Spring 2005

Dance Marathon: Community foundation support exceeds $30,000

Dancers also benefit juvenile diabetes research

Northwestern student Beth Gianfrancisco, this year’s top individual money raiser, dances during the ninth hour of Dance Marathon.

Jerry Lai

Northwestern University’s student-run 31st Annual Dance Marathon netted $404,328.40 during the 30-hour event that benefits two organizations.

This year’s primary beneficiary, the Illinois chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation  (JDRF), the leading charitable fundraiser and advocate of Type 1 (juvenile) diabetes research worldwide, will receive $374,003.77.

The Evanston Community Foundation (ECF), Dance Marathon’s secondary beneficiary for the eighth consecutive year, will receive 7.5 percent of the net total of dollars raised — this year, $30,324.63 — to help fund projects and programs proposed by local not-for-profit organizations serving Evanston.

Last year, Dance Marathon raised $320,000 for the primary beneficiary Have Dreams, an organization dedicated to improving the lives of autistic children and their families through training and structured teaching, and $26,000 for the Evanston Community Foundation, the secondary beneficiary.

Dance Marathon has contributed more than $200,000 to ECF in the past eight years.

Dance Marathon, one of the world’s largest collegiate philanthropies, has raised more than $6.5 million for various charities since it began in 1975.

The majority of the 500 dancers involved in the 2005 event were undergraduate students who also participated in a variety of fund-raising activities.

Each dancing couple had to raise at least $750, typically done by “canning” for cash or by asking family and friends for donations.

DM beneficiary Evanston Community Foundation values bond

The Northwestern students who have taken part in Dance Marathon recently received praise from one of the student charity’s beneficiaries.

At a Dance Marathon fund-raiser, Sara Schastok, executive director of the Evanston Community Foundation, expressed the group’s gratitude to the students for their support over the last eight years.

She said, “Whatever the differences between the City of Evanston and Northwestern, the students and the people of Evanston have a common bond that unites us — a deep commitment to the community where we live.

“We share a profound concern for the needs of others and a commitment to community service. There is no better example of our shared values than the partnership between Dance Marathon and the Evanston Community Foundation.”

This year, Schastok said, students “are working especially effectively with the foundation to create community connections for volunteer service.”

She said the foundation, as the secondary beneficiary of Dance Marathon proceeds, has received more than $200,000 in the last eight years, allowing the foundation to increase the number of grants it makes to Evanston organizations.

“We are very grateful to the outstanding young people of Dance Marathon and all who support them,” Schastok said.