This initiative is for Washington DECA chapters that could benefit from fundraising support, especially chapters with fewer resources, newer advisors, or students facing financial barriers. GFG will prioritize chapters based on need, student enthusiasm, advisor support, logistical feasibility, location, and local buyer market fit.

This idea grew from first-hand experiences of shopping patterns as a teen growing up in underserved communities, particularly in rural areas that did not have the more expensive retail markets supplying the local thrift stores. In addition, recent sourcing of items for the Confidence Closet has provided familiarity with the current second-hand market and the ability to identify quality items with resale potential.

The boutique model was selected because higher-value and recognizable brands create greater opportunities for large profits when presented in an upscale environment more akin to retail shopping. As GFG explored ways to generate funding for ICDC students, this approach emerged as a practical and scalable solution as there is considerable time overlap with the existing Confidence Closet efforts.

Hosting the boutique at an easily accessible, shared location will also benefit from ‘herd' shopping. Feedback from others greatly reduces uncertainty about buying particular items, and they will often suggest other pieces for you to try as well. We saw a lot of this joint shopping behavior during the Confidence Closet pilot, even among students that otherwise wouldn’t have planned shopping trips together.

We are open to other ideas for helping teams fund the increased ICDC qualifiers we hope to train, as long as it is something that can be used as a case study to help teach the DECA concepts.

No financial investment is required from chapters. GFG provides starting clothing inventory, on-loan racks and setup materials, boutique planning guidance, project management mentorship, and free workshops connected to the fundraiser.

This project is currently being self-funded by Go For Glass board members. Once details are set in stone, we do hope to advertise for clothing donations in the Seattle area to offset spending.

IF a chapter wishes to host multiple, large events to maximize revenue, Go For Glass and the school will need to discuss using a small amount of revenue from the first event to help offset some of the cost of ongoing sourcing of inventory. That said, the majority of inventory costs will be carried by Go For Glass board members and not fundraiser proceeds.

There is no catch, other than wanting to find a chapter where students treat this as an opportunity versus a charity. Two of the GFG board members grew up in disadvantaged situations so know first hand the additional struggles compared to students in well funded, affluent areas. This project could be compared to that of Running Start in which, yes, you are receiving monetary value, but you will need to work hard to properly benefit from it. Our continued efforts sourcing inventory will also depend on whether any of the students seem to be working just as hard.

A win at DECA can greatly change a student’s trajectory. A previous mentee went on to be the first Alabama student to win 1st place in his event, and he has since been courted by multiple Ivy league schools.

Most of the Go For Glass resources exist to help everyone to a certain point, whereas the goal for this project is to truly change the lives for a handful of students.

Chapters are responsible for school approval, facilities requests, student coordination, and money handling through school-approved processes. Advisors need to sign off on logistics and financial oversight, but students should expect to lead most of the work.

For a larger chapter, around 20 hours of work per student over the next 9 months could raise meaningful funds.

However, due to the nature of this resell model, the level of effort put into planning and marketing will greatly effect revenue. This ‘planning’ is part of the learning aspect of this project as students would be doing similar exercises for their own PM papers. It’s an experience that students will be able to draw on when employers or colleges ask those open ended questions about challenges you faced and how you succeeded.

The exact time commitment depends on the size of the chapter, the number of students involved, the number of events hosted, and how ambitious the chapter wants to be.

To bootstrap this fundraiser, we decided to use the ~1,500 pieces of business casual items that we had been collecting for pre-regional Confidence Closet events. Instead, the Confidence Closet will only focus on pre-state business professional going forward.

This initial inventory includes slightly dressier items that can still be used as regular clothing if not paired with a blazer. This includes dresses, blouses, button up shirts, chinos and semi-dressy shoes and accessories.

In the month since deciding to launch this project, we have already added hundreds of items specifically with this fundraiser in mind. We have mainly been purchasing jeans, coats and purses/bags as they are big ticket items with large markup potential and have less differences in style. For jeans in particular we are filtering brands based on MSRP and popularity. Most brands average > $75 except for popular exceptions such as Zara, H&M, and American Eagle. Some brands we are finding such as 7 for all Mankind and Paige have MSRPs of $200+.

