On a cold morning in early February, a band of brave folks from the greater Raleigh area will step up to the challenge of eating one dozen doughnuts and running from Peace Street to the Belltower. This, of course, is the Krispy Kreme Challenge, a tradition started right here at NC State 14 years ago by a group of Park Scholars. What started as a group of friends who dared to run while eating doughnuts, has turned into an organization that is centered around charity.

Although the Krispy Kreme Challenge, commonly known as the K2C, is not until February, the planning for such an event starts almost a year beforehand. What goes into organizing an event as large as the K2C? How does a student-run organization handle the many tasks when planning this? Well, the team working on this year’s race has the answers.

Hannah Caison, a third-year studying industrial engineering, is a race director for the K2C this year, and explains how establishing a strong team is the first step of race planning. The organization has four race directors, multiple committees and a board of directors. The board of directors meets at the beginning of the planning season and is made up of race director alumni, a student chief financial officer, a faculty advisor and the current race directors.

“While there are adults on the board, they are not directly involved in race planning,” Caison said. “They are there to approve our budget and give us advice.”

The applications to be a committee member for this year just closed, but they accept new applications each fall. The committees include: logistics, marketing, fundraising, social media and leadership team. Each committee has about a dozen members plus a department head, and the whole organization has about 90 members. Members tackle tasks like calling past and potential sponsors, creating media and sponsorship packets.

Each year the first task the team must complete is contacting the city of Raleigh and getting approval for an 8K road race. Once approved, the city assigns an event manager to ensure the city’s requirements for safety and conduct are met. Each K2C member is a certified crowd manager, which is necessary because the race typically draws out about 7,000 participants. The city requires one crowd manager for every 250 people. ­

One of the biggest duties each year is picking a race route. Race director Cameron Gray, a third-year studying human biology, discussed the logistics of this process. The route for this year has not been announced yet.

“The route has traditionally been the same, but we’ve had some challenges this year because of construction, we’ve had to find an alternate way that is still five miles long,” Gray said. “We meet with the city of Raleigh’s contact at the Raleigh Police Department and find a way from Peace Street to the Memorial Belltower.”

All the while, committees work towards completing their separate goals. The marketing team contacts local media to spread the word, and plans pre-race events such as doughnut days and booths at the Student Government-hosted Campout, among other student events.

One of the biggest pre-race events is the Expo. This is where runners can come pick up their race day materials and check out almost 15 vendors who support the K2C. Although 15 vendors may seem excessive, the race itself has around 20-25 sponsors.

A goal for this year’s committee is improving their social media presence with a brand new social media team. Another goal is to make the K2C a recognizable brand, with the design team redesigning merchandise, as they do every year. Merchandise will be for sale in October.

“Last year we switched to NC State designs for everything and this year we want a cohesive brand,” Caison said. “When you see a Krispy Kreme product, we want you to know it’s our merch.”

What truly makes this race is the doughnuts, with thousands of participants all getting their own box of doughnuts. Clearly, Krispy Kreme has its work cut out for them, as they prepare to feed mounds of hungry runners.

“We order 8,000 boxes of doughnuts, which costs around $20,000 dollars,” Gray said. “We order them weeks in advance, and account for the extra amount of people who do same day registrations.”

All of the proceeds go to UNC Children’s Hospital, and the K2C is the largest unrestricted donor to the hospital. This means they can use this money as they wish, from buying teddy bears for the patients to new lab equipment. This organization is a nonprofit, and has donated $1.35 million to date, and they have a $2 million donation commitment by 2020.

“Before I got into it I didn’t know how much less like a club it feels and how much more it feels like you’re working for a nonprofit,” Caison said. “Knowing that we create this incredible race, and that it does so much for the community is so worth it.”

Registration for the challenge opens Oct. 14 and the group is hosting a registration event that day at Aloft — doughnuts provided. There will be a discounted price for students who register, and the team wants to clear up the misconception that one must eat all 12 doughnuts to participate. Simply put, anyone can run this race.