It’s one of the biggest events of the year at Northwestern, but it had its start as a Penn State dance competition.

The event originated in 1973 at Penn State University as a fun dance competition to improve the reputation of the Greek system at Penn. Thanks to its huge success, by 1978 Penn State had gotten rid of the competition to focus solely on the charity. From there it spread from college to college, helped along by support of the Children’s Miracle Network.

This year, Penn State raised an incredible $5.2 million, for a total of $45 million since their DM began. It’s partly thanks to that school’s success that the event has been emulated at dozens of schools across the country now.

Although there’s no comprehensive list of DMs, Northwestern raises far more money than most other colleges.