After student feedback, we will expand our scope. Depending on what they wish to include, we can likely have 1,000+ casual pieces in time for a fall event.

Money raised will go through the chapter or school’s approved financial process. Go For Glass is not in the pipeline for incoming money.

The goal is for funds to help students reduce DECA-related costs, such as conference registration, travel, lodging, meals, or other approved chapter expenses.

This fundraiser will provide the project management knowledge needed for an ICDC worthy PM paper. Students may use the experience to build a PM paper in parallel, strengthen future written events, or develop adjacent projects that may qualify for additional, free 1:1 mentoring. The founder of Go For Glass will provide workshops and guidance on documentation, strategy, writing, presentation skills, and project execution. The students need to be ready to share execution tasks as homework.

Her mentorship track record includes a high rate of student qualification for ICDC, with usually ~90% of 1:1 mentored students advancing. Just this past season, nine students placed in the top five at ICDC, including two first-place winners. Due to the limited number of students she mentors each year, slots are highly sought after.

Go For Glass is a support organization that has no official partnership with DECA. That said, the founder performing the mentoring is heavily involved in DECA, and has been an official judge at both state and ICDC levels.

Yes! We are open to tweaks to this vision, or other ideas completely, if they fit within our time and budget constraints.

Every adult on the Go For Glass side that will come into contact with the students either in person or online will apply as a volunteer with the chapter’s school and go through standard verification

We will implement other processes as needed to satisfy other school requirements.

Smaller chapters often have less purchasing power, resulting in higher travel costs for students compared to larger chapters. This challenge is then compounded by many of these schools being less funded overall.

While costs are not within the scope of this particular project, if time allows, we would like to explore this issue from the lens of a retired Program Manager that has dealt with process inefficiencies. Potential improvements may be possible merely by understanding in depth the strategies used by larger chapters and how to apply them on a smaller scale. Or, perhaps, there is a way to group smaller chapters together without exponential overhead.

It is possible that previous attempts of this have already failed, but we may be able to help if advisor time constraints have mostly prevented investigations.

If you are from an affluent area and believe you can help, then we would love to have you! If you find a DECA category to map your effort to, it may also qualify for 1:1 mentoring.

We are currently advertising this opportunity as well as reaching out to chapters that look like a good fit on paper. We hope to finalize a decision in the next couple of weeks since some tasks should happen before school is out.

The immediate tasks (based on the current vision):

1. GFG volunteers: complete school background checks or other requirements while school is in session.

2. Adjacent DECA Projects: Any official DECA projects that students wish to base on this fundraiser will need to be discussed and approved early before too many collective decisions are made that may invalidate your topic. Depending on the project and impact, it may also qualify for additional 1:1 mentoring for that DECA category.

3. Peer research: begin gathering feedback on what types of events, products and brands would be most marketable to students.

4. Advertising: bring awareness to students so that they know it’s coming and to save some of their back to school clothing budgets.

5. Facilities: Figure out where it can be held so that requests can get in early. From the Confidence Closet, we have found that school facilities may need booked months in advance.

6. Define internal processes such as how to map student effort to share of the travel revenue, how to break up work load (planning and execution), communication channels, etc…

Over the summer:

1. Make final event decisions.

2. Prep inventory: there will be size sorting, hanging, tagging, etc… There are also a number of high-end shoes and bags that need some TLC but would be quite valuable once cleaned and conditioned.

3. Prep artifacts for the events (signage, etc…)

4. Continue advertising

Timing of events will depend on decisions made by the chapter. There could be a single, large event with everything, or there could be smaller themed events based on product types.

Currently, jeans and fall clothing are the best deals on the used market which would pair well with a back-to-school event. During the fall and winter, summer clothing would be the best buys which would pair well with a final push to raise ICDC funds post-state.