This #Giving Tuesday, Be a Giver by Participating in the Jefferson Jog-a-Thon

Jefferson is depending on you: the only way we can reach our goal of $40,000 is through hundreds of small donations

#Giving Tuesday is a movement introduced in 2012 as a day for communities to focus on fundraising and charitable giving. It is strategically timed to occur on the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving, the national day of celebrating our blessings by stuffing our bellies and, shortly thereafter, participating in unbridled and competitive consumerism.

The Spirit of Giving

We hope that this #Giving Tuesday, and throughout the remainder of the Jog-a-thon pledge drive, the spirit of altruism and the culture of charity will inspire you to raise money for your children’s school. The Jog-a-thon is the school foundation’s biggest fundraiser, and its success is crucial if we are to continue to fund programs including art classes, gardening classes, after-school clubs, assemblies, and more. Our goal is to raise $40,000, which will allow us to pay for programs we already fund, as well as providing a cushion for unforeseen expenses. With a little more than a week left of the pledge drive, we are not quite halfway to our goal. (The jog-a-thon run is on 12/5, and we wrap up pledging at the end of that week.)

Register and raise money for art, gardening, and clubs at www.pledgestar.com/jeffersonjog !!

If you have already been participating in the Jog-a-thon, thank you so much! You are the reason we’re able to provide many of the “extras” to Jefferson students that help keep them excited to come to school every day. If you have not yet begun participating, thanks in advance for doing so right now! It literally takes just a few minutes to register at www.pledgestar.com/jeffersonjog , import addresses from your email contacts, and automatically send out pledge requests to grandparents, aunts and uncles, and friends. You can also post pledge requests on social media. You will be surprised at how generous your friends and family are!

The Math

It can be very tempting to respond to charitable appeals of (like this one) by saying, “Well, I can’t really raise much money, so it doesn’t matter if I don’t participate.” But in reality, the more people that participate, the more we earn overall. For example, as of this writing, Jog-a-thon participants have raised about $15,000. That’s quite a bit of money, but it may surprise you to know that it was raised by only about 100 students! They have raised, on average, $150 apiece. Jefferson currently has about 450 students enrolled. Imagine if 400 of them raised $150 each! We would surpass our goal of $40,000 by about $20,000! While that would be amazing, it’s probably not a realistic expectation. But…is it unrealistic to think that half of the students at Jefferson could raise an average of $177 each? That’s about nine $20 pledges per kid. Or what if two thirds of the students participated? In that case, each student only has to raise about $130. As you can see, the more that people participate, the less each participant must raise to reach the goal.

The Incentives

As you probably know, we have offered many incentives to get people excited about participating in the Jog-a-thon, including prizes like a bike, a Kindle, drones, an RC car, and just recently announced, tickets to Disneyland!  However, we hope that the most powerful incentive is that you want to help fund the programs at Jefferson that benefit not only your child, but every student in the school.

School funding is a complicated and contentious issue. But most parents would agree that every student should be afforded the same educational opportunity regardless of the location or tax-base of their public school. The current system is not perfect, but it’s what we have to work with at this point. The school district pays for the most basic needs of the school, and anything “extra” is left to the resources and creativity of the families and administration. For that reason, the Jog-a-thon is our best vehicle for collecting small donations from our families and communities in order to provide the amenities that make our neighborhood school every bit as inviting and enriching as those in the most wealthy pockets of the district.

We hope that you will take the very brief amount of time and energy necessary to register and send out pledge requests via www.pledgestar.com/jeffersonjog and take pride in knowing that you have helped to provide funding for a high quality educational experience, not just for your own child, but for every Jefferson student. We appreciate every single donation you bring in, no matter how small, and we want you to know that the foundation-funded programs would not be possible without your support.

Thank you!