UCP of Central Florida recently opened their brand new virtual East Orange/Bailes Campus Schoolhouse to coincide with a fundraising campaign to complete the final phase of the capital campaign for the Bailes Charter School campus. When complete, the Bailes campus will host more than 300 children with and without disabilities each year. You can view the UCP of Central Florida announcement of the their grand opening here.
The Bailes schools will physically open in July 2009 as a fully inclusive Charter School that will be focus on Arts and Technology. The facility will total more than 35,000 square feet of space.
The announcement of the school's virtual opening also included a personal e-mail message from UCP of Central Florida CEO, Ilene Wilkins on the social network, LinkedIn. Leveraging existing social networks will help bring those who are used to life online and more likely to be comfortable to your virtual cause than many traditional donors and this is an excellent example of utilizing a social network to produce fundraising results.
What makes this project so unique is how the affiliate is raising money for the Bailes campus. Each individual can purchase any virtual item to coincide with the physical item for the actual school. Items include virtual chairs, desks, books, paper, wall art and much more. Ilene Wilkins writes in her LinkedIn message, "We've developed a very cool new Virtual School - where you can wander around our new school - and donate monies for individual items." When a person purchases a virtual item it acts as a donation to the capital campaign The donor receives instant recognition when their name appears on the item they purchased and it represents a tangible item for the donor.
On the virtual tour page it says, "NO DONATION IS TOO SMALL!" We hope you can stop by and take a look at this interesting and exciting way to complete UCP of Central Florida's capital campaign for the East Orange/Bailes Campus Charter School and help children with disabilities live a life without limits. If you do intend to purchase a virtual item, you can give Ilene Wilkins credit she is "Campaigner #13."
For more information , including the real costs of any of the virtual items, or on larger items such as Naming Opportunities within the campus, contact Terri Chastain or Suzi Albrecht at (407) 852-3300.
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