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CHS class invests, then donates money
CLOVERDALE — Given $25 each, two teams in the Cloverdale High School business management class were recently given a simple instruction.
Grow it.
Teacher Patrick Rady had little else to tell his class, only that he wanted them to find a way to find a way to turn the $25 into even more money, which would then be donated a charity of the students’ choice.
“I wanted them to be creative,” Rady said. “It started as a contest, winner was going to take all, but both did really well and they decided to split it.”
So it was that on a March morning, representatives from both the Mary Allison Children’s Trust and Mental Health America of Putnam County gathered in Rady’s CHS classroom to accept donations from the two groups.
“It was a really good experience,” student Carson Hall said. “It was a really good chance to take the lead.”
The group, which also included Gracie Haga, Jade Buis, Eli Kelley and Abby Hilton, raised money through a number of means at the school. They sponsored a hat day, hosted a talent show and sold drinks at both the talent show and a school dance.
With their money raise, they chose to donated the money to Mental Health America of Putnam County.
Hall said he reached out to Linda Merkel for ideas of local non-profits.
“She sent me a long list,” Hall said. “We went through some of them and finally decided on Mental Health America.”
“We know there are a lot of teens here in high school who struggle with mental health,” Hilton said, “so we thought that would be best for us to give back.”
Reviewing the same list, the other group chose the Mary Allison Children’s Trust.
“We chose the Mary Allison Children’s Trust,” Kiersten Wade said, “because when we read all the descriptions, that one just stuck out the most. We thought the money would go toward our community as well as others.”
Wade’s group, which also included James Kendall, Landon Bates, Noah Betz and Jordan Hendricks, took a different approach to raising funds.
“We had a couple of really good ideas for this fundraiser,” Kendall said.
The first was to sell roses around Valentine’s Day, but another group was already doing that in the school.
Instead, they bought cups, whipped cream and plates, as well as procuring some raffle tickets.
Students could pay $2 a ticket and place their names in the cup of their choice with a teacher’s name on it.
On the day of the event, a name was drawn from each cup, with that student getting to throw a cream pie at that particular teacher.
At the middle school, PE and health teacher Brantson Scott upped the ante when he volunteered to shave his head if a certain goal was met in his cup. The goal was surpassed, and Scott was true to his word.
With money already raised, the group invested some of it further and bought 300 ducks on which they wrote numbers and again had a raffle. On basketball senior night, the ducks were thrown on the basketball court, and those that were closest to gift cards to local restaurants won the cards.
The ducks were then donated to the athletic department for future fundraisers.
Rady expressed his pride in the groups for their creativity, but even more for their dedication to local groups.
“Local charities were important to both groups,” Rady said. “That was a theme I heard over and over. I challenged them to choose something that maybe has affected them.”