A nationwide storytelling and fundraising push that helped send Albany State's 150-member Marching Rams Show Band to Pasadena.
During the same season at Albany State, my fellow intern and I, both former members of the ASU Marching Rams, took on the Rams in the Roses campaign, a push to raise funds and support for the ASU Marching Rams Show Band's trip to the 2016 Rose Bowl parade in Pasadena, California.
Sending the 150-member band to Pasadena would cost close to $300,000, at roughly $3,000 per student. The band had under a year to raise that amount, out of a small city with limited resources to draw from. ASU was the only HBCU chosen for the parade that year, which raised the stakes even higher.
We built a multi-platform appeal combining social media, email, written and visual storytelling, and coverage in HBCU and education publications to reach supporters nationwide. The plan leaned on the band's selection story itself, being the only HBCU in the parade, as the emotional core of the campaign.
A national stage, a historic invitation, and a story supporters could rally around.
We produced videos documenting the band's rigorous selection process and its case for the Rose Bowl, and pushed the story out through local news outlets, HBCU publications, university leaders, and community figures. The goal was broad outreach paired with a narrative people could rally around, not just a fundraising thermometer.
Marching Rams · Rose Parade Campaign
The campaign exceeded its $270,000 goal, raising $332,775. The full band made the trip to Pasadena as planned, and the leftover funds went toward needs-based scholarships for students.
A tight deadline and a small city budget didn't mean a small outcome. The story had to work harder to make up for what the budget couldn't, and it did, sending the band across the country and leaving a scholarship legacy behind.
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