Students like Jenna Ghorra at Bay Ridge Catholic Academy are off to sell subscriptions and renewals of The Tablet for this year’s Tablet Catholic School Fundraiser.
“Last year it was maybe 50,” Jenna Ghorra, a seventh grader at the academy said. “Every year I do, definitely, try to get more.”
The fundraiser begins today until Oct. 6 with over 80% of sales going toward students and their schools in the Diocese of Brooklyn and school administrators can’t emphasize enough how much it will help them.
“With the increased amount of donations we can get from this process, yeah it will allow us to do more things as an academy,” said Paul Morisi, principal of Bay Ridge Catholic Academy.
The Tablet has participated in a number of ways to raise money for Catholic schools, but no matter what, the people behind the paper always have one goal in mind.
“This fundraiser is our way of giving back, so basically we don’t make money on this,” said John Alexander, marketing and circulation manager at The Tablet. “The whole point of this is to help [raise] money for the students and the schools. This year we’re giving back even more.”
For every $25 subscription that a student sells they get $10 dollars, and their school gets another $10 dollars.
The top seller will get a major prize of $3,000.
The incentives are putting the competitive spark in these students’ eyes.
“One year me and my brother did a competition, we tried to beat each other,” Ghorra said. “We’re very competitive.”
While the students compete for a grand prize it’s also teaching them about the importance of Catholic journalism.
“The Tablet helps us teach our students about what journalism is,” Morisi said. “We want to encourage great readers, right?”
In addition to becoming great readers, they’re spreading the good news to others in the Diocese.
“The Tablet is an award-winning paper,” Alexander said. “We won the CMA, the Catholic Media Association’s top weekly newspaper award this year, and we’re very proud of it.”
If you want to support Catholic journalism and the schools in the Diocese of Brooklyn, just go to thetablet.org/catholicschoolfundraiser.
There you can sign up for a subscription with the school of your choice.