Thank you to James, Quinn and Blake Robertson for organizing their inaugural Swing Fore PC golf tournament. Their creative organization made the fundraiser a huge success! James shared the following about their event:
On June 20th we hosted what we hope to be our first of many Swing Fore PC fundraiser golf tournaments. We chose June to align with PC awareness month and hoped there might be a donation match incentive. We were thrilled when a match was announced!
Having never hosted a golf tournament or a fundraising event on our own, we got off to a slow start and made some adjustments as we went. Ultimately, we hosted a round of 9 holes plus dinner and raffles, with 41 participants and 9 “hole sponsors” – 3 of which included official prizes, 12 raffle prize donations and several monetary donations from non-participants.
Registration was $100, which included golf, dinner, prizes and the fundraising aspect. Most tournament registrations would include carts; but not ours! We encouraged our golfers to walk the course as a sort of “walk a mile in their shoes” incentive. Although we know the task of walking a golf course for non PCers wouldn’t come remotely close to what those with PC experience; we were still able to charge golfers a $15 penalty fee on top of the cart cost if they chose to utilize a cart (disability and mobility reasons excused of course).
We had a couple of in game “challenges” throughout the round as most for fun tournaments do, but one that was unique to Swing Fore PC was what we called the “Lego Tee”. What we did here was spread a variety of Lego out on the ground and our golfers had to take their tee shot while standing sock foot on Lego’s in an attempt to fractionally put into perspective what a PC’er may feel (we are newer to the PC community but we’ve read some comments relating the pain of walking to walking on stones or Legos). If participants chose to opt out, they paid a $5 penalty fee. If they participated their name was entered into a draw for a prize. This was a win-win experience for us – either we were able to raise awareness for PC or we were able to raise money for the fundraiser. I am happy to report that majority of our golfers did participate, and we received great feedback with many asking further questions and expressing the discomfort they felt while on the Lego and sharing empathetic comments with us.
Our sources for fundraising revenue included:
- A portion of registration
- Hole sponsors
- Prize donations from family and local businesses
- The cart and Lego penalty fees
- A 50/50 ball drop
- A generous business-sponsored dinner, this turned all dinner fees into fundraiser profit
- Several monetary donations – these assisted with offsetting any costs
After our round was complete, we enjoyed dinner and announced our prizes. We had designated prizes for longest drive – male and female, the Lego tee draw, the winning team and best team name. Then we drew