Our booster club has a huge operating bingo 2xs a week for the public year round. Each year there's a lottery for school clubs to get dates to earn money for their club. Most clubs get 2 dates a year. The club has to get 5 persons for each of the 2 shifts on the day they're responsible for. Each worker earns $50 for the team. So a full day's shift earns the team $500. Late workers, someone not showing up, early departures, reduce the money to the team, and shows the booster club your club's not reliable. If a team doesn't show up for their date at all, all subsequent dates are cancelled. There are regulars working the hard and foundational part of putting on the bingo. The volunteers walk around constantly selling $1 cards or games. Those on the 2nd shift also clean up.
We aren't doing candy or car washes... Cuz of the particular circumstances of our team, we've been meeting 3xs a week since spring 2002, all of which is an open house to the public advertised in the paper. That's brought us visitors from as far away as Riverside, an hour away. We had a very tough year last year, and had a lot we needed to accomplish this year, like completely reorganizing our facility cleaning up the auto shop that hadn't been used in years
Cleaning out old greasy yucky abandoned auto parts.
http://www.bcrobotics.org/20022003/p...6thumbnail.JPG
Putting our stamp on the cleaned out cupboards.
http://www.bcrobotics.org/20022003/p...3thumbnail.jpg
(1/03 auto shop's being redesigned into construction technology and a robotics area), , reorganizing the way our team does things, experimenting with robotic subsystems...
Most clubs only want 2 bingos cuz it's hard to get that many volunteers. Last year we had 3 bingo opportunities. I got 5 bingo opportunities this year - all scheduled July - Sep. I sweat some bullets deciding whether to take all those dates. I am getting commitments NOW from parents, mentors, students who will be 18 by end of June, that they do 2 bingo shifts. If everyone does their part, I've covered all 5 bingos and our team will have earned $2500.
Next year we don't expect to be meeting 3xs a week, our facility should be done, we'll have experienced our newly cohesive team and come up with better ways for us to organize ourselves. Who knows what fundraising activities we'll be doing then.