Decades ago, Dance Marathon was an event where the last couple standing won a prize. That all changed in 1973 when the Interfraternity Council began a new type of Dance Marathon at Penn State University. By 1977, it had a set length and was an annual benefit for the Four Diamonds Fund at Penn State’s Hershey Medical Center.

The Children’s Miracle Network first heard about Dance Marathon when Indiana University raised more than $60,000 in only their third event for the Ryan White Infectious Diseases Fund. This fund was established by the Indiana University Dance Marathon Council at Rile Hospital for Children, a Children’s Miracle Network hospital in Indianapolis.

Thanks to the help of students at Indiana and Penn State, and many schools since then, the Children’s Miracle Network’s Dance Marathon program was born. In 1995, the first year of the program, four schools raised $142,000 for kids treated at the Children’s Miracle Network hospitals. The next year, ten schools participated and raised over $300,000. In 1997, eighteen schools held Dance Marathons and raised more than $600,000. There are now dozens of schools and tens of thousands of students from coast to coast participating.