Fundraising is a crucial part of any high school extracurricular. However, originality gets more and more difficult with each new school year, and clubs are finding it challenging to make plans that haven’t been done before. For South High School’s Band and Orchestra, though, that problem wasn’t too hard to overcome.
Saturday, Nov. 11 marked the date for the Band and Orchestra’s primary fundraising event of the 2023-2024 school year. This fall, they partnered with Second Renew, a secondhand collection drive program, to put together a collection drive for clothes and other household needs that combined fundraising with giving back to those in need, and the community showed up to support.
“We’ve reached out to the community, parents, South teachers, everyone around to help us organize this,” Band and Orchestra Booster Club Fundraising Chair Janine Eckert said. “We’re taking gently used clothing, coats, boots, purses and jewelry and we get paid by the pound.”
In just one Saturday, Band and Orchestra was able to fill three trailers of bagged donations in the South parking lot for Second Renew, who will distribute them to stores catering to those in need.
“They take these particular items and make sure that they meet their criteria and they have no stains because they want to give them to people that deserve nice clothes,” Eckert said.
The instrumental music program uses the money raised from fundraisers for a variety of things, but it always goes back to the students.
“Our fundraising efforts go towards scholarships, predominantly trip credits for travel and professional clinicians we bring in,” Eckert said. “That’s all paid for by the boosters.”
Throughout the day, several student volunteers came to South to help load up the trucks with donations people brought by, including NHS member Vivian Rizer ’24.
“There were a ton of people coming and dropping bags of clothes off, which was super awesome to see,” Rizer said. “(People) had seen it on Facebook or Instagram, or walked past it that day.”
Rizer said this event was different from any she’s helped out at through NHS because of how it combined fundraising with giving back to people in need.
“I think Band and Orchestra did something really interesting because this is a fundraiser that also helps people,” Rizer said. “It was a nice way to help.”
