Minute to Give It

If you’ve ever attended a Thespian Festival, then you should already be familiar with the Minute to Give It campaign. At a mainstage performance, Thespian officers pass around plastic buckets, which students throw their change (and dollar bills) into. The goal is to raise more money than all of the other states that are participating in the campaign. You can do something similar in collaboration with your high school drama department to help raise money for your course fee.

Ask if you can pass around some plastic buckets at the beginning or end of your high school play or musical. If you can, set up a timer on your auditorium projector for one minute, so that the audience can count down with you. Make sure to explain to audiences clearly what’s going to happen: “We’re going to pass around some buckets to raise money to send our own [student name] to New York City this summer where she has the opportunity to perform with our national youth theatre!” And then give your audience members a minute to take their money out of their wallets. Have some volunteers make sure that plastic buckets make their way around to every single member of the audience. (If you do this fundraiser at the beginning of the production, you can count the money backstage during intermission and make an announcement at the end of the performance, celebrating how much money the audience was able to raise!)

Your drama department might even let you do this fundraiser during every performance. This enables you to pit audiences against one another, saying: “Last night’s audience was able to raise [amount]. Let’s see if we can raise even more tonight!” You can let them know after the performance how they stacked up against the previous night!