This spring, the band director of Henderson State University (HSU) proudly took a whipped-cream pie to the face. He smiled and walked away with a jar of money for the music department, the winner of our SPS chapter’s pie-a-professor fundraiser.

We asked professors from several departments to volunteer for the event. Each had a donation jar, and the rule was that the jar that collected the most money would become a donation to a student organization in that professor’s department. The remaining donations would go towards funding SPS events, many of which are outreach events for local middle schools and high schools.

During the fundraiser, SPS members monitored the jars at a table in the middle of our campus. We explained to interested students and faculty what the Society of Physics Students does, what we plan to do with the money we raise, and, most importantly, who was winning and by how much. Many students (and quite a few faculty members) donated. Some wanted to see a particularly tough professor get pied, but several people gave to the lowest-value jar just to ensure our organization would receive their donations. A few of these people said that they will look to join SPS in the fall.

Although the winning jar accounted for nearly a third of the total money donated, we collected about $160 for the chapter and only had to pay for a dozen jars and two cans of whipped cream. This fundraiser is so simple, fun, and inexpensive that I expect our chapter to repeat the event next semester. //

Fundraising Stories

Sean Bentley

For the past three years, our chapter has rented out a local laser tag arcade for a night, and sold tickets to students campus-wide as a fundraiser.

Ed Greco

My SPS chapter recently received the green light to solicit funds through our university's kickstarter site. We are raising money to complete construction of a spark chamber. The spark chamber will be on display to the public for the 2014 Atlanta Science Festival (http://atlantasciencefestival.org/).