The organization, founded in 1997, has been named UNC Dance Marathon since its inception. This year, it’s changing its name to Carolina For the Kids Foundation.
Senior Evan Sherwood, the program’s executive director, said the name Dance Marathon didn’t give the community a clear idea of its purpose.
“Whenever I’d go out in the community talking about who we are, there was always a lot of general confusion about what we do because our name doesn’t point you in any particular direction of who we’re supporting or what we’re helping or who we’re helping,” he said.
Corporate marketing chairwoman Christina Lewis said the name often presented the wrong idea about the group’s mission.
“One of the most commonly asked questions is, ‘Oh, you’re the dance people?’ And so a lot of people recognize us as being a dance group, which we’re not, or they recognize us as just being our one event in March, which we are not,” she said. “We’re a yearlong fundraising event.”
Carolina For the Kids’ mission is to provide emotional and financial support for the patients and families served by N.C. Children’s Hospital.
Morale and recruitment chairman Jean-Luc Rivera said the new name will help fundraising efforts.
“By introducing ourselves as Carolina For the Kids, it will be much clearer what we actually do, and we’ll be interacting with the community, so that will hopefully help us with our fundraising goals,” he said.