Carson King, an Iowa State student, held up a sign at the football game, asking for beer money. It ultimately resulted in him earning over $1 million to donate to the University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital.
King was not expecting his advertisement to go this far, “I didn’t think I would make anything, it all started as a joke,” he said. His original goal was to get money to buy Busch, and people saw his advertisement and took it seriously. He received $400 within the first thirty minutes. Now he has obtained $1 million and counting, with large sums of donations coming from Anheuser Busch and Venmo.
As King started receiving more and more money within the first few days, he decided to donate that money to Iowa’s children’s hospital. More people began to contribute to donate money when King announced what he would do with it.
Chris Kohn has a personal connection to the Iowa Children’s Hospital and praised King’s actions. “I think that it is a great thing that something as innocent as the sign asking for some help in the purchase of some ‘beverages’ has turned into the Stead Family Children’s Hospital possibly receiving millions of dollars in donations,” he said.
Even if Kohn wishes donating money is something people should do on their own, he still thinks it is a great thing for King to be doing. There are many things the money could go towards in the hospital and Kohn has ideas of what he would do. “Personally it would be nice to see some of that money go towards research for pediatric issues like congenital heart defects, pediatric cancer, or any other pediatric issues,” he said.
King’s ties with Anheuser Busch were recently cut. This was just before the Des Moines Register exposed King’s tweets from eight years ago that were revealed racist tweets quoted from Tosh.O. There was a backfire against the Des Moines Register on social media from all around the world with some even canceling their subscriptions. Many believe the Register was wrong for doing this because King has significantly matured since his teenage days.
Many believe King did not deserve this, including Senior Preksha Kedilaya. “I’m not saying that what he said is at all appropriate or okay, but he decided to use the money, that he could’ve kept, to donate for an amazing cause,” she said.
Through all of these complications, King has now extended his goal to $2 million and still plans on donating all the money to Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital. The running total is currently $1.7 million.
