TO: Robert D.

Bridges
robert.bridges@nemours.org
10140 Centurion Parkway
Jacksonville, FL 32256
FROM: Golden Knights for Golden Kids
SUBJECT: Grant Query
Dear Mr. Bridges,

The innocent, loving children that come and go through Nemours Childrens Hospitals
doors constantly touch our hearts. Their passion and zeal for life leaves a lasting impression
on others. As past volunteers, we have all been touched by these special children and want to
help expand the awareness of volunteer opportunities for local childhood cancer organizations
to University of Central Florida students. There are tens of thousands of students all visiting the
same campus, and getting exposure at a place like UCF would do wonders for any volunteer
program.
Golden Knights for Golden Kids (GK4GK) is a way for University of Central Florida students to
connect with Orlando organizations benefitting childhood cancer and vice versa. We currently
have a website accompanied by social media pages on Facebook and Twitter. However, our
objective is to expand our services to create an offline presence within the UCF community as
well as polish our website to better serve our stakeholders.
We would like to make closer connections with our stakeholders by hosting events and tabling
to spread awareness about the organizations featured on our website. Online, we want to
update our website and change our calendar to an event management system to make it more
accessible to users. Our total requested budget is roughly $1,400 (outlined in Proposal) for
physical assets and website updates. We respectfully request the help of Nemours Childrens
Hospital to help GK4GK fight against children's cancer in Orlando.
Sincerely,
Golden Knights for Golden Kids
gk4gkinfo@gmail.com
http://ucfknights.wix.com/goldenknightskids

Golden Knights for Golden Kids

Community Outreach and
Website Upgrades

Danielle Ridenour
Bri MacNaught
Kaitlyn Pleasants
Masumi Palhof

Executive Summary
Golden Knights for Golden Kids (GK4GK) is a website with accompanying social media that
helps bring together students and Orlando organizations that have the common goal of fighting
childhood cancer. Our goal is to expand our services in order to create an offline presence as
well as enhance our website to make it more user friendly. Through GK4GK, students will have
access to a database of organizations for which they can volunteer, and organizations will have
a new avenue of support that is of no cost to them.
We want our organization to make connections in the real world with our stakeholders by
hosting local events and tabling. These events will help get the word out about the non-profit
organizations featured on GK4GKs website. Online, we wish to update our website and change
our calendar to an event management system, making it easier for volunteers to have access to
as many opportunities as possible.
Introduction
GK4GK needs an offline presence to bring attention to the site, and consequently the volunteer
opportunities we present. We want to get UCF students involved on our site, and we could get
our audience to engage with our site much more quickly if we had a presence on campus.
Getting more traffic would also mean we would need to upgrade our site with a domain name
and a better content management system. Unlike Volunteer UCF, our focus is not on UCFaffiliated organizations. We have a specific focus (childhood cancer), which involves mostly
outside organizations. We have gathered all this information in one place, which has the
advantage of cutting down research time for students looking to volunteer for childhood cancer
causes. It also could potentially serve as a space for students, student organizations, and the
many childhood cancer organizations in Orlando to connect.
Project Narrative
GK4GK gathers information on Orlando organizations benefiting children with cancer and
provides one place to find that information, making volunteering easier and more enticing for
students. We reach out to students through social media and community events in order to
create awareness for local childhood cancer organizations and recruit volunteers. To provide
our service to the students of UCF, we must create awareness for GK4GK. Our website has the
potential to drive large amounts of student volunteers to the local childhood cancer
organizations Orlando that are in need of help. We want to provide the children in Central
Florida with enough support to successfully fight cancer. This is made possible through
volunteers that support fundraising efforts or work directly with the children affected. There are
several ways that we can further develop GK4GK and create a community that positively
impacts the lives of children with cancer.

