We had our Bingo in October. There is a list of businesses and celebraties on an older posting here with addresses. A couple of good ones are Circuit City, they sent us $100.00 gift card, Lowe's for $100.00 gift card, a couple celebraties (Dolly Parton and Oprah) sent autographed pictures and a few others. I have a letter that we used to obtain donations and another one as a receipt/thank you for them. If you would like I would be glad to email you a copy. Go to as many businesses and individuals as you can for donations. The fuel company that one of our parents work at donated $150.00, several individuals donated money and we took that money and purchased prizes, such as a girls and a boys bicycle, TV, DVD player, Game Boy etc. If you have someone that is an Automotive Technician see if they deal with Snap-On. We had a Snap-on 80th Anniversary Edition Screwdriver Set donated and man did the men come in to play (value $60.00). We are a very small town, but most of the people we visited donated. We are limited to a 2 hour Bingo. This is ran the same night as our Fall Festival, so we have games for the children and adults too. We try to get all donations in a couple weeks before the Bingo event. Then we make a list of everything and the value of the items. We combine items to make nice prizes and decide if it will be a 50 cent, $1.00 or a $2.00 game (this is the cost for each card they wish to play), example: 12 pack of coke, movie rental, pizza and popcorn = 50 cent game, the DVD player and $25.00 to Wal-Mart = $1.00 game, the snap-on screwdriver set and $50 to Lowe's = $2.00 game etc. You can do a straight game where you have just one row filled in any direction to a black out, where every number has to be covered. Make sure you have a lot of volunteers. We thought we had to many this year, but we ended up being short because a number of the parents never showed up to work. We have one person (treasurer) in charge of the money (making change/collecting when bags are full, etc). One calling the balls, and one announcing the prizes and the price of each game. Then several on the floor working a section of tables each. The ones on the floor we tried to work in 30 minute time slots, some worked an hour, some both hours.
If you send to the companies do it asap, Circuit City sent back fast, Lowe's took a little longer. You can do it, last year we started when school started and the morning of the Bingo we were at my house putting together games, this year I started sending letters to companies and celebrities during the summer and made sure it was all done the week before, then the week of the Bingo we could relax a bit. Make sure you delegate duties. Also, make sure that everyone knows where everyone else is going to ask for donations, including parents that offer to help. Don't be shy to ask for help from any and everyone. Don't feel that you or the officers have to do it all. The President last year didn't want parents gathering donations, thought they might keep them. This year I asked for the parents to help and if any kept a donation, one I didn't know about it and two I figured they must have needed it more than we did. If they can live with it we can live without it. We made over $1700.00 in our 2 hours, just wished we had more time we could have done so much better, but that is more than the other PTO's had done in 4 hours on a Saturday. Good Luck, hope this helps a bit. You can email me also.
Donna
[ 01-18-2003: Message edited by: PTOmomof5 ]</p>
