The New Challenges of Fundraising Due to COVID 19

Daniel Schiffman ‘23

This school year students have worked hard to sell food and clothes and organize food drives to support their chosen organizations. However, during the pandemic, this steady institution of small-level activism has faced new obstacles. 
Like so many other fields and pursuits in life during a pandemic, the already demanding and ambitious task of fundraising has changed in many ways. Whereas before COVID 19, fundraising was a mostly straightforward task, now the job can be challenging due to required health and safety protocols. 

Junior Oren Ramer and sophomores Alec Stein and Daniel Schiffman collaborated on a racial justice fundraiser to help people of color in Newark receive vital food resources during COVID-19. To raise money for the cause, they sold donuts that were bought from Dunkin’ Donuts. The sale of food items has been especially tough this year. 
“Individually wrapping donuts was hard,” Ramer said. “Normally we could just buy them and sell them, but now we had to communicate with both Dunkin’ Donuts on individually wrapping and the school administration to approve our plans.” 
Junior Yoni Arzt had similar struggles in a National Honor Society fundraiser that sold muffins from Dunkin’ Donuts to fund Chai Lifeline, an organization that helps to support children with cancer. 
“It’s harder to do food-related drives, especially ones with making your own food, we can’t do those anymore. We had to make our sale the safest it could be,” Arzt said. 
He went on to discuss another precaution his group made in “making exact change with donors” to prevent money exchanging hands in an unsanitary manner.
Despite all of the hoops to jump through in order to make a fundraiser possible, the logistics of these events are not the only hardships that changemakers need to overcome. There are also hurdles that have to do with the toll that the pandemic and other current events have taken on the members of the Golda Och community. 
In looking to do good and make a change in the local and greater community, students at Golda Och Academy have always had a strong initiative to stand up and fundraise for causes that are important to them. 
However, this year, between protesters taking to the streets in the spring and summer for racial justice in response to the murder of George Floyd, an intense and divisive United States presidential election race in the fall and less social contact throughout, many are struggling socially and emotionally.
This collective stress of the community has led to further challenges in gathering momentum and traction for fundraising events. 
“The main thing is people don’t feel motivated lately,” Arzt said.  
Golda Och attendants also feel overextended between the multitude of social change movements sweeping across social media platforms and the school’s campus. Therefore, it can be harder in the present climate to attract people to one cause. 
“We had to figure out a way to educate people on our cause and why they should donate,” Ramer said. “With the pandemic taking up people’s mind space, it was difficult to grab people’s attention to our cause, even though it was just as relevant as others.” 
Yet another newfound difficulty in recent change efforts is the lack of in-person, face-to-face communication. Many educational promotions have to be done over virtual meeting platforms such as Zoom. 
“On Zoom, it is harder to connect with people,” Ramer said in his brief speech about his team’s cause during a virtual assembly. 
Social distancing can also hinder the human connection involved in community events. 
“It is tough to get a lot of people in one spot when people have to be distanced and separated,” Arzt said on Student Council programming. “It’s a lot harder to motivate people as a group or have indoor activities. So overall, it’s more difficult to build a connection in doing these things.”
Even though the road to making change in the midst of a pandemic is long and bumpy, the future is bright with the next generation of leaders already adapting to the challenges they face in their efforts, and students remain hopeful. 
“Despite the challenges, there are some benefits,” Arzt said. “Now, there is more human sympathy and a collective positive attitude towards social justice and change.”