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Armed with a few laptops late Friday night, Jan Frayser walked up and down O Street in Lincoln with a mission.
The guidance director for Lincoln Pius X High School and other volunteers needed to collect as many votes as they could — before midnight — for an online contest to win $500,000 for the school.
She got several bar-hopping college students and Husker fans to log on to their Facebook pages and vote.
It seemed like a goofy idea, but her clever tactic worked.
Frayser sat in the back of Duffy's Tavern as the last two voters submitted their entries. Then the contest was over: Pius X became the only Nebraska or Iowa school to win $500,000 from Kohl's Cares, the department store chain's philanthropic branch.
The contest is awarding a total of $10 million for health and education projects to the 20 schools that had the most Facebook votes. Hundreds of schools took part in the contest.
“We couldn't have done it without the Husker Nation support,” she said. “Everybody was screaming for us, and it was cheers and hugs and excitement. It was just great.”
The school plans to use the money to build a larger and more accommodating kitchen.
Pius X currently has two kitchen spaces, but in separate buildings. Neither has enough space to prepare food as well as serve students. Kitchen staff and student volunteers have to push carts of food and trays from one building to another at least 20 times a day.
Frayser said the school finished fourth of the 20 winning schools, with 151,545 votes. Pius X expects to get official word from Kohl's on Tuesday.
The contest began in July and was always close, Frayser said. The competition was tough, so she knew she had to step it up the last couple of weeks.
In the past week, she visited seven college campuses in Omaha, Lincoln and Kansas to get votes.
“We were out combing people across campuses, walking up to them with our laptops,” she said. “It worked really well.”
Before Frayser and other volunteers went out to collect votes, they would cheer, “Kohl's Cares Top 20/Pius High School in the money.”
“It's the first time in my life I've been a cheerleader,” Frayser joked.
She woke up Friday morning, went online and saw that the contest was still “tight and scary,” so she made a game plan.
She went to three college campuses, a Pius X alumni event and a Lincoln Salt Dogs baseball game to get more votes. Then she headed to the bars in downtown Lincoln.
Just on Friday, Frayser helped Pius X get 26,000 votes.
“What's more gratifying to me is how people supported us,” she said.
And Pius X supported back.
They encouraged voters — who were allowed 20 votes total, no more than five per school — to vote for another Catholic school in Lee's Summit, Mo., and for a high school in Ohio that was destroyed by a tornado. Both of those schools also won.
Next up, Pius X officials will submit a plan for the new kitchen to Kohl's Cares in the next few weeks. The estimated cost of the project is between $750,000 and $1 million. Pius X will supplement the cost with money raised from other fundraisers.
“It's very exciting,” Frayser said. “Winning the $500,000 was our goal, and we went for it.”
Contact the writer:
444-1336, leia.mendoza@owh.com
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