Phi Delta Theta Gives Back

Phi Delta Theta Gives Back

On April 16, 2016 Phi Delta Theta at West Texas A&M hosted their annual Chilifest and 5k event to benefit the ALS Association. The ALS Foundation is the national philanthropy of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity because the disease has been nicknamed Lou Gehrig’s Disease, after the famous Yankee first baseman and Phi Delta Theta alumni. Each year chapters across the country host events to benefit the ALS Association, and everyone has their own event that they do.

The Texas Theta chapter of Phi Delta Theta began planning for their April earlier this year in January. Chase Fulton, the chair of the event, was very eager to get started. “We got the planning off to a little bit later of a start than I would have liked. It put us into panic mode pretty earlier on in the semester trying to have things ready to go in April,” he said. Normally the beginning planning stages start to happen during the fall semester, but due to some complications with the selection of the Chilifest Chair the planning was postponed.

Once planning began it was still a struggle to get things done because at this point the chapter was trying to book things fairly last minute. There are many different things that go into the planning of the chilifest; the chapter is tasked with finding a third party vendor that will serve alcohol at the event, they need to get musical acts, get chili teams, map out the 5k route, find silent auction items, fill out several different risk management forms, and this year all the members of the chapter had to raise $400 in sponsorships. “When you start to look into all of the different things that go in to making this event happen, and having it be successful, it is a lot of work to do over the span of about two and a half months.” Fulton said.

The amount of money that the members had to raise was doubled from what it has been in recent years. Members in the past have been asked to raise $200 in sponsorships and this year...