By Avery Ballmann | Staff Writer
When Dr. Luis X. Morera, senior lecturer in history, isn’t teaching, he is captaining Walking Bears — a group of students and post-grads who have raised $2,805 so far for the Alzheimer’s Association. The team has been fundraising since July, and all of their hard work will be celebrated this Saturday at the Walk to End Alzheimer’s in Brazos Park East.
Alzheimer’s disease is a type of dementia that affects memory, thinking and behavior. According to the Texas Department of State Health Services, approximately 400,000 Texans are diagnosed with this disease.
Morera’s grandfather suffered from Alzheimer’s, which is partly where his passion lies for this project. Morera said he wants to help students use their degree and skills in a new sector, the world of nonprofits.
“I like to help young people,” Morera said. “I like to catapult them to new levels of success. Open their horizons to stuff, show them everything you’ve learned in class isn’t just theoretical.”
Morera is looking to create a course about basics of fundraising under philanthropy and public service as an 1100 Civic Learning course. He is using this fundraiser to help test his materials and analytics for this potential new class.
McGregor sophomore Elizabeth Jackson is the top fundraiser for team Walking Bears and so far she has raised $552. Her original goal was $100.
“It feels like I really accomplished something,” Jackson said. “So I feel like I’m more included with the fun Baylor events, because last semester, I just stayed home and so I wasn’t really involved with campus. So doing this, I got to be more involved with campus extracurricular and fundraising activities.”
In this process, Jackson has recruited her parents and brother and has found a personal connection to the fight to end Alzheimer’s. Jackson said she started to get into fundraising for Walking Bears because she is autistic and is used to something that affects her thinking and neurological system like people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
“She appears to have found her voice in a major way,” Morera said. “So that’s why I want to offer this service learning. To teach students how they can take their classroom skills, a little bit of rhetoric that I can provide for them and then just use it to leverage and move assets from people to cause, in ways that they never envisioned, that their class skill sets would work.”
Morera didn’t know this at the time, but when he was writing his dissertation he was looking at historical kingdoms from an events planning, fundraising, development, communications and stewardship perspective. Coincidently, those skills are what Morera needed to steward his team to raise money.
“So basically, I’m doing what is in my research wheelhouse, applying it to real life and making a huge impact,” Morera said. “I have my teaching gig, then a few really dedicated students, I can now walk them through the world of nonprofits, and show them not this, but this.”
Morera created envelopes for each team member, equipping them with trifold flyers precisely folded for presentation purposes, a script and donation forms so they could be prepared to ask people for money, which isn’t the most comfortable task.
This model was tested to see if the in person approach would raise the most money, after trying social media, Morera said this method proved to work best among Baby Boomers and Generation X.
Jackson said she raised money by asking her friends and family to donate, she then gained the title of champion fundraiser, a volunteer who has raised more than $500.
“It gave me an opportunity to represent Baylor in the fight to end Alzheimer’s, fundraising, the brochures, the donations and that these are just some ways the organization helps cover those costs,” Jackson said.
The Waco Walk to End Alzheimer’s has so far raised $143,500. The Alzheimer’s Association uses these funds for research, medical care, support groups and other resources to support people with Alzheimer’s.
“I’ve been doing what I can do in the world, but there’s only so much I can do in a class,” Morera said. “Fundraising, that’s what I’ve been missing, that’s where my passion is.”
