After initially aiming for $5,000 in September, Elder, alongside club co-advisor Shawn Hallahan, raised the goal to $10,000, and finally $20,000 after receiving an outpouring of donations from the school community.

The club set a low target, since they “didn’t know what the community response would be,” Elder said.

While the club has existed for a handful of years prior to the pandemic, a four-year hiatus required them to start from scratch at the beginning of the 2023-24 academic year.

At the beginning of this year, five 11th grade girls came to Elder with an idea.

Dance DJ Nick Caracciolo (right) presents Thad Dick with the crown for Mr. Mini-THON as second-place finisher Kole Dickinson claps along.

“So back when we had (Mini-THON) pre-COVID, we would have some of the middle schoolers come by when we had our dance, just to see it before going back and leaving it to the highschoolers,” Elder said, “and apparently they remembered that, and it was a big memory for them.”

These five students now serve as officers for the club, and have been instrumental in its recent success.

Their first effort was a “canning” drive — collecting spare change at home football games in old coffee cans.

“When we did it I didn’t expect much, I thought that I would be able to count everything they got in a few minutes,” Elder said.

Ultimately, it took him over two hours to count the donations from the first home game, totaling several hundred dollars.

Elder and Hallahan agreed to double their donation target to $10,000 after the unexpected success of the canning effort.

The club, now about 50-members strong, refocused on their next fundraiser — the Mr. Mini-THON competition in January.

Structured like the typical prom king contest, eight students vied for the crown and donations from the crowd at the Bellwood-Antis High School Winter Dance on Jan. 13.

At the end of the night, Thad Dick was crowned Mr. Mini-THON and the club raised more than $9,000 from the contest, and an additional $1,400 from the admission costs, for Four Diamonds pediatric cancer research.

“We were blown away by the outpouring of support from the community,” Elder said. “It was very impressive seeing the amount of students who showed up.”

Now, Elder and Hallahan are optimistic for the remainder of the fundraiser, and are looking forward to seeing what their students can accomplish.

With the Mini-THON dance marathon a little over a month away, Elder believes the club has time for one last major fundraiser.

Stall Day, where students across every school in the Bellwood-Antis district can bring in their loose change, is when the start of class will be delayed for however long it takes for their teacher to count the total.

“We’re going to make it a competition between the different schools, to see which one can get the most time,” Elder said. He anticipates that the district’s elementary school students will be particularly fond of this fundraiser.

“We’ve had a lot of our (club) members with elementary school siblings say they’ve wanted to participate,” Elder said.

Elder and Hallahan are still in discussion with the participating school principals to find a day where the delay will be the least-impactful on students’ learning.

While the school-record Mini-THON donation of about $43,000 is still a long way off, Elder said he is excited to see how the club will continue to grow.

“All the officers this year are 11th graders, and they’re already coming up with ideas for next year,” he said.

Mirror Staff Writer Conner Goetz is at 814-946-7535.