By Heather Graves
Editor
GREEN BAY – For 68 years, the community has set aside two days each March to raise awareness and funds for a nonprofit organization that provides services to infants, children and adults with disabilities.
As one of the longest-running telethons in the country, the weekend-long CP Telethon showcases the CP community while generating support for its innovative therapy and life skills for people of all ages and abilities.
“The fact that the telethon has been around for 68 years is unique in its own right,” Kristen Paquet, director of donor engagement and marketing, said. “I think one of the reasons why the telethon has just kind of been this legacy is you have a lot of people that grew up here. People just have a lot of fond memories of the telethon. That being said, we also need to think about the relevancy of the event and make sure that we’re keeping it modern and up-to-date, so that it really appeals to a wide variety of folks.”
Paquet said this year, the telethon, which was held March 5-6, raised $1,454,571.
She said funds from the telethon – which accounts for nearly 20% of CP’s operating budget – go directly toward supporting programs at CP, such as therapy, aquatic exercise, child care and adult day services for individuals with special needs in Northeast Wisconsin.
Paquet said the 2022 telethon closely resembled those of past years, before COVID restrictions and precautions were necessary.
Paquet said this year “we were able to relax things a little bit.”
“Our VIPs could talk on phones without having to have a mask on, so that was good,” she said. “We still tried to keep it to a low number of people. We didn’t want a ton.”
Paquet said organizers even kept some COVID-19 precautions put in place last year, because they made sense long-term.
“When it was during the pandemic, what we decided to do was pre-record all the segments during one day when everyone was already here anyway,” she said. “And we thought, ‘Well, that’s silly to ask families to come in on a Sunday when we can just continue to pre-record them.’”
Paquet said this year’s event didn’t include many new things, because “we just didn’t know what to expect.”
“When we have to make some of the decisions for the telethon, we’re making those decisions, like in July and August,” she said. “So given that the pandemic, we were doing it based on what we knew at that moment. Obviously, a lot of things have relaxed since then, but you know, we still wanted to just keep safety as a priority. So we didn’t tweak the show this year too much.”
Paquet said the support CP and its annual telethon receives from the community each year is nothing short of amazing.
“We didn’t know (how things would go) this year,” she said, “and this community just keeps supporting CP every year. So the way that they come out, and just support us, is just amazing.”
In terms of getting ready for next year, Paquet said “we’ll take a little time off and then we start planning in July.”