Give N Day.
A day of community, fun, stress, and long hours. With the dust settled, let’s talk about the past Give-N-Day.
The Search for Water: 2024
We settled on fundraising for a water bottle fill station pretty early. If my memory serves me right (which it rarely does), we tentatively decided on the stations a month or so after the 2023 Give-N-Day.
All was good. We had a plan. It was set to start early and work in earnest on promotional materials in mid-January. It would be a shame if someone vital to all of that decided to get surgery about a month before the big day. It would be a bigger shame if the surgery had about a month recovery time.
On Jan 31st, I went in to get my nose fixed due to some complications stemming from a car wreck. The recovery time was about a month. Despite this, we marched forward. The plan was settled to do a 12-hour livestream as our big Give-N-Day. Grad Student Johnny Shinnaberry would be my co-presenter and student worker Mia was tasked to make the overlay. We were totally not copying Colonel Esports (we were). We decided to up the ante on the stretch funding goals and to drop the tattoo to a mostly reasonable amount. It was going to be a fun day.
The advanced giving period was an intense time. We tried to get every challenge possible. There was a brief moment where we were in a dead heat with our friends over at Bridge for Independent for most advanced donors. The battle kept most of us awake into the late hours of the night.
On March 5th, we got the livestream rolling. Last minute, we decided to up the stream time to 14 hours. The stream started with one of my favorite games: Dark Souls. Rather than play the game normally, we had all of the enemies and items randomized. At our peak, we had about 100 viewers during this challenge run. We went through a good many games. Power Wash Simulator, Fall Guys, and Heckdivers 2 all made appearances.
Outside of the stream, Brandy kept our social media going with posts and networked a lot of donations. Mary Katherine kept us fed with social media graphics and collabed with Brandy on an amazing Give-N-Day display on 2nd floor.
So, how did we do?
We raised $3,825 and hit all but one of our funding stretch goals!
So, what does that mean?
It means that we will be getting at least one water bottle fill station. It also means I have to get a bucket of ice water dumped on me, dye my hair blue (with frosted tips), and get a water bottle fill station tattoo.
What about the board game collection?
Let’s talk about that.
Game Time: 2023
We are making decent headway with the gaming collection. We should be able to unveil the collection during the upcoming fall semester.
Currently, we are purchasing board games and cataloging them as they arrive. The next step is to fully iron out our check out procedures and purchase the TTRPG books.
The Future: 2025
Have any ideas for Give-N-Day 2025? Email me: Andrew.barbier@nicholls.edu or send us a message on insta @nichollslibrary. These fundraisers are for you, and we want to put this money toward what benefits our community the most, so let us know.