An entire year of recruiting, planning and canning culminated with 30 hours of dancing at Northwestern’s annual Dance Marathon, March 3 through March 5. The event raised $686,377.37 – the largest amount since DM began in 1975.
This year, Pediatric AIDS Chicago Prevention Initiative and the Evanston Community Foundation received most of the money. DM donated about $400,048 to pediatric AIDS research and about $44,449 to the Evanston Community Foundation with the help of 600 dancers and 400 committee members.
DM co-chairman Ben Woo, Weinberg ’06, said he was satisfied with the event.
“I felt it was a resounding success,” Woo said. “Everybody had so much enthusiasm, and everybody was motivated and inspired.”
One major change this year was an extra 100 dancers. Although there were concerns about such a large increase in the number of people in the Louis Room, overcrowding was not an issue.
“We accommodated them without any problem,” Woo said. “The whole thing went so smoothly.”
Each member of the executive board put in roughly 500 hours of work, and the chairs 1,300 hours, Woo said. He said he wants to make sure that no matter how big the organization gets, everyone cares about and becomes closely involved with the selected charity organization.
“We grew to 1,000 people this year, but everyone needs to feel just as connected to the beneficiary,” Woo said.
– Kristyn Schiavone
