Wednesday, October 24^th, four girls managed to bring together Dance Marathon, Cupcake Emporium, and attract hundreds of students to raise money for the Children’s Miracle Network.

At “Cupcakes for a Cause” cupcakes were sold, $2.00 a piece. They were provided by Cupcake Emporium who caters for events, parties, weddings and other occasions. Thirty percent of the group’s proceeds are going to Dance Marathon, a fundraiser that has helped children with life threatening illnesses for 15 years.

Dance Marathon plans to donate the money to Children’s Miracle Network, which is a non-profit organization working with over 170 children’s hospitals throughout the United States and Canada. The hospitals involved with Children’s Miracle Network treats millions of children with small injuries to serious diseases each year.

Brooke Prouty, Sara Johnson, Jessie Muntz, and Jessi Decker were all grouped together in the Iowa State course, Event 371. They were given an assignment to create an event of their choice. The four of them agreed to do a non-profit event or a fundraiser.

The idea for the Cupcakes for a Cause came together when Sara Johnson, one of the four group members, shared that she works at Cupcake Emporium and when Jessie Muntz shared that she is an executive with Dance Marathon. The four of them decided to combine the two, and raise money for the Children’s Miracle Network.

Tickets were pre-sold for the event to get an idea of how many cupcakes were needed, and more were sold at the stand.  A “no hands” cupcake eating competition was held as well. Tickets for the competition were also pre-sold for $3.00 giving students a cupcake for the competition and the chance to win a voucher for two free cupcakes.

When the idea was proposed to Tanya Zerr, owner of Cupcake Emporium located in downtown Main Street, Johnson described Zerr as excited to be working with the group and on campus.

Brooke Prouty, group member, said, “We thought it would be a great opportunity to get a local business to come out and support the Dance Marathon and also to get our name out to students on campus.”

Jessie Muntz, Director of Fundraising for Dance Marathon and a group member, described the five different flavors of cupcakes.

“We have white chocolate raspberry, peanut butter cup, chocolate and vanilla that have the DM logo on them, and then red velvet.”

The event took place next to the campanile beginning at 11:30am and going until 1:30pm. By noon the group had already sold their first batch of over 200 cupcakes and had to call in another batch.

Dance Marathon members arrived at 12:30pm to dance.

Amy Garvin, Morale Dance Performance Coordinator, said “We decided to perform the morale dance at it [Cupcakes for a Cause] to add a little entertainment to the event. The morale dance is a five minute mash up of random songs that we create just a fun, goofy dance to, and then we perform it every hour on the hour at our event to kind of keep the energy up.”

When asked about the event’s progress, Jessi Decker, a group member, stated, “It’s been pretty fun. I think we’ve been pretty successful. I’ve got a good bunch of girls.”