There are a lot of ways to spend a Saturday at Temple. Sleeping until noon is a popular one. Staying on your feet for hours in a tutu and face paint is not. But every spring, Temple students do exactly that for @HootaThon, and this month, the club is in the middle of a push to get ready for it.
Full disclosure: I’m HootaThon’s Hospital Relations Chair, which means part of my job is staying in touch with the Miracle families the club supports. I’m not a neutral observer here, but I can tell you what the club does, what the money is for, and why a hot dog sale on campus is more important than it looks.
So, what is HootaThon, exactly?
HootaThon is Temple’s student-run dance marathon. It’s a club that fundraises for the Child Life Department at Children’s Hospital Of Philadelphia (CHOP), and it’s part of the Children’s Miracle Network Dance Marathon program, which started in 1991. The money stays local, so what Temple students raise goes to kids in Philadelphia.
The dancing is the finale, but the fundraising runs all year. CHOP’s own page for dance marathons says there’s more to it than dancing: the day includes performances, games and stories from the families who benefit from the money.
Who is everyone dancing for?
To understand HootaThon, you have to know what child life actually is. It’s not a doctor’s visit or a prescription. CHOP describes child life specialists as people who use therapeutic play, preparation and education to reduce fear, anxiety and pain for children and their families.
In practice, that can mean helping a kid get ready for a procedure. A specialist might introduce the medical equipment and explain the “who, what, where, how and why” in a way a child can follow, and they’re also there during the procedure itself. In CHOP’s cancer center, child life services exist to help kids and families cope with the emotional stress and anxiety of a cancer diagnosis and treatment. The staff also looks for ways to engage kids in normal, day-to-day activities, because a kid in the hospital is still a kid.
Dance marathon money across CHOP’s schools supports programs including oncology, child life and social work. In HootaThon’s case, past donations have helped fund programs, activities, toys and craft materials for patients.
Why does nobody sit down?
This is the best part. During a HootaThon marathon, everyone stays on their feet. At the 2017 event, organizers did a ten-second countdown, everyone stood up together, and nobody sat down for the rest of the day. It isn’t a gimmick. The club has described the event as standing for the kids who can’t.
The day is also, frankly, a lot of fun. Hourly morale dances keep the energy up, and students get seriously into the costumes, with tutus, bright socks and face paint. The part that keeps it grounded is that CHOP’s Miracle kids and their families speak to the students throughout the day. One student told local radio that hearing from the children helped her picture who the money was for, even though she’d never dealt with cancer herself.
How did a student club get here?
HootaThon started at Temple in 2012. Its first marathon in Mitten Hall drew 450 people and raised more than $60,000. By November 2015, it had 1,271 registered dancers and had raised $280,620.76. In 2017, it moved into the Liacouras Center and raised $404,074.85 for CHOP in a 12-hour day.
The event has changed shape since then. Last spring, the main event was a six-hour day in the Howard Gittis Student Center, a smaller version with the same dancing, food and games. By 2023, the club had raised nearly $1.7 million for local kids over its first 11 years, and that total only grows because students keep showing up.
So, what’s happening this month?
This month, HootaThon has one mission, and it shows. The club has already held a hot dog sale at Maxi’s and a goodie bag sale at the SAC (the Howard Gittis Student Center, known to students as the SAC). The executive board is fundraising toward personal goals of its own, so the people running the club are doing the same thing they’re asking everyone else to do.
Small sales like these are how a student club raises real money. A hot dog is cheap, a goodie bag is easy to say yes to, and the money adds over a month. It also gets HootaThon in front of people who might never have heard of it, which is how the club grows.
What do you actually get for fundraising?
If you want to raise money yourself, fundraising runs through Children’s Miracle Network’s platform, where participants can use the DonorDrive fundraising app. This month, there are incentives to give people a reason to keep going.
Raise $250 and you earn a fidget box. Raise $400 and you take home a water bottle. Neither prize is the point, but they’re a nice thank-you, and they turn a big goal into smaller steps you can actually see. Twenty-five friends or family members giving $10 each gets you to the first milestone. Fifteen more gets you to the second. If you’ve ever said you’d do something to help but weren’t sure where to start, a clear number to aim for helps.
Why it Matters
It’s easy to think of fundraising as a number on a screen. But behind each milestone is a kid at CHOP who gets to understand what’s happening to them a little better, or who gets a toy, a craft or a game on a hard day. That’s what the money turns into.
HootaThon isn’t the biggest thing on campus, and it doesn’t pretend to be. It’s a group of students who decided that one month of effort, one hot dog at a time, was worth giving to kids they may never meet.
You can DONATE to HootaThon here, and every dollar goes to the Child Life Department at CHOP. You can stay up-to-date with HootaThon’s fundraisers by following them on Instagram @templehootathon.