philanthropy
The NextGen Community Foundation was developed in an effort to revitalize vacant downtown buildings with community programs designed to promote prosperity, social interaction, and education. With a 14% poverty rate, and over 73% of its local students on free or reduced lunches, the rural residents of Clay County lack the social and economic opportunities that many inner-city youth, vocational, or senior programs may offer. Our goal is to provide them with a fighting chance to continue to grow personally and professionally, regardless of age, gender, or race with a long term goal of providing the same effort across numerous communities throughout the State of Illinois.
We are pleased to acknowledge and select the NextGen commUNITY Foundation, a registered 501(c)3 non-profit, as the primary beneficiary of any event profits stemming from the 2021 Miss NextGen Illinois Pageant.
In 2020, our sister pageant, the Flora Apple Queen Pageant, teamed up with web-based fundraising specialists, MightyCause, in an effort to streamline our Contestant's philanthropy efforts. By creating independent fundraising sites for each contestant, we not only introduced the ability for out-of-town friends and family to support their fundraisers, but we were also able to provide a traceable leaderboard for Contestants to track their progress.
The results at the end of the fundraising campaign (11:59PM on Friday September 17, 2021) will dictate the award recipients for the 2021 Miss NextGen Illinois Philanthropy Award presented during the final Awards ceremony on Night 2.
Once you have registered as a contestant, paid your entry fee, and provided your sponsorship fee, a Mightycause account will be set up for you by Miss NextGen Illinois staff. At that time, we will provide your username/login information as well as instructions on how to market and promote your fundraiser using social media and networking.
As your patrons donate towards your campaign, you will be able to track your progress against your fellow competitors on the public leaderboard tracking fundraising progress as a whole for the pageant system.
Example of an Individual Fundraising Site
Aside from Division Winners, being recognized on-stage and receiving a plaque for their philanthropy efforts, the Miss NextGen Illinois Pageant also offers the top 3 philanthropists in each Division an opportunity to raise money for their own local causes.
Those awards are as follows:
1st Place (per Division):
50% of individual funds raised
allocated back to causes of Contestant's choice
2nd Place (per Division):
25% of individual funds raised
allocated back to causes of Contestant's choice.
3rd Place (per Division):
10% of individual funds raised
allocated back to causes of Contestant's choice.
Both the Miss NextGen Illinois Pageant System as well as our local sister pageant, the Flora Apple Queen Pageant, are built on the premise of helping our Contestants and helping our Communities. That's why we are proud to say that since the founding of our local charity in 2019, our Contestants, their friends and family, and our wonderful staff have combined to donate over $40,000+ back into our local community charities and causes. Our hope is that by extending to a statewide pageant system, we can implement the footprint we have created in Flora and increase our philanthropy efforts across multiple communities across the State of Illinois and beyond.
