MOST OUTSTANDING PHILANTHROPIC EVENT NOMINEE
university of southern mississippi vietnamese student association
usmvsa’s pho tau
Provide a detailed description of the event and the population it served. Details MUST include: date of event, number of participants, program purpose (goals, objectives, etc.), use of resources (finances, community support, etc.), marketing techniques, and amount fundraised.
This event was our VSA's most recent fundraiser and collaborative event. As an e-board we started to plan probably a month in advance with the logistics of how we were going to make the pots of pho and how things were going to work day of. This event was held on April 25th at our school's Baptist Student Union and we had around an estimated of 60 people to show up and enjoy our bowls of pho ga and che thai. We wanted to serve bowls of pho to revive one of our old events that was done with another fraternity in the past (Sigma Noodles). We sold everything in a restaurant fashion. This means that we packed away to-go orders and we also made bowls that they could eat then and there at the venue. We wanted to create another opportunity of union between campus organizations. Since we had been volunteering regularly with Phi Tau, it only felt natural to do the collaboration with them. By figuring out more cost effective and quicker ways to make the pho, we were able to cut down on costs and had a good turnout from both students and faculty on campus to support us. A good bit of members from both organizations showed support by getting their share of food, but also both organizations were consistent with advertising it to the community. We didn't raise a big sum of profit (probably around $150), but in the end we were able to make valuable connections with the Phi Tau brothers and the people from the USM community was able to enjoy the food that we provided.
What efforts were used to motivate and involve the organization's members?
Some efforts that motivated the involvement of both club members to volunteer were offering for those who signed volunteer hours. We advertised to our members specifically that this would be a great chance to try Vietnamese food and also spend time and socialize with their friends. Keeping the combination option which included a bowl of pho, drink, and dessert at a low cost also enticed people to put in orders.
How did the organization overcome any challenges that arose while planning and implementing the event?
One of the biggest challenges that we had for this event was predicting how many people would actually come. We did open preorders so that people could put in their orders and give us an estimated amount and their time of pickup. Originally only about 35 people put in pre-order so we ordered only 50 bowls for the event. But day-of, a lot of people actually came and we could tell we were going to run out of bowls. To fix this, we were able to get one of our e-board members to lend us bowls to serve those who were dining in and so the problem wasn't noticeable by any of our attendees. It was also a miscommunication to some of those who were preordering that they could take everything to-go. Originally we were planning to do only dine-in, but we were flexible and ordered to-go bowls to hold the liquid and we already had to-go boxes in our inventory. We catered to those who pre-ordered because it was a mistake on our part for not including that in our graphic/details of the event.
