VCU Prepares for Second CreateAthon onCampus

By Tom Gresham

More than 40 students at Virginia Commonwealth University will spend 24 consecutive hours completing marketing and advertising projects for free for a dozen area nonprofits beginning on Thursday morning.

The student volunteers will be participating in the second-ever CreateAthon onCampus, a caffeinated marathon of creative work designed to help nonprofit organizations with little or no resources for advertising and marketing initiatives. Students will begin work at VCU on Thursday at 8:30 a.m., laboring through the day and night on their assignments. They will present their completed projects to their clients on Friday morning. Student team leaders then will help guide the work through production, partnering with local vendors to eliminate production costs for the nonprofits.

Last year VCU became the first university to launch a CreateAthon program, which has been used by professional advertising agencies around the country.

“CreateAthon onCampus last year was an amazing experience for the students,” said Peyton Rowe, associate professor of advertising at VCU and director of the project. “They worked extremely hard, but they also had fun, learned a great deal and their clients were extremely appreciative of their efforts. We’re looking forward to another excellent year.”

Student teams have been planning for this week’s work since January. Participants include undergraduate students from the VCU School of Mass Communications and volunteers from various VCU programs. In addition to the students, a group of local professionals will volunteer during the creative blitz, serving as mentors to the teams.

More than 60 nonprofits applied to participate in the program. Organizations were selected based on both the organizations’ limited resources and how well their needs matched the students’ expertise and the 24-hour creative window.

Participating nonprofits this year include CARITAS Works, Daily Planet, the Center for Human-Animal Interaction, East District Family Resource Center, Dreamer’s Theater Group, Hilliard House, the Virginia Public Access Project, the Virginia Poverty Law Center, Virginians for the Arts, Free Clinic of Powhatan, Assisting Families of Inmates Inc. and Esteem Teens Inc.

For more information, visit http://createathononcampus.org/vcu/.