A nation-wide contest to raise money for UNICEF ended last week, and N.C. State’s UAB finished third for its efforts throughout the year.

Ricci Kearney, UAB vice president and a senior in media communication, said entering the contest was the UAB adviser’s idea.

“Our advisor Rick Gardner bought the nation-wide contest idea to us at the beginning of the semester,” Kearney said. “It included different ideas on how to raise money, so we incorporated them and sent in the money we raised in February.”

Kearney said one of the biggest focuses of this year’s fundraising was the Red and White Charity Ball, which, this year, raised money for UNICEF.

 ”The vice president plans the Red and White Ball every year,” Kearney said. “And it has a different charity each year picked by the board so since we were already part of the challenge, picking this charity was pretty simple.”

Kearney said the competition led to the UAB working harder to make this year’s ball a success.

“We started planning to raise more money and have more attendance than last year,” he said.

The ball had 500 attendees and raised more than $4,000, but the total fell short of the goal Kearney had set, which lowered the board’s expectations in the competition.

“We had a set goal that we didn’t reach, so we thought we’d have a lower place in the standings,” Kearney said, adding the lower expectations led to the board being surprised and excited when they found out the results. “We didn’t even care what prize we had won, we were just glad N.C. State was nationally ranked.”

But the prize, Kearney said, will help next year’s UAB to be even more effective.

“The board gets to send a person to one of the leadership conferences for free,” Kearney said. “Whoever goes next year will be able to network with student leaders around the country and bring it back to N.C. State. It proved to us that even though we weren’t raising money to our standards, we were able to do something that would impact people all over the world.”

But beyond the conference and additional networking, next year’s UAB will benefit from knowing it was only two places behind tops in the nation — especially given the margin that separated N.C. State from number one.

“The top place winner only beat us by a couple hundred dollars,” Kearney said.

Kearney said coming so close to being the best will help next year’s board to be more focused in its efforts.

“Coming in third place is an honor,” Kearney said. “But knowing we only lost by a couple hundred dollars definitely set that fire under the board to do whatever we can to make up for that next year.”

Still, Kearney said the board took a lot away from the process, besides national recognition and paid attendance at a conference.

“Winning was really something that humbled the board,” Kearney said. “We strive to make the campus a better place for the students and knowing the students helped us and others for a change meant the world to us.”