Hunt for a Cure
Hunt For A Cure
In 2016 and 2017, I teamed up with a group of 4 friends to put together a scavenger hunt fundraiser for cystic fibrosis (CF). I felt like I hadn’t brought any of my fundraising work to Boston when I moved for school and wanted to expose a different group of people to the struggles, successes, and uncertainties associated with CF. In total, we raised $10,410.47, with 100% of the event participants’ entry donation going straight to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
Event Design
With two years under my belt at MIT, it felt like the right time, so we focused on putting together an event that could fit within a student’s time, budget, and attention constraints. I wanted to bring my experience from working with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in Oklahoma City, but the constraints of running an event on campus quickly came into play. Without a student organization requiring people to act, I needed a core group who would stick to helping even when coursework, sports, and other clubs demanded significant time on top of this. Without being linked to a specific club, departmental support was required to rent space for registration and any form of reception. Above all, we had to make sure the event could fit into any student’s schedule because without prior experience, students were gambling that the event would be worth attending.
The hunt was designed to accommodate people who had been on campus for a month while also challenging people who were a few months from graduating. Some teams split up then sprinted to cover all the clues and others strolled together to see what they could, but the greater crowd of hunters in 2017 reinforced that we had found something lighthearted, but competitive to make a great fundraiser.
Fundraising for the Event
Our goal was to ensure that every dollar spent by participants in the event went completely to fighting cystic fibrosis. To make sure the fundraiser achieved its goal to raise money for CF research, we had to seek sponsors for every other facet of the event. Without the support base of a club or student life group, we had to take an unconventional route, reaching out to every contact we had around campus to find people who were willing to join in the cause personally and professionally. The MIT Edgerton Center, MIT Mechanical Engineering, and MIT Aeronautics & Astronautics departments helped where they could and guided us to other resources throughout both years of running the Hunt. Without them, we would have been stranded with no way forward.
We had event space with help on campus, but El Pelon Taqueria and J.P. Licks both stepped up to make sure the food and prizes were top-notch. Whether it was the support of a professor or the spare dollars offered by people not even hunting, it was a strong reminder that even cold New England is actually pretty warm inside.
THe Hunt
2016:
Getting the tournament off the ground was a trial-and-error effort. MIT has few resources devoted to students who want to organize their own philanthropic events, so ensuring that event spaces were confirmed and that the event operated within campus policy was half the battle. With the back-end of the event set up, we split the work into finding sponsors and finding participants. Over half of the hunters in our first year signed up during the week of the event, so to our great relief, 82 people embarked on the first Hunt for a Cure. In the end, we raised $4,475.47 through participation from both students and professors. Despite finalizing the hunt clues around 1:00 AM before the Hunt, it was a pretty good first year for the event.
2017:
With the kinks worked out in 2016, we had a smoother fundraiser in the Hunt’s 2nd iteration. The clues were finalized during the week before the event, there were no locked doors preventing clues from being answered, and the dinner was ready before teams even arrived for the wrap-up reception. The second Hunt was designed to be a hunt through the majors where each clue was related to each of MIT’s majors, as well as a few special departments. 94 participants formed 27 teams to run across campus for an hour (some through thunderstorms) to compete for hockey tickets, Chick-Fil-A (a rare commodity in Boston), and dinner at a few local restaurants. In total, we raised $5,935.00, but more importantly introduced 36 new people to the efforts going into fighting CF.