One Day For Iowa is an annual 24-hour online event administered by the University of Iowa Center for Advancement that raises donations to various programs and departments within the university. 

March 25 marks One Day For Iowa’s 10th annual event. Over 140 departments and programs related to athletics, health care, research, liberal arts and sciences, and others opted into the event to receive donations from students, faculty, and alumni.

As of 7:37 p.m. on March 25, over $2.7 million was raised from nearly 5,000 donors. 

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“It provides a lot of attention for all different areas across campus that are supporting students, faculty, and community members,” Shaina Spencer, the associate director for annual giving at the UI Center for Advancement, said.

“There is an option for almost anyone coming to our site to find something that they are interested in and passionate about supporting.”

The School of Journalism and Mass Communication, in collaboration with DITV, hosted a four-hour livestream event to bring on faculty and students to discuss the event and its support toward the program. 

Jake Mayer, the SJMC student success and engagement coordinator, said the funds are monitored during the livestream and that it is an effective way to show support for the program.

“We wouldn’t be able to do that if we didn’t have generous alumni supporting us,” Mayer said. “As someone who works in marketing and communications, I think it’s such a cool way for the UI to keep in touch with alumni. We have a very robust alumni network, so it’s cool to see the support coming back.”

From 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., the UI Center for Advancement hosted a One Day for Iowa event on the Pentacrest for students to participate in different activities such as a basketball hoop contest, a photoshoot in front of the old capitol building for the online Hawkeye pride photo mosaic, and a drawing area.

Megan Magee, the UI Center for Advancement content marketing strategist, said the different activities such as the photo mosaic allowed students to engage in the fundraiser by earning up to $250 in bonus dollars that would go to any of the participating programs.

“We’re going to pick 20 submissions from the photo mosaic to earn $250,” Magee said. “We’ll contact them and ask, ‘Where do you want this money to go?’ And then we will move those funds from our pool towards the program. We have this whole pool of extra funding today, so you don’t have to donate but you can still participate in funding some of your favorite areas.”

Another way anyone could help raise funds during the event is participating in the social media challenges through Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, or the social platform X. 

According to One Day For Iowa, posts or comments can be made on the platforms through different challenges. Then, depending on the type of challenge, a number of people who participated in the online challenges are randomly selected to donate $250 or $500 in bonus funding to the featured area of their choice.

The programs can set specific dollar amount goals and there are online challenges available for the different areas, Spencer said.

“We have donors who sponsor challenges for specific areas,” Spencer said. “We like to put them on our site and encourage all of our participating areas to have a challenge that really promotes giving, and it’s exciting for each area to have individual goals like that.”

As part of the 10th-anniversary theme, new additions include programs such as the SJMC and College of Liberal Arts and Sciences having a $10,000 fund goal and the athletic teams participating in a secondary leaderboard for challenges.

“We have a lot of different featured areas who are doing some fun 10th-anniversary-themed challenges,” Magee said. “We’re just building off on what we’ve already done, which has been pretty successful. We’re just hoping to raise a little bit more than we did last year.”

Spencer said after starting with only 20 programs in its first year, One Day for Iowa has greatly expanded in the last ten years.

“It’s very exciting that this is our 10th anniversary,” Spencer said. “To have over 140 areas this year is just tremendous. For us at the Center for Advancement, we can put a lot of effort into it and it really doesn’t happen without our campus partners. That growth that we have seen has absolutely been because of their excitement, their involvement, their dedication to helping us elevate this program every year. So we’re very grateful for that side of things.”

Editor’s note: The Daily Iowan receives donations from One Day for Iowa.