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Friday, March 29
The Indiana Daily Student

IU sophomore's tweet goes viral, raising thousands for IUDM

A tweet sent by IU sophomore Christa Kabbes was simply supposed to help her donate to IU Dance Marathon.

At 9:05 a.m. Thursday, hoping to raise her IUDM fundraising total, Kabbes tweeted:

“I will donate $1 for every retweet & $0.50 for every favorite this tweet gets to @IUDM until tonight @ midnight. MAKE ME POOR GUYS, FTK!!” 

But after the tweet received widespread attention on social media, Kabbes is raising more money for the kids than she anticipated.

“When I was writing it, I was like ‘OK, maybe a few hundred of my friends will retweet it and I can donate some of my own money,” Kabbes said.

She had already raised about $375 for the annual dance marathon which supports Riley Hospital for Children.

If participants raise enough money, they dance without stopping for 18 or 36 hours while listening to testimonials from Riley families. Her goal is to dance the full amount with her sorority sisters in Delta Zeta.

An hour after she sent her original tweet, Bloomington bar Kilroy's on Kirkwood retweeted it.

“Ten minutes later, I had over a thousand favorites,” Kabbes said. As the numbers climbed, Kabbes worried about how much she could afford to donate.

“Cutting off at $1,000!!!!” She tweeted to her followers.

She could afford to donate with the help of her family.

But within two minutes, KOK had a response:

@KilroysKOK “ @ckabbs ha don’t do that we will cover the rest.”

“I literally started crying,” Kabbes said. “It’s so cool that they want to help. I just wanted to say that I’m so thankful for everyone that is retweeting it and favoriting it.”

See Kabbes’ tweet here.

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