The initiatives are 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 Confidence Closet or fundraiser.

These projects are 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.

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. These projects 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.

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.

We currently have ~1,000 pieces of non-business clothing that could be used in a fundraiser, ~1500 pieces of business-casual clothing that could be used for either event, and ~1,000 pieces of business professional clothing for the Confidence Closet.

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

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

These initiatives will provide the project management knowledge needed for ICDC worthy PM papers. In addition to 1:1 mentoring for the specific relevant projects, Go For Glass will also provide more general chapter level mentoring. Other 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.