Written by: Sarah Daniels, Internal Philanthropy Chairman

The start of second semester for Clemson Tri Delta means that our first philanthropy event is right around the corner. Every year, usually in February, we put on a Letter Writing campaign called Sincerely Yours, where we send out letter to friends, family, and community with the efforts to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. This semester, I have the privilege to serve as our chapter’s Philanthropy Chair. With this position, I get to plan, direct, and organize everything that we do related to St. Jude. It’s such a rewarding position to hold in this chapter and I get more and more excited about raising money every day!

St. Jude is an incredible partner to have for our philanthropy because they really do as much as they can on their end to help us college girls raise money. For Sincerely Yours, St. Jude purchases all of the supplies and stamps needed to make the event happen. I simply had to pick up my phone, call our representative, and tell her how many letters, envelopes, and stamps that we needed. Each member in our chapter usually writes around 50 letters. When you multiply this by 240 members, you get 12,000 letters that we send out!

On the night of the event, we had the honor to have an employee of St. Jude come all the way from Memphis to Clemson, to present an impact report on what our chapter specifically and Tri Delta has a whole has done for St. Jude. We spent the rest of the evening decorating our envelopes so that they would be cute and fun little surprises in each of the mailboxes that they would end up in. It was so fun to see what personal touches that everyone put on their envelopes and gave some times for our sisters to hangout and bond.

The day after Sincerely Yours, I got to take all 12,000 of those letters to our local Post Office for them to be sent off. I am already anxiously waiting for donations to start rolling in, and cannot wait to see what impact that Clemson Tri Delta can make for the kids and families of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital!