The 2022 Day of Beneficence will be held on Saturday, June 11. The goal is to have at least 2,000 alumni and current and future Cardinals participate in some service opportunity on that day. Cardinals are caring and share generously of their Time, Talents, and Treasures. Through volunteering two to four hours at an organization in their local community on this one day of service, think what an impact Ball State Cardinals around the country will have!
Alumni around the country are encouraged to work with a local organization in their community to set up a service project for June 11, 2022. An online project registration form is available on the Day of Beneficence website. The project registration deadline is February 28. Projects will be confirmed and made available for participant registration to begin on March 7.
What is Day of Beneficence?
The Ball State Day of Beneficence is a community service event conceived during a 2018 Alumni Council meeting exercise. The moniker was chosen to represent Cardinals’ gifts of Time and Talent in service to their communities around the country. The first Day of Beneficence was held in April of 2019 to resounding success. However, the following year’s event was canceled due to the inability of most organizations to host in-person volunteers after the onset of COVID-19.
In April 2021, the next Day of Beneficence was held with 25 organized projects engaging 116 participants across five states: California, Indiana, New York, Ohio, and Florida. Twenty alumni in six states—Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky—registered their individual acts of service and contributed more than 50 hours of community service. Of the registered projects, two supply drives were held to collect more than 200 personal hygiene items for the Red Cross and more than 100 school supply items for Muncie Community Schools. Two blood drives were held, resulting in the donation of 26 whole blood units and six double red cell units, potentially impacting up to 114 lives. Through electronic forms, 54 notes of welcome to admitted students and 25 notes of congratulations to Ball State graduating seniors were received from alumni around the country.
The Indianapolis Alumni Chapter had the most alumni involvement, as they set up opportunities downtown and on each side of the Indianapolis metropolitan area. Chapter board member Bill Bradford coordinated the selection and promotion of the volunteer sites and ensured a chapter board member led each site.
When discussing strategies for developing the project, Bill said: “Our board members identified areas of the Indianapolis Metropolitan area that would garner the most involvement. In total, we organized seven different projects, which were all in different regions of Indianapolis. After that, the BSUAA platform did most of the work with a drip campaign to reach as many alumni as possible. After identifying the projects and site coordinators, we were able to have well-attended events at each site since the BSUAA has such a wide reach with their email campaign for the Day of Beneficence.”
The Indianapolis Chapter enlisted help in the selection of their project partners. Bill said: “We partnered with a local non-profit that identifies volunteering projects and recruits volunteers with their online platform with a focus on downtown community projects. Also, communicating with the BSUAA helped identify a few projects that the Ball State Alumni Association members had already established over the past few years.”
Bill offers the following advice for anyone looking to organize their projects: “Time is a scarce resource, so make sure that everyone can show up ready to have fun and make an impact right away. Always have a Plan B, and be sure to thank everyone for their time in the end. Be sure to take lots of pictures and tell your story on social media platforms.”
About next year’s plans, Bill said: “All of our sites from last year have expressed interest in having us come back this year, and we may even expand to more. Our short-term goal is to have all sites identified and confirmed by no later than the end of February 2022. A long-term goal will be to get a news feature on local media to highlight the impact that we are making during the Day of Beneficence.”
For more information, visit bsu.edu/dayofbeneficence.