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,
Our hearts are constantly touched by the innocent, loving children that come and go
through Nemours Childrens Hospitals. 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 UCF-affiliated 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

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Week 5

Research/ hire web developer

Site setup

Design & print banner

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 KnightThon, 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.