Our Club's Annual Fundraiser

Wow. Friday, March 12th was our club's annual casino night fundraiser. Pam and I were the co-chairs this year. There were moments Friday that I thought we wouldn't pull it off. A full 40% of the donated items for auction and almost 50% of the ticket sales were not turned in until Friday afternoon. When the event opened I was still running around in a t-shirt and jeans. As of today I have no idea how much money we raised to help others, but I know we were profitable. I know this post is not part of the DG trip, but in a way it is because without doing things like this my club probably would not have nominated me for DG.

As an aside, let me say that this fundraiser has worked very well for us. We started it when a Rotarian from Ohio brought the idea to us 8 years ago and we have made as much as $35,000.00 clear. We have professionals bring in casino gambling tables and slot machines, the chips are play money, we furnish a dinner, music and dancing, an open bar and, of course, our live and silent auction items and a few other ways of making money. The past two years a good one was what we call the "The Wheel of Hope". Kind of like the Wheel of Fortune, but standing upright, the wheel has 48 spaces on it. We put a nice trip as the prize, sell tickets and spin it at sometime during the night. This year all the money, including a match from a local foundation, was used to package over 70,000 (? typing from memory and both 40 and 70 stick in my mind) meals with an eye towards relief in Haiti. When we started this our club was very small and we hired out almost everything, now, as the club has grown, we do a lot ourselves. In 2005 we ran our fundraiser at the same time as our fundraiser for tsunami relief and the combined total was in excess of $85,000.00 with about 23 members involved.