The Relief Telethon exceeded fundraising goals and united the PBD community during COVID-19.

The Pacific Ballroom Dance Telethon was a seven-hour virtual event held live via Facebook and Zoom Webinar on May 2, 2020 with over 1500 viewers from all over the nation. Thirty-seven guests including PBD founders, alumni, board members, and current students joined PBD staff members to share their PBD stories.

The event was patterned after the old telethons of public television but updated for new audiences, using Zoom and texting instead of TV and telephones. It consisted of live interviews of past and present students, staff, and board members and included prize drawings, trivia, and even a little dancing. “We hope to entertain, inform, and connect with our great PBD family,” said Anne Eugenio, Development and Communications Specialist. “The studio had been closed for two months and we were beginning to understand that a spring concert was not possible. We realized that we would need to more than double our fundraising goals without any of the events we had on the calendar. We had to start from scratch and our PBD family really came through for us.”

The ambitious $30,000 fundraising goal was met and exceeded long before the telethon ended and donations kept coming in. 

Did you miss it? You can watch it on YouTube today. 

Executive Director Heather Longhurst hosted the Relief Telethon. Here, they are joined by former coach Christine Franz.