.\u201d\u00a0 – Sundance Organizer You might be surprised to hear that the Bay Area has an appetite for Country-Western dance.\u00a0 You\u2019ll definitely be surprised to hear, however, that this desire has been strong enough to sustain an active Country-Western […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"acf":[],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Olivia Hosey","author_link":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/author\/ohosey\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2051\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}