‘It all adds up, dollar by dollar’: Pitt Dance Marathon exceeds 12-hour fundraising goal for UPMC Children’s Hospital

Pitt Dance Marathon announced that they exceeded their fundraising goal of $17,000 for UPMC Children’s Hospital on Monday night. Their 12-hour fundraising push raised $24,980.51, breaking last year’s record of $21,000. Anna Jacobs, a senior dietetics and nutrition major and the president of Pitt Dance Marathon, said they relied on human connections to meet their goal.

“Our staff is reaching out to their friends, their family, their professors. They’re posting challenges on Instagram and having their friends donate,” Jacobs said. “It’s mainly peer-to-peer, asking people in our network for donations and sharing our reasons for fundraising for the Children’s Miracle Network. It all adds up, dollar by dollar.”

The Children’s Miracle Network is a non-profit organization that raises money for children’s hospitals around the country, including UPMC Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh. Jacobs said illness in her family inspired her to take action with Pitt Dance Marathon.

“When one of my cousins was four, he got diagnosed with neuroblastoma … luckily, he is perfectly fine now, perfectly healthy and he is a teenager, but I got to experience that firsthand,” Jacobs said. “I wanted to make sure that other families in our area didn’t have to go through that alone, and that the funds that we raise go to support the kids so that they have a healthier and safer time in the hospital.”

Jacobs said the drive was months in the making.

“We’ve been planning this for two months now, and we put out tons of fundraising resources for our staff,” Jacobs said. “We really kept morale high … all the prep work is what makes this day amazing.”