University athletes teamed up with dozens of University fraternity and sorority life members Tuesday to help raise money for United Way of Lane County, a local non-profit provider of financial, educational and health-related aid.
The volunteers, included 150 athletes, who hoped to shatter last year’s total and assembled at the EMU to hit up mid-morning campus rush. The volunteers wielded signs and donation jars and asked students and staff to donate their spare change to a philanthropic cause. The fall day of service, branded the Live United Challenge, is the second annual fund-raising collaboration of its kind between United Way and O Heroes, a community organization run by student-athletes through the athletic department.
Last year, volunteers raised more than $1,200 to be channeled into the extensive list of local aid agencies that United Way supports, including FOOD for Lane County, Big Brothers Big Sisters  of Lane County and Womenspace.
Monique Fuiava, a softball player and one of the challenge’s volunteer student-athletes, helped raise money for the event last year and had such a memorable experience that she was happy to pick up her donation jar for a second time.
“I got involved through O Heroes last year, and I didn’t really think anything of it,” Fuiava said. “But it was really fun and entertaining, so I volunteered to do it again this year.”
Rick Mowday, a management professor at the Lundquist College of Business, helped oversee the competition. He was glad that organizational and equipment costs were kept low, allowing more of the collected money to go directly to charity.
“We are all volunteers, so there is basically no cost,” Mowday said. “The Duck Store (was) our major sponsor and donated 200 T-shirts.”
United Way spokesperson Cheryl Crumbley said the organization helped revamp the fundraiser this year by making it more competitive, creating an incentive for more contributions.
“Last year was just kind of an experiment, (so) this year we thought, ‘Let’s make it even juicier. Let’s make it men versus women.’” Crumbley said.
According to the competition’s guidelines, the money raised by the competing groups will be kept separate and will eventually be tallied to find out the more financially lucrative gender.
University fraternity and sorority life was new to this year’s fund drive, working with O Heroes to motivate dozens of students from the fraternity and sorority community to don T-shirts, grab collection jars and take to the University’s streets. Crumbley was elated to work with new volunteers, and expressed her high hope that the next few years will bring in more students and a more extravagant competition.
“The fraternity and sorority community turned out to be a very good match,” Crumbley said. “(With their help), I would love to see this turn into a much bigger challenge.”
Annie Carlson, the Fraternity and Sorority Adviser at the Holden Leadership Center, saw the drive as a way to show the campus and Eugene communities how important community service is to the University’s fraternity and sorority system.
“We are always trying to find ways of branching out, and this was (a chance) to reach groups outside of the fraternity and sorority community,” Carlson said. “It’s about living out one of our core values.”
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