In his previous blogpost, Sean Donegan went into detail about the planning for the fundraiser dinner that he and his peers organized for Share Our Strength. Below, Sean describes the night of the event in detail and how he was pleasantly surprised by the support that the student body expressed:
By: Sean Donegan
The night of the Inaugural Share Our Strength Charity Dinner has arrived! At 7 pm the doors opened and a about 300 Cornell students came in to support us. Before the event began, each of the seven Philanthropy Chairs arrived with their chef’s meal so all food could be safely stored and kept at the proper temperature. By having each Chapter’s representative in the same place, we were also able to coordinate transportation easily.
The Charity Dinner itself sold 345 tickets, bringing in roughly 300 attendees to Alpha Gamma Rho on the night of the dinner. Over 50 people bought tickets to support us even though they had an exam, sporting event, or other prior engagement that evening. No President or Philanthropy Chair mandated that any of their members buy a ticket or even attend the event; everyone that came did it on a voluntary basis. We were surprised by the sheer number of students and Greek Chapters who bought tickets simply to support our activities as well as Share Our Strength and its campaign to fight childhood hunger.
To allow people to carpool and park for free, the Brothers of Alpha Gamma Rho cleared our parking lot to make as many spaces available as possible. In addition to this, many students elected to take taxis to and from the event so more parking spaces would be available to the other guests. Everyone immediately sat down to reserve their seat but due to the excitement in the air, many people eventually got up to catch up with friends and socialize. Probably the only delay in the night’s festivities was getting everyone to break away from their shuffling from group to group and taking their seat for dinner.
After a quick announcement made by Seth Hoffman, dinner was served in two buffets. Thanks to careful planning and a bit of luck, we had just enough food. Only a few servings of each buffet remained and were quickly stored as leftovers to be eaten later on. The corporate sponsor apparel was a huge attraction as people signed up to support the companies and their student representatives.
Overall, the Share Our Strength Charity Dinner was a great example of the Cornell Community banding together to support a common good. Students were taking the time on a Friday night to spend a few hours supporting childhood hunger at a charity event when they could have just as easily been spending their weekend evening elsewhere. As my time at Cornell draws to a close, I hope this event will inspire other college students across the nations to create events like this to raise money for Share Our Strength and the many other worthy causes that are out there. If anyone out there ever thinks they would like to create one of these events, please feel free to email me anytime at . I would be more than happy to help and advise you anyway that I can.
Sean Donegan is a PreMedical student at Cornell University, majoring in both Animal Science and NeuroBiology. He has minors in both Global Health and International Relations. He is a Senior Research fellow in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and a member of the Cornell Men’s Varsity Polo Team. He is the President of Order of Omega, the Greek Honor Society and cofounder of The Donegan-Hoffman Foundation.