Ms. Kaelyn Stieg,  Business teacher at Oakdale High School, has her students participate in a charitable project from September 18th to the 21st. The students are assigned to raise money for their chosen charities for Principles of Marketing class. 

When asked what they learned from the project Bonura explained, “Learning how to market an idea or product to someone.”

One of the projects had an interesting approach to raise money. Juniors Keegen Brown and Nicholas Bonura chose to offer the hair on Bonura’s head for donations. 

In a recent interview, Bonura explained, “If we raised $300, I would shave my head. We also offered a $35 dollar Visa gift card for a raffle at one dollar per ticket.”

Bonura’s group surpassed their goal, meaning his head was shaved. Bonura’s hair raised over $370 dollars for the Maryland Deaf Community.

In total, his group raised money for their chosen charity: The Maryland Deaf Community. Bonura explained how they got the vast majority of their donations, “Outside of school, friends and family donated quite a bit, most of the money came from that.”

When asked why Bonura and Brown chose The Maryland Deaf Community, Bonura said, “I’d say it does because some of my neighbors are deaf and they only have one member in their family who’s deaf and he went to this school at some point.”

The process for starting their fundraising campaign was quite simple as they explained. They had to make an ad for the announcements, make a flier to display around the school, and determine an incentive for people to donate. 

Bonura explained the biggest issue they faced was, “High schoolers don’t really carry cash because we couldn’t do online transactions like cashapp for example.” With all that in mind Bonura’s group still raised the most out of any other.

In the end, their group was able to inform the school through the morning announcements by a short video where the group expressed that they had raised more than enough money for the Maryland Deaf Community, and even showed a clip of Bonura getting his hair shaved off.