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Texas THON Awarded as 2021 Miracle Network Dance Marathon Hackathon Winner

On Thursday afternoon, August 19, the 2nd annual Dance Marathon Hackathon final presentations took place. The finalists gave four incredible presentations in this Shark-Tank-style event to a panel of judges. Their collective ideas each held great fundraising potential and identified some valuable areas of opportunities to grow our Dance Marathon program.

We are thrilled to announce the winning idea: DonorDrive Stewardship presented by the team from The University of Texas at Austin. Congratulations!

Our Dance Marathon staff will now explore, research, and test bringing Texas THON’s DonorDrive Stewardship idea to life in the upcoming year!

The winning team has also earned a $1,000 USD donation to their chosen Childrens Miracle Network Hospital and will have a choice of a grand prize between:

  • A one time, $3,000 grant to their Dance Marathon program
  • A custom DonorDrive theme along with coaching from DonorDrive on how to make their fundraising platform as effective and engaging as possible for their Dance Marathon
  • A trip for up to three to Children’s Hospitals Week 2022 in Orlando, FL!

Individuals across the country tuned in to view the Hackathon presentation. If you missed the broadcast, you can revisit it here.

Although not every presentation can finish in first place, the other presentations proved brilliant as well. In fact, we are committing to add all four finalist ideas to our Dance Marathon idea pipeline, exploring ways to implement them in the coming years. We are thrilled to honor each of these runner up teams with a $250 USD donation to the Childrens Miracle Network Hospital of their choice! You can read more about each of the final ideas here

Thank you to our judges who weighed in with insightful feedback and questions.

  • Maria Hokanson, EVP US & Canada Marketing, Dairy Queen
  • Hammed Sirleaf, Assistant Director, Fraternity & Sorority Life, George Mason University
  • Kasey Cuppoletti, Chief Product Officer, DonorDrive
  • Quy Nguyen, Senior Associate Director of Student Life, University of Oklahoma
  • Taylor Peter, Director, Dance Marathon Community, Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals
  • Jack Green, Dance Marathon Alumni, past Hackathon winner

Thank you to each person who came together to make this possible. Everyones brilliant ideas and hard work adds up to make Dance Marathon an even more powerful program that continues to change kids’ health and change the future! Congratulations to our winning team and to all our participants!