MOST OUTSTANDING Philanthropic Event NOMINEE
University of Southern Mississippi Vietnamese Student Association (USMVSA)
Pie a VSA
Provide a detailed description of the event and the population it served. Details MUST include: date of event, number of participants, program purpose (goals, objectives, etc.), use of resources (finances, community support, etc.), marketing techniques, and amount fundraised.
With "Pie a VSA," the event is essentially as titled. Individuals can pay to pie a USMVSA (University of Southern Mississippi Vietnamese Student Association) Executive Board member and/or an Intern. When announcing the event, we opened up a pre-sale. This allowed people to pre-order their pies. This was targeted for those who were tuning into our livestream during the event, as they could not be there. With this, we let them donate and designate their pies to whoever they wanted. These were done live on the livestream for them to tune in and enjoy the pie-ing! Day of the event, we also had "day-of" purchases. Of course, people can walk up and pay to pie us on the spot.
The population was aimed for anyone around the USM campus, along with individuals from other VSAs in the Gulf Coast region. We wanted to allow everyone a chance to have fun on the college campus while putting in the efforts towards a good cause. As for the background information for the event, It took place on April 7th, 2026, from 12 pm to 3 pm. It was located on USM campus at Shoemaker Square. The purpose of "Pie a VSA" was to have an event on USM campus where anybody can have fun pie-ing us while also explaining how the funds are going to a philanthropic cause. With the money we raised, it gets put back into the organization to help build the foundation of the club while also going to our Collective Philanthropy Project for that year. When looking at pre-orders and day-of purchases, we had around 40 participants, with 100 pies total. This included those on campus, family, and friends who wanted to participate. As for resources, these included purchases for the whipped cream. After consulting with our Treasurer, we were able to make the necessary purchases. Mainly for everything else, we already had in our organization inventory to use. As for marketing, of course, we used our social media platform. Our Public Relations Chair and President collaborated on a graphic to post, introducing the event with relevant information regarding it (such as when, where, pricing, etc.). Alongside this, to gather more engagement, we created a video to post as well. This included the E-Board and Interns to make a funny and entertaining videos marketing the event. We also relied on personal communication to spread it. E-Board and Interns had friends and family who wanted to take part in pie-ing them, which helped drastically in the success of the occasion. In the end, the amount raised from "Pie a VSA" was $257, which was very successful.
What efforts were used to motivate and involve the organization's members?
When looking at efforts, there were a handful that were made to involve the members. Of course, we reached out to them through our socials. Not only did we share it to Instagram and Tiktok for our members, but we also advertised it in our official Discord server with them. A big motivator was that some of our members were already friends with the current Board and Interns. This pushed for them to want and come out to pie those that they are really close with. However, the main thing was that we saw it as a connecting point from the start of the school year until now. With the members seeing us as a group who runs the organization, the chance to pie those who are in charge would seem persuading and enjoyable. This connection would hopefully be a great motivator in getting our members to come out and enjoy one of our last events of the year with us!
How did the organization overcome any challenges that arose while planning and implementing the event?
There were definitely some challenges when working with this event. First, there was the shared space with another organization who were doing the same event. There was a fraternity that was also at Shoemaker Square, doing a pie event as well. This brought problems with finding a spot to setup that would not create a "competition" with them and allowing a good flow of passersby to participate with us. We ended up stationing further away, near the fountain. This allowed distance between us while also ensuring a constant flow of people to cross our tent. There were minute challenges, such as clean-up, price advertising, promoting on the spot, etc. However, these essentially were fixed as we went. We came up with a way to obtain more water for clean up, made sure to walk around and advertise away from the tent, and announced prices out loud. We adapted on the spot to ensure we could run everything smoothly. Afterwards, we made sure to talk about the event as a group and come up with better ways to go about these problems for the future Board to rely on.
