March 6, 2011 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Last fall the charity Autism Speaks spent more than $50,000 to update the Web site of Autism Speaks U with online fund-raising features that enable college students to use social networks and other types of technology to raise money for the charity.
The idea of helping college students become fund raisers came partly from Andrew Moses, who was a student at Penn State in 2006, when he co-founded an annual walkathon to raise money for Autism Speaks. Since then, the university’s events have raised more than $650,000 for the charity.
In addition, Mr. Moses, with Autism Speaks U co-founder Adam Dorfman, has helped to rally other campuses to start similar fund-raising activities. So far, more than 150 colleges have signed up to use the site to promote fund-raising races, concerts, and even a hotdog-eating contest that raised $1,800.
At Colgate University, the women’s hockey team held a special game in January to publicize the charity’s work and to show support for its team manager, Kati Williams, who has Asperger’s syndrome, a disorder that makes it difficult for her to interact socially.
During the game, the players wore special jerseys adorned with puzzle pieces, a symbol used by Autism Speaks, and anyone who wore light blue, the charity’s color, was admitted free.
The team auctioned the players’ jerseys after the game, and the team also raised money by selling items such as lip gloss and commemorative pucks.
To raise money online, the women relied on Puzzlebuilder, a feature created by Autism Speaks to help call attention to its slogan, “solving the puzzle of autism.” They used the feature to create digital puzzle pieces out of team members’ pictures and sent them to family, friends, and team supporters through Facebook, Twitter, and e-mail. Recipients were asked to donate $10 to buy a piece of the puzzle and help support autism research. At first, the puzzle pieces show cloudy images, but the more pieces people buy online, the clearer the image becomes. The women’s team raised $12,000 for Autism Speaks.
“If we want students to collaborate, we have to give them the technology to do so,” Mr. Moses says. “We have to start speaking their language. The days of flyers and radio announcements are moving to the rear-view mirror.”
