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A Night at the Races Fundraiser

by Michelle
(Staten Island, NY)

I have organized "A Night at the Races" for a local charity who tries to give inner city youth the opportunity to go to a sleep-a-way camp for at least 2 weeks in the summer. My objective was to raise enough money to send at least 50 deserving kids to camp. The most successful way we do so is to hold a series of "A Night at the Races" at a local elks club who donates the room for the event. We solicit local businesses to donate equipment for grilling hotdogs, hamburgers, popcorn etc. We also manage to get a local firm to donate kegs of beer. From video archives at a local tv station we get very old horse races of races that ran at least a decade ago.

We have a live-wire announce the races that supercede the real race sound-track. We open betting booths where people bet on the races and we set odds. We try to make the actual 15 or so races very lively events. In between races, we purchased punchboard chances where for $10 you could by 11 punchboards for an opportunity to win small amounts of cash.

We hold these events on Friday or Saturday mid-afternoons. Between the food we sell, BEER, and Bets we can earn in one afternoon enough to send at least 10 kids to camp.

This season we raised $34,000 dollars - that's a lot of camp!