D-PAN, RID Team Up To Build Financial Support

Just about everybody is familiar with traditional charity fundraising drives. Groups of all kinds send their members out to sell products —cookies, candy, coffee mugs, and everything in between—in order to raise the money they need to keep going.

This year, the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID) Region IV wanted to do something a little different, and D-PAN was happy to help.

In the spring of 2009, RID’s region IV President Amy Sieberlich and D-PAN Executive Director Scott Guy discussed ways to work together to help the region raise needed funds. Rather than selling calendars or candles, the group would give D-PAN DVDs to people making contributions of $20, taking advantage of the natural tie-in between the DVD’s ASL-centered videos and the group’s primary focus.

Amy put Scott in touch with RID region IV’s new Fundraising Coordinator, Monica Parks, and they got down to work developing flyers, customer receipts, brochures, order tracking forms and supporting informational materials necessary to make the program a success.

In October, the fundraiser really got rolling. Some fifty RID members across eight states began a three-month drive to solicit donations and get “It’s Everybody’s Music” DVDs into the hands of friends, family, ASL interpreters and other RID supporters, reaching out to schools, clubs, local businesses and beyond. Team members were enthused by the DVD. “Everyone was struck by the quality of the video and how cool all the songs and interpretations and performances were – we just loved it,” Parks says. “The participants thought it was a really wonderful item to go out and get donations with. It made them really enthusiastic.”

According to Parks, the effort was a success. “We had some economic pressures that made donations not quite as vigorous as we had hoped, but it did work out well.”