Like many students, fourth-year public relations student Molly Rigatti finished last semester by completing a project. Unlike most students, her project was a concert at The Cotton Gin in Five Points that benefited charity.
Rigatti was a student in professor Lisa Sisk’s Journalism 531: Public Relations Campaigns class last semester. This course required the students to create and execute a public relations campaign for an organization as the semester-long Capstone project. Rigatti and classmate Casey Pigott chose to do theirs for USC Dance Marathon.
“I have served USCDM as a public relations coordinator for the past two years and have truly fallen in love with the organization and what it does,” Rigatti said about choosing USC Dance Marathon.
USC Dance Marathon started as a single event in 1999 to raise money for the Palmetto Health Children’s Hospital. The main event, featuring dancing, games and other entertainment, has continued every year since. It has also become USC’s largest student-run philanthropy, raising money for Palmetto Health in additional ways throughout the year.
“Because USCDM launched its ‘Half a Million in Half the Time’ campaign in September, we decided to couple community engagement and fundraising," Rigatti said. "We spent a few weeks researching what USCDM currently does in the realm of community engagement and fundraising efforts and wanted to build on the strengths of existing efforts."
Rigatti and Pigott wanted to do the fundraising where students were already spending money, so they looked into having a concert in Five Points. John Sears, owner of The Cotton Gin, had helped with Dance Marathon as a student at Penn State, and he said he was happy to host the event. Local artists Waccamaw and DJ Bois Obscur agreed to play at the concert.
One of the hardest parts of the process was scheduling around everyone's calendars.
“Our biggest difficulty in planning our event was the timing. It was difficult to plan our schedule around the schedules of our organization leaders, hospital leaders and university students," Rigatti said. "When we finally got a date nailed down with the venue and entertainment, it conflicted with other USC functions and we were then limited to one week before finals.”
The event took place on Dec. 2, 2014. Rigatti hopes to help in expanding USC Dance Marathon’s “For The Kids” campaign around the state.
“I love people and doing everything I can to put people in their most advantageous position," Rigatti said. "I believe that it is our university’s job to make our campus optimal for all students.”