Galion Boosters ask for input on bingo plans

By Sarah Einselen

Inquirer Reporter

Bingo might well be com­ing to Galion.

The Galion Boost­ers Club announced that it has almost com­pleted the process of get­ting a state bingo license from the attor­ney gen­eral and solicited com­mu­nity input at a spe­cial meet­ing Mon­day night, Feb. 6, at Galion High School. Scott Car­pen­ter, Boost­ers sec­re­tary, pre­sented a rough bud­get needed to launch a Boost­ers bingo pro­gram and said the great­est need at this point was com­mit­ted vol­un­teers to over­see var­i­ous aspects of the bingo nights, like con­ces­sions and door sales.

“It could do a lot for kids K-12,” Car­pen­ter said. “This is about all the kids in the city schools. The Boost­ers don’t just care about ath­let­ics.” The ulti­mate goal for Boost­ers bingo is to elim­i­nate most of the other fundrais­ers that the Boost­ers now run, he said.

The plan is to hold bingo from 7 to 9:30 p.m. on Mon­day nights, 52 weeks of the year, with set-up begin­ning at 5:30 and doors open­ing at 6 p.m. A crew of about 10 core vol­un­teers are needed to man­age door sales, tips sales, acces­sories sales and concessions.

Beyond that, school par­ent groups will be asked to com­mit vol­un­teers about four nights per year to work the floor and con­ces­sions and to help with setup and tear-down. Boost­ers will also be glad to have vol­un­teers from the com­mu­nity, Car­pen­ter said. All vol­un­teers have to be at least 18 years old.

Ini­tial equip­ment costs will total about $9,400, not count­ing either adver­tis­ing costs or the $700 paid to get the state license. Car­pen­ter and Mike John­son, a Lan­caster Bingo Com­pany sales rep­re­sen­ta­tive, esti­mated that pay­out to vol­un­teer groups would be $50–100 per hour of bingo, to start with, but it will depend on how many bingo play­ers show up.

John­son, who will deal with the Galion Boost­ers as long as they run bingo, said that based on Galion’s size an aver­age atten­dance at bingo nights would prob­a­bly run about a hun­dred, give or take twenty depend­ing on the sea­son. That’s com­pa­ra­ble to Northmor’s bingo atten­dance, which John­son also deals with.

North­mor bingo orga­nizer Linda Trout­man was unavail­able for com­ment, but a report from the Ohio Attor­ney General’s office of char­i­ta­ble bingo finan­cial infor­ma­tion showed that the North­mor Music Boost­ers bingo pro­gram gen­er­ated about $16,300 net prof­its from about $550,000 gross rev­enue from Novem­ber 2009 through Octo­ber 2010.

“We think that within three to six months we’ll be in our typ­i­cal capac­ity,” said Boost­ers trea­surer Bryan Sum­mer. “Word will get out and bingo peo­ple are pretty con­sis­tent.” That will also give the Boost­ers enough time to deter­mine how many vol­un­teers can be counted on to help run the bingo nights.

As trea­surer, Sum­mer will man­age the Boost­ers bingo rev­enues and will be respon­si­ble for dis­burs­ing them to the var­i­ous stu­dent groups, he said.

Many of the 45 par­ents, school board mem­bers and admin­is­tra­tion at the meet­ing asked how pro­ceeds would be divvied up between var­i­ous groups. Dis­cus­sion cen­tered on whether a per­fectly fair appor­tion­ment among groups could be achieved, based on how many par­ents con­nected to each group vol­un­teered and for how many hours.

“It’s not fair for other groups to com­mit and not show up and still get the same amount,” Car­pen­ter said, so rev­enue would prob­a­bly be dis­bursed to var­i­ous stu­dent groups based on how many of the par­ents were present to vol­un­teer at bingo nights.

How­ever, the Boost­ers haven’t decided yet how rev­enue will be dis­bursed, Car­pen­ter said. That’s why the infor­ma­tional and com­mu­nity input meet­ing was held, he said. How rev­enue is divvied up will be ham­mered out at the Boost­ers reg­u­lar meet­ing Thurs­day night, Feb. 16, in the high school media cen­ter. Car­pen­ter invited every­one to attend that meet­ing, too.

Posted by Sarah Einselen on Feb 9 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.