Drive One 4UR School

Recently, an opportunity came my way and I thought I’d share it with you.  Ford of Canada wanted to pilot a successful program they had run in the US here in Canada and I was lucky enough to get a crack at it.  The concept was a simple one. Ford would set us up with local dealers who would bring their vehicles to our school on a set date.  We, in turn, would solicit members of the community to test drive the vehicles and in return Ford would give us $20 per test drive to a maximum of $6000 or 300 test drives.

I had planned on running a fundraiser to help our schools new robotics team anyhow, so this seemed like a perfect fit.  And so, the Drive One 4UR School Event was in play.

I decided to have my grade 12 management class run the fundraiser.  The students were quite enthusiastic about the entire thing and we had to plan the entire event in about 3 weeks.  We decided to use the Internet to spread the word about our event.  We used Facebook and Twitter to promote the event and we used Google Docs to help organize the planning of the event.  The students were broken up into teams with different responsibilities and each team had a Google Doc which they shared with the class to update us on their progress.  We also set up a Google Spreadsheet and shared it with anyone who had been invited to our event via Facebook.  People were able to pre-book their test drives by vehicle online and many did so with great enthusiasm.

To make a long story short, we had a very successful day.  The weather was beautiful (On November 7th believe it or not) and we actually managed to get just OVER 300 test drives.  In fact, we were informed that no other school in Canada had done as many test drives thus far.  As such, our robotics team is looking at receiving a great windfall thanks to some hard work on the part of the students and the philanthropic efforts of Ford of Canada.

It is without a doubt that we could not have achieved our goal without the use of the Internet.