TO: Robert D. Bridges robert.bridges@nemours.org10140 Centurion Parkway Jacksonville, FL 32256FROM: Golden Knights for Golden KidsSUBJECT: Grant Query

Dear Mr. Bridges,

Our hearts are constantly touched by the innocent, loving children that come and go through Nemours Children’s Hospitals. Their passion and zeal for life leaves a lasting impression on others. As past volunteers, we have all been touched by these special children and want to help expand the awareness of volunteer opportunities for local childhood cancer organizations to University of Central Florida students. There are tens of thousands of students all visiting the same campus, and getting exposure at a place like UCF would do wonders for any volunteer program.

Golden Knights for Golden Kids (GK4GK) is a way for University of Central Florida students to connect with Orlando organizations benefitting childhood cancer and vice versa. We currently have a website accompanied by social media pages on Facebook and Twitter. However, our objective is to expand our services to create an offline presence within the UCF community as well as polish our website to better serve our stakeholders.

We would like to make closer connections with our stakeholders by hosting events and tabling to spread awareness about the organizations featured on our website. Online, we want to update our website and change our calendar to an event management system to make it more accessible to users. Our total requested budget is roughly $1,400 (outlined in Proposal) for physical assets and website updates. We respectfully request the help of Nemours Children’s Hospital to help GK4GK fight against children's cancer in Orlando.

Sincerely,Golden Knights for Golden Kidsgk4gkinfo@gmail.comhttp://ucfknights.wix.com/goldenknightskids

Golden Knights for Golden Kids Community Outreach and

Website Upgrades

Danielle RidenourBri MacNaught

Kaitlyn PleasantsMasumi Palhof

Executive SummaryGolden Knights for Golden Kids (GK4GK) is a website with accompanying social media that helps bring together students and Orlando organizations that have the common goal of fighting childhood cancer. Our goal is to expand our services in order to create an offline presence as well as enhance our website to make it more user friendly. Through GK4GK, students will have access to a database of organizations for which they can volunteer, and organizations will have a new avenue of support that is of no cost to them.

We want our organization to make connections in the real world with our stakeholders by hosting local events and tabling. These events will help get the word out about the non-profit organizations featured on GK4GK’s website. Online, we wish to update our website and change our calendar to an event management system, making it easier for volunteers to have access to as many opportunities as possible.

IntroductionGK4GK needs an offline presence to bring attention to the site, and consequently the volunteer opportunities we present. We want to get UCF students involved on our site, and we could get our audience to engage with our site much more quickly if we had a presence on campus. Getting more traffic would also mean we would need to upgrade our site with a domain name and a better content management system. Unlike Volunteer UCF, our focus is not on UCF-affiliated organizations. We have a specific focus (childhood cancer), which involves mostly outside organizations. We have gathered all this information in one place, which has the advantage of cutting down research time for students looking to volunteer for childhood cancer causes. It also could potentially serve as a space for students, student organizations, and the many childhood cancer organizations in Orlando to connect.

Project NarrativeGK4GK gathers information on Orlando organizations benefiting children with cancer and provides one place to find that information, making volunteering easier and more enticing for students. We reach out to students through social media and community events in order to create awareness for local childhood cancer organizations and recruit volunteers. To provide our service to the students of UCF, we must create awareness for GK4GK. Our website has the potential to drive large amounts of student volunteers to the local childhood cancer organizations Orlando that are in need of help. We want to provide the children in Central Florida with enough support to successfully fight cancer. This is made possible through volunteers that support fundraising efforts or work directly with the children affected. There are several ways that we can further develop GK4GK and create a community that positively impacts the lives of children with cancer.

This is what the organizations page on our website currently looks like:

Individual organization page on GK4GK:

Our website (http://ucfknights.wix.com/goldenknightskids) is currently hosted on Wix, however we would like to provide GK4GK with its own domain name. A one-time monetary donation will allow us to update our website, and a small donation of $15 per year would cover the renewal of our domain name. We will hire a web developer to set up our website, and use Joomla and Ohanah for our event management system. Ohanah will allow site visitors to submit events and even add organizations similar to the non-profits listed on GK4GK. In addition, we will be able to pre-approve events that volunteers share.

Our current event system, which allows only 5 events total at a time:

Sample event listing from ohanah.com:

Currently, GK4GK has a purely digital presence that informs students of organizations and events they may participate in. We must find ways to reach the UCF population and bring volunteers to the current organizations we are featuring. GK4GK currently utilizes social media to connect with UCF students, however, we must meet directly with potential volunteers in order to fully demonstrate the benefits of volunteering with children’s cancer organizations. We need donations that will help us support our promotional efforts to UCF students. For example, UCF holds Market Day each Wednesday, during which various organizations and clubs table by the Student Union in order to recruit students. There are also several other tabling events that are open to UCF organizations as a way to promote themselves. GK4GK will need a decorative poster or table runner with our logo as well as a tent to set up at events such as Market Day and Opening Knight.

We have developed a plan to host a rally once a semester to mass recruit volunteers for the local childhood cancer organizations featured on our website. To organize this rally, we will rely solely on donations from sponsors. Our donations will go towards funding a meeting space and towards refreshments for the students that attend. We will host the organizations we have chosen to feature on our website, and each organization can provide the students with informational materials such as

flyers, brochures, or business cards. They may also provide students with promotional items from the organizations, such as shirts, pens and pencils, hats, and any other materials that will help recruit students to volunteer.

GK4GK exists to generate a volunteer base for existing organizations. We are not trying to become a new childhood cancer organization. This is why we only need one-time donations, and from there we will be self-sufficient. We have the ability and experience to manage our new website once it is created, and the social media is free and run entirely by the existing personnel who do not receive pay.

WorkplanWeek 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5

Research/ hire web developer

Site setup

Design & print banner

Buy tent

Host event/start tabling

Personnel Currently, our team consists of four members, all of whom are writers with a foundation in writing and rhetoric. Kaitlyn Pleasants and Bri MacNaught currently manage our Facebook and Twitter accounts; they have created the pages, followed or liked other pages relevant to our cause, and have been posting content aimed towards our target audience. Danielle Ridenour has been our liaison to many of the childhood cancer organizations, while Bri also has strong connections to Knight-Thon, UCF’s biggest philanthropy. Masumi Palhof created our website with the help of Kaitlyn Pleasants and has been updating the site periodically. Each member wrote and edited a portion of the content of our website.

Budget Item Quantity Cost Total

Domain Name (.com) 1 $2.99 $2.99

.com renewal 5 years $15 $75

Website setup 1 $1000 $1000

Ohanah 1 $61.15 $61.15

GK4GK Banner 1 $15 $15

Tent 1 $220 $220

Grand Total $1,347.14

Budget JustificationOur domain name change will provide GK4GK with the legitimacy it needs to be an appealing go-to for students searching for volunteer opportunities. With this domain change, we will switch our website platform to Joomla. Joomla’s software is free, however paying for a developer to set it up will cost approximately $1000. After our new website is created, our personnel will be able to manage and update content with greater ease.

Ohanah is an event management system that allows users with logins to submit events and listings for organizations on our website. Once we have Joomla installed on our website, we can then install Ohanah, which will be both more usable and cost effective than an upgrade of our current calendar; it only requires a one-time payment. Ohanah is also better for search engine optimization (SEO) because Ohanah’s software will help us show up higher on the list of clickable search results.

Our banner and tent are for tabling and events such as Market Day and Opening Knight. Tables for campus tabling events can be borrowed from the Student Union for free, but tents and banners are the organizations’ responsibility. From our donations, will be able to use our funds to purchase these items that are necessary at the time of these rallies each semester.