The Severna Park High School (SPHS) Key Club members, including the president and advisers, have had to change events and fundraisers because of COVID-19, these changes have affected attendance and engagement in their fundraising abilities. 

The Key Club is a club focused on serving the community and has had to make big changes due to COVID-19. These changes include virtual fun runs and changes in the way they organize and publicize their events. This has affected the club in both good and bad ways.

“Since we have to obey Covid rules, almost all of our events have had to be virtual, like our Halloween Fun Run which had people run individually and then submit their times, rather than hosting a real fun run,” vice-president Maggie Tanner said, “Plus, we’ve become a lot more reliant on social media and advisories to spread the word of our events since we can’t use announcements or real life posters.”

Adviser and science teacher Ms. Stahl shared Tanner’s sentiment, that being virtual has created challenges for Key Club. “Many of our events are designed to be in person and have had to be reworked this year,” Stahl said.

Since the events became virtual it has been harder to get interaction and enthusiasm. They have had to change many things in order to follow COVID-19 guidelines and come up with different fundraisers. 

 “Due to the virtual nature of everything these days, it is difficult to find new, creative service projects and fundraising ideas, and then further share them with the public,” president Kira Martin said. “It has mainly been difficult to find ways to encourage active participation from the members of the community, as our creativity is currently being tested by this new situation that has been thrown at us,” Martin said.

Some fundraisers that are being held virtually include Halloween Fun Run and the Virtual Family Game Night. In the Halloween Fun Run, participants had to turn in their own times separately to keep big groups from running together like a usual 5k. The Virtual Game Night is an event coming up that you can participate in with your families and younger siblings. 

“Recently, due to Covid restrictions, we’ve had to focus our fundraising efforts to online events. For example, we hosted our first-ever Halloween Virtual Fun Run, where participants ran on their own and submitted their times as a way to promote social distancing and safety, while also benefiting the Special Olympics of Maryland. In addition, we were also able to still collect donations for Harvest For The Hungry, but unfortunately, we were only able to collect monetary donations for safety reasons” Martin said.

The Key Club is always accepting donations and holding fundraisers. Just because everything is virtual doesn’t mean you can’t still help out. There are various events and fundraisers being held now that individuals can contribute to including the March of the Dimes which is accepting donations right now. 

“Right now, we are organizing a Virtual Family Game Night to take place of the Prom Fashion Show as a way to still raise money for the March of Dimes,” Martin said. “However, the details are still to be determined, but more information will be out on that later on Instagram @sphskeyclub20.”