Jump Rope for Heart: Easy Ideas to Make Your Event a Success
By: Michele Whittingham, Colorado JRFH/HFH State Coordinator

IJump Rope for Heart (JRFH) has been a big success at my school. I have been organizing and running Jump events at Cherokee Trail Elementary for 8 years now. Each year our school has raised between $10,000 and $15,000 in donations for the American Heart Association: earning our school a spot among the top fundraisers in the state of Colorado. My success is due to many aspects including having a supportive staff and principal, having parents and community members that are committed to the fundraiser, and students that are excited about fundraising for such an important cause.

The basics of my events:

• I run my event during the school day. I have 2 classes of students per class period (about 45 students). The students from either music or art come to the gym for their specials time. I then use the art or music teacher as a volunteer for the day.
• I have 2 events (4 track school) so that all students get to participate.
• All of my students participate in the Jump regardless of if they brought in donations or not.

Below are some ideas that I have used to get the students at my school excited about Jump Rope for Heart.

One Month before your event:

1. Hand out donation envelopes at least one month in advance from your event. This will give students time to ask out of town relatives and friends for donations.
2. Call your local American Heart Association branch and reserve a health fair display. The display is free for you to borrow. It contains items such as “Tubes of Fat” that shows the fat content in certain foods. It also has displays and models that depict what a person’s mouth and lungs would look like if they used/smoked tobacco. The students really get into this on the day of your Jump.
3. Contact a local hospital or doctors office to borrow stethoscopes for your event. The students can listen to their heartbeat after they jump. Be sure to buy alcohol pads to clean the stethescopes after each class.
4. Have an assembly for your school to watch the video “Jump On” about how to collect online donations.
5. Hang the Thank You Gift posters around your school for your students to see.
6. Get samples of the Thank You Gifts for your students to try out. Students will be excited to test the items that they will be earning.

One to Two weeks before your event:

1. Remind students that Jump Rope for Heart is coming up. Remind them when they come to physical education class. Put the date in the school and classroom newsletter. If your school has announcements in the morning, remind students then too.
2. Practice jumping rope in class or at recess. Students are more likely to enjoy the event if they are good at jumping rope.
3. Teach students that there are many ways to jump rope, including basic jump skills and advanced jump rope skills, Chinese jump rope, long jump ropes, partner jumping and jumping using a hula-hoop. It does not need to be limited to “traditional” jump rope skills.
4. Have a Jump Rope for Heart poster contest. Any student who wants to enter the contest can make one poster to be turned in. The posters can include ANYTHING having to do with JRFH or AHA. They can be any size and made out of any product. I have had small posters and I have had HUGE posters. Some are made of paper and others made of candy. The sky is the limit. I allow each student to vote on his/her favorite poster during the jump event. The winner of the poster contest gets to go to lunch with me for a prize. You may want to consider having an age bracket contest so that 1 st grade is not competing with 5 th grade.
5. Seek out parent volunteers to help run your event. I use a minimum of 4 parent volunteers for each event.
6. Format your spreadsheets for tallying your donation dollars. The spreadsheet is on the CD that AHA sends with the Jump collection envelopes. Add your own information in the spreadsheet including your name, school and JRFH date. Assign names to the different pages on the spreadsheet for each classroom teacher so that you can easily flip from one class to the next when counting donations.
7. Start hanging up posters that have been turned in for poster contest. Number each poster for anonymous voting purposes.

The day of your event:

1. Set up your gym for the event. I run my event in stations.
1. Station 1 – Individual Jumping – have single jump ropes for students to practice basic jump rope skills. I use poly-spots or tape marks of the floor for students to jump on for rope safety.
2. Station 2 – Chinese jump rope – a group of 3 students practice Chinese jump rope skills.
3. Station 3 – Health Fair – Students get to discover all of the items that you borrowed from the American Heart Association. The stethoscopes are at the health fair station as well. Make sure a volunteer is at this station to clean the scopes and insure the proper use of heath fair items.
4. Station 4 – Poster Contest – Make a class list that a volunteer can mark on for the poster votes. The students will tell the volunteer which poster is his/her favorite by telling the volunteer the number of their favorite poster. The volunteer will tally the votes at the end of the day.
2. Jump Rope Contest – for the last 3-4 minutes of class, have a “who can jump the longest?” contest. I buy little prizes to hand out (jump ropes, heart note pads, pencils)
3. Collect donations – when the classes arrive to the gym have the art or music teacher collect the envelopes. This teacher is the designated money counter. He/she should have a volunteer to help enter the donation dollar amounts into the computer. For security purposes, do not have the volunteer count the money. This should be the job of a teacher only. Be sure to put money that is turned in prior to the event date in the school safe so that it is secure.

After your event date(s) is complete, send all donations and forms into the American Heart Association as soon as possible so your students do not have to wait long for their thank you gifts.

If you implement a few of these ideas into your Jump Rope for Heart event, you are sure to have a very successful event. If you are interested in viewing one of my Jump events or if you have any questions, please contact me at Cherokee Trail Elementary in Parker, Colorado at 303-387-8137.