jferst's blog

The following was composed by three TB4CF Board members as a tribute to our retiring professor.  Honey Nashman is the founder and outgoing director of The Human Services Program at The George Washington University, where Buzzing for Change was founded.

Last night I was at a Sixers game with the Drexel program.  They had made up shirts for the game that said "catch the buzz."  One of the guys who was taking those photos that you can buy came by and asked "How do you catch the buzz?"  While the incident was funny, it was one of those you needed to be there type of moments, but it did get me thinking...

Since our inception, we have looked for out of the box ways to promote our events.  Whether that was purchasing large afro wigs at GW or shaving the Dean of Students' head at a Drexel basketball game, we strive to find creative ways to promote our events.  

In the past few years we have been very fortunate to be able to form some amazing partnerships and are starting to see our campuses take initiative with this as well.  For instance, our program at GW this past year formed alliances with both College Boxes and NIH Federal Credit Union that helped them increase their fundraising for Special Love.  Our new program at Pitt has some exciting things in the works for this year.

Six years ago, on September 14th, 2003, Buzzing for Change held its first program.  After that day many doubted if the successes we saw could be replicated.  Six years and ten events later I think we can answer that doubt with a resounding "yes we can." 

After reading this post (and the one related to it) I was inspired.  Not really by what was said (well, not for Buzzing for Change purposes) but for the sentiment where Alex says "Dare to be great.  Together."

The new school year is about to begin for most of our programs, and TB4CF has gotten geared up as well.  We are in the final stages of developing our three year strategic plan, we finally finished our year end accounting (and raised nearly $30,000 for children living with cancer), recruited new people for our team and spent significant time revising and updating our program manual.

Many of you may have been wondering where we've been all summer. Let us first apologize that this post did not come earlier in the summer. For those of you that are in college, work for an educational institution or remember back when you went to college - the summer is down time.

We, like our students, put in a lot of work throughout the academic year and spend the summer re-charging. We take time to review the past year, our successes and what we need to improve upon. We look at our numbers - our programs, participants and dollars raised and figure out what that means for us.

Last week, I was at an awards dinner and someone said in their speech:

"If you strive for perfection, you will achieve greatness"

While I doubt this is an original quote, it has resonated with me and I think it applies to the three B4C programs that were held in April.  Each had its unique challenges, but the students rose to meet them, and often surpassed our expectations.

As you may know, Buzzing for Change is run entirely by volunteers, which means that everyone on our Team has a day job.  I work for Hillel at Temple University where I advise Jewish students on Temple's campus.  At my job we often talk, as I am sure other campus religious groups do, about a students growth.  We use the metaphor of them be