(Courtesy of FTI) Foxman Torah Institute (FTI) of Cherry Hill, New Jersey, an all-boys Jewish high school, the only Jewish high school in southern New Jersey, raised an incredible $617,000 in a 24-hour, all-or-nothing, quadruple-matching fundraising campaign powered by Charidy.
The Charidy Campaign has been an annual fundraiser for FTI for the past couple of years. The fast-growing school first started with a goal of $400K in 2016, and last year raised over $500K. This year, FTI increased the goal to $613,000 to raise much-needed funds for the 2017-2018 academic year.
Charidy is a fundraising event that brings tremendous achdus (togetherness) throughout the entire yeshiva family. From teachers to students, parents to alumni, and board members to community members, it’s an all-hands-on-deck, 24-hour marathon towards a common goal. There is a special energy and bond felt by all who participate, which intensifies as the day goes on, the clock ticks down and the live online campaign gets more exciting.
These volunteers, or influencers, as they are called, were calling, texting, emailing, WhatsApping and posting the link to donate to everyone they knew. In all, 1,281 people donated over $157,000 during the 24-hour period, which was generously matched by a group of over 30 donors 3 to 1. Every time there was a big donation, it was a morale booster, and every time a milestone was reached, hundreds of people spread the word, trying to encourage others who had not yet participated to do so. They also shared the joy of the accomplishment with others and spread the message that there is still more work to do.
Success did not come quickly, however. Charidy claims that in a successful fundraiser an organization should have 60 percent of the goal by the late evening and wake up to 70 percent in the morning. Well, FTI had less than 45 percent by nightfall and woke up to see not much more progress by morning. At this point, Charidy started to doubt the success of FTI, especially with the yeshiva’s technical limitations; FTI does not use any social media directly. All social media was managed by friends of the yeshiva only. In addition, there seemed to be a new filter on gmail, causing many of the school’s emails to be sent to people’s spam. But no one at FTI gave up; with a spirit of can-do-ism, volunteers doubled down and attempted once again to reach the contacts they couldn’t reach the night before.
At approximately 11 a.m. the campaign started to move into high gear with the gifts coming in at an average of every 10 seconds for the remaining four-hour home stretch. Finally, with about 10 minutes to spare, the finish line was crossed and the goal of $613,000 was met, thanks to an anonymous donor who contributed $4,800 to cross the 600K mark a few minutes earlier. The spontaneous celebration that ensued was as if the yeshiva had just won the superbowl. The cheering, singing and dancing were euphoric. In the end there was a total of 1,281 donors, donating $617, 321, over $115K, and almost 300 more donors than last year. Donations came in from all over the country and world, even as far as Australia.
Just in time for Purim, FTI reaching our goal was yet another miracle that Hashem has done and continues to do on a daily basis, but just like Purim, not all his miracles are obvious… if we don’t stop to look. The yeshiva thanks all those that contributed and made the campaign possible, especially campaign coordinator Rabbi Baruch Gore, director of special projects at the yeshiva. To see the campaign page go to www.charidy.com/FTI.