This is what the organizations page on our website currently looks like:

Individual organization page on GK4GK:

Our website (http://ucfknights.wix.com/goldenknightskids) is currently hosted on Wix, however

we would like to provide GK4GK with its own domain name. A one-time monetary donation will
allow us to update our website, and a small donation of $15 per year would cover the renewal of
our domain name. We will hire a web developer to set up our website, and use Joomla and
Ohanah for our event management system. Ohanah will allow site visitors to submit events and
even add organizations similar to the non-profits listed on GK4GK. In addition, we will be able to
pre-approve events that volunteers share.
Our current event system, which allows only 5 events total at a time:

Sample event listing from ohanah.com:

Currently, GK4GK has a purely digital presence that informs students of organizations and
events they may participate in. We must find ways to reach the UCF population and bring
volunteers to the current organizations we are featuring. GK4GK currently utilizes social media
to connect with UCF students, however, we must meet directly with potential volunteers in order
to fully demonstrate the benefits of volunteering with childrens cancer organizations. We need
donations that will help us support our promotional efforts to UCF students. For example, UCF
holds Market Day each Wednesday, during which various organizations and clubs table by the
Student Union in order to recruit students. There are also several other tabling events that are
open to UCF organizations as a way to promote themselves. GK4GK will need a decorative
poster or table runner with our logo as well as a tent to set up at events such as Market Day and
Opening Knight.
We have developed a plan to host a rally once a semester to mass recruit volunteers for the
local childhood cancer organizations featured on our website. To organize this rally, we will rely
solely on donations from sponsors. Our donations will go towards funding a meeting space and
towards refreshments for the students that attend. We will host the organizations we have
chosen to feature on our website, and each organization can provide the students with
informational materials such as flyers, brochures, or business cards. They may also provide
students with promotional items from the organizations, such as shirts, pens and pencils, hats,
and any other materials that will help recruit students to volunteer.
GK4GK exists to generate a volunteer base for existing organizations. We are not trying to
become a new childhood cancer organization. This is why we only need one-time donations,
and from there we will be self-sufficient. We have the ability and experience to manage our new
website once it is created, and the social media is free and run entirely by the existing personnel
who do not receive pay.
Workplan
Week 1
Research/
hire web
developer
Site setup

Design &
print banner

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Week 5

Buy tent

Host
event/start
tabling
Personnel
Currently, our team consists of four members, all of whom are writers with a foundation in
writing and rhetoric. Kaitlyn Pleasants and Bri MacNaught currently manage our Facebook and
Twitter accounts; they have created the pages, followed or liked other pages relevant to our
cause, and have been posting content aimed towards our target audience. Danielle Ridenour
has been our liaison to many of the childhood cancer organizations, while Bri also has strong
connections to Knight-Thon, UCFs biggest philanthropy. Masumi Palhof created our website
with the help of Kaitlyn Pleasants and has been updating the site periodically. Each member
wrote and edited a portion of the content of our website.
Budget
Item

Quantity

Cost

Total

Domain Name (.com)

$2.99

$2.99

.com renewal

5 years

$15

$75

Website setup

$1000

$1000

Ohanah

$61.15

$61.15

GK4GK Banner

$15

$15

Tent

$220

$220

Grand Total

$1,347.14

Budget Justification
Our domain name change will provide GK4GK with the legitimacy it needs to be an appealing
go-to for students searching for volunteer opportunities. With this domain change, we will switch
our website platform to Joomla. Joomlas software is free, however paying for a developer to set
it up will cost approximately $1000. After our new website is created, our personnel will be able
to manage and update content with greater ease.
Ohanah is an event management system that allows users with logins to submit events and
listings for organizations on our website. Once we have Joomla installed on our website, we can
then install Ohanah, which will be both more usable and cost effective than an upgrade of our

current calendar; it only requires a one-time payment. Ohanah is also better for search engine
optimization (SEO) because Ohanahs software will help us show up higher on the list of
clickable search results.
Our banner and tent are for tabling and events such as Market Day and Opening Knight. Tables
for campus tabling events can be borrowed from the Student Union for free, but tents and
banners are the organizations responsibility. From our donations, will be able to use our funds
to purchase these items that are necessary at the time of these rallies each semester.