Senior pride shines as Notre Dame’s Class of 2024 leads record-breaking fundraising effort

After a record-breaking fundraising effort in 2023, Notre Dame Regional High School students and community members surpassed expectations again during Activity Week 2024.

Last year, students raised a record $318,397.94 ($749.17 per student). This year, they beat that record by more than $35,000 with a total of $354,203.40 ($816.14 per student).

“Activity Week’s been going on for over 60 years now,” Notre Dame president Tim Garner said. “Instead of having several different fundraisers for this, that and the other throughout the year, we just put it all in one week in order to just minimize the overall solicitations, but also to allow for this sense of community while you're doing it.”

Notre Dame sets its Activity Week fundraising goals based on overall operating costs and needs. This year’s goal was $265,000.

“We’ll take a look at what our budgetary numbers are going to be, and knowing, historically, where we've been at and try to give a conservative estimate of what we feel like, we can raise,” Garner said. “Because it goes directly into the budget, it's got to be a conservative estimate, so that the budget doesn't fall short.”

Since 25% of Notre Dame’s operating funds come from fundraising, Activity Week provides students with some friendly competition as they raise money for their school. Top overall salespersons, salespersons per category, homerooms and overall classes receive prizes for their efforts, which include $100 gift certificates to businesses in the area, breakfast served by faculty members and dress-down days, among others.

Upon winning, the top overall class gets to select a student to act as principal for a day.

“It varies by who is selected, and it’s within reason,” Garner said. “But it’s (things like) no homework at the teachers’ discretion or dress-down days, which are a big deal when you have a full dress code every day. It may be a senior movie in the gym or something. Just various things that take on the personality of the individual doing it.”

This year, Notre Dame’s senior class took the top spot, raising more than a third of the net profit with $120,659.20 ($1,040.17 per student).

“They're motivated as leaders of the school, and part of that is taking ownership of being the school leaders and leading the way by example,” Garner said. “They definitely showed that this year. We traditionally get senior classes that have so much pride in what they're doing and carry on the tradition of the senior class. Going above and beyond, and raising more funds than the other class levels, (carries) a sense of pride and responsibility. They don’t want to be a senior class that is outworked by the underclassmen.”

Students had various sales categories, ranging from candy to trash bags, to raffle tickets. The top overall salesperson was Ella Stroup who raised $13,616.43.

For full results of Activity Week 2024, visit www.notredamehighschool.org/activityweek2024results.