STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Now that THON weekend 2023 comes to a close, it begs the question, just how many people does it take to pull of the event each year?
Just how many student volunteers does it take to raise over 15 million dollars?
The short answer is thousands.
According to Lily Pevoto, the THON 2023 Executive Director and 5th year Accounting Major, 16,500 students participated in THON. These students worked up to 40 hours each week, the equivalent of a full-time job, in order to make this year’s event as successful as in years’ past.
Pevoto said that about 4,000 of those volunteers had some role beyond fundraising. Some of these roles included serving on committees that focused on communications, finance, technology and dancer relations. The students on these committees had responsibilities throughout the school year, not just in mid-February during THON weekend.
One of the committees that has a particularly large role is the Rules and Regulations/Event Safety committee.
That committee which was directed by Tyler Saiers, a 5th year Labor and Human Resources major, consisted of 40 members and over 1,000 other volunteers. This group is responsible ensuring that everyone that attends THON gets into the event and is able move around safely.
The attendance for 2023 was not available yet, but according to Saiers, for THON 2022, 23,000 different people attended the event, and with people allowed to come and go there were 40,000 overall times that people entered the Bryce Jordan Center.
In addition to people entering the building, Saiers and his team are responsible for people getting on and off the event floor at the appropriate times. His team started the process of identifying and communicating those with floor access as early as December. Each of the 707 dancers were permitted more than a dozen guests each and all this movement had to be coordinated correctly.
This is just one example of the many students giving a great deal of their own time, in addition to maintaining their academic standards.
Most people know THON as the weekend event that raises a great deal of money to assist families in their fight against pediatric cancer, but may not be aware of the sacrifice and efforts that Penn State students make to make the event a success.