UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A class project conducted by students in a management course taught by Neil Fogarty, instructor of entrepreneurship in the Penn State Smeal College of Business, collected funds to purchase more than 31,000 cans of pet food that were then donated to Centre County PAWS, a local, non-profit, animal shelter. 

“Animal shelters like Centre County PAWS care for homeless dogs and cats, and they have to do so when their budgets are being cut, and one of their biggest expenses is food for the hungry animals in need,” Fogarty said.  

This year, Fogarty’s four sections of Management 453: Creativity & Innovation in Business set a record by donating the money collected in the pet canned-food drive to purchase the equivalent of 31,000 cans of pet food for PAWS.  

Fogarty asked his students in the beginning of this class project to make a reasonable prediction of how many cans of pet food they thought their team of five members could collect, and the standard answer in all four classes was 30-50 cans per team. Multiplying that number by the number of teams in the four classes, the students’ prediction was approximately 900-1,500 cans. 

“This drive is a great hands-on lesson on how creativity and innovation can improve productivity to get better results. By thinking outside the box and challenging the traditional way of doing things, you can surpass expectations, in this case by 2,000%,” says Fogarty.  

This year, 150 students formed 29 teams to gather contributions through GoFundMe, as well as physical pet food cans. The students leveraged social media marketing and invited Smeal faculty and staff to participate in driving the effort to a record-setting level of contributions to charity. 

"I believe in having my students get practical, real-world experience," Fogarty said. "This drive has become many of my students' favorite projects in my classes because they are learning about fundraising, forming effective teams, and giving back to the community." 

This is the second time Rylee Monoski, a fourth-year management student, has participated in the pet food can drive. 

“Through this food drive, we were taught to be selfless leaders and to cooperate as a team for a cause greater than just a grade,” said Monoski. “The lessons we learned during the pet food can drives go beyond anything we could ever learn from a textbook.” 

This is Fogarty’s 14th pet food can drive, which began in fall 2017. Prior to joining the Smeal College of Business in 2020, Fogarty said, he had previously conducted them with his classes at Penn State Beaver and Penn State Greater Allegheny. 

“Adding up the total can food count from all my students' PAWS drives since I joined Smeal, over these last three years, my students have collected the equivalent of 133,548 cans for PAWS,” said Fogarty.  

Executive Director of PAWS Lisa Bahr said, “We are truly grateful for all the students’ efforts and the generosity of this community. In addition to feeding PAWS’ shelter animals, the food donated is also used to help stock the Virginia Walker Pet Pantry, our community pet food pantry, which helps any community member who needs some help feeding their animal during tough times, no questions asked."

Fogerty said, “In 2017, its first year at Penn State Beaver, the students collected mainly physical cans; we got about 3,500 cans and delivered them to the Beaver County Humane Society.”  

Fogarty's students collected 5,000 cans the following year, and more teams started using GoFundMe to gather contributions to purchase pet food cans for local shelters. In subsequent years, using GoFundMe became a more practical way for students to collect donations for pet food cans. 

The pandemic in 2020 further encouraged the use of GoFundMe to collect contributions since students could not physically purchase and deliver pet food cans to PAWS. 

"We took the total amount of money collected and divided the funds by the average price of a can of dog food and cat food," explains Fogarty. "I had wrongly assumed that the total can count would drop due to COVID-19, but it went up to more than 10,000 cans in 2020. So, given the success of GoFundMe, I have continued this model."