Covalent Immunology Foundation

Captain of Ohio Wesleyan’s Improv Team, and college senior Jake Barnett, lead an impressive week long series of events to raise money for CIF. Events included and improv show, a dance off, and a concert.
Jake focuses on finding venues and ways to tell the powerful story of Dr. Sudhir Paul’s research, and his journey to scientific discovery.

Read his full recap below:
When you have a cause and idea as motivating as “ending HIV”, part of you expects fundraising to be easy. As I am sure everyone reading this knows however, this is not the case. Stretched pocketbooks, competing causes looking for money, apathy and a score of other factors make fundraising a difficult and disheartening task in many ways, especially on a college campus. My experience with CIF, although marked by some of the difficulties listed above, has also been one in which the optimism and compassionate nature of people has been highlighted. When someone hears the story and goals of CIF and Dr. Paul, it is hard not to become inspired.
That is why a large part of my fundraising efforts were directed at simply creating a format to tell the story of CIF. Instead of asking people for money or setting up donation jars, I wanted to create events with their own independent pull at which there could be a short five minute informational segment to educate and inspire the participants. I tried to keep any talking short, and to hit on what I found most inspiring about Dr. Paul, with my stock subjects being the originality of research, the success in preclinical trials, the nonprofit status of CIF, and the global minded nature of the project.
I started off the project by choosing a week in advance when we could have a series of events, and talking to various groups about becoming involved. This early preparation allowed me to try to facilitate other groups that were involved and /or interested in HIV to become a part of the project. In the end, the International development group, Africa issues and GLBT group on campus all became involved in different ways. This not only gave the week a more diverse and rich perspective, it also took a lot of the organizational burden off of me.
We started off the week with advertising for the events through facebook, posters, campus e mail and face to face. I strongly pushed the face to face aspect of advertising because I felt it would be the strongest way to convey the enthusiasm everyone involved had for this cause. . I also organized people to table at a popular part of campus at lunch, where students could come to buy tickets to shows, learn more about events, learn more about the cause, or buy condomgrams and red ribbons. One aspect of advertising that I did not take full enough advantage of was advertising in the community. In retrospect I would have liked to have talked to our local newspaper and local business people in an effort to pique community interest
Our first event was the “Fast for a Cure.” At this event individuals pledged to fast for 24 hours for donations and wore stickers to raise awareness of their fasting and the week of events. In order to reach out beyond the campus those fasting were encouraged to send out letters detailing the goals of CIF and Dr. Paul, while adding their own personal touches as to why they were inspired by the events. While this fundraising technique was not a particularly timely one, since it took time for the letters to arrive and for people to return them, we felt this was an effective way to raise awareness and funds for CIF beyond our campus.
Our second event was a dance sponsored by the Africa issues club on campus. The dance, which charged an admission price of 2 dollars, had all of the proceeds donated to CIF. While this event gave no format for any speech or awareness raising about CIF, it was a fun and easy way to raise money.
Our third event was an Improvisational comedy show. The long term planning of the week of events allowed me to reserve the main theater at school and actually get another local college improvisational troupe involved. Admission price was three dollars and about 140 people attended. This cause was the one closest to my heart, not only because I was on the improvisational troupe, but also because this was an event at which there was a very easy format to speak about why the work of CIF and Dr. Paul were so important to support. This was also a good event to ask faculty and employees of the school to, one that was at an easily identifiable location with a good reason to come. Getting older members of the community to attend was an objective to me, because it meant getting people with more disposable income. After my original speech I asked people to give on their way out and raised another 150 dollars this way.
Our fourth and final event was a benefit concert. A friend of mine had approached me asking if he could play a concert to raise money for the cause, a proposition I enthusiastically agreed to. This event, although not hugely successful, was still able to easily raise another 70 dollars for CIF without my having to put in any substantial effort.
In the end we were able to raise about 1,200 dollars for CIF, an amount that speaks to the inspiring nature of the cause on a small and overprogrammed campus. I strongly feel that this medicine has the potential to change the world, and after this competition I am proud to say that I am one of the people that has contributed to CIF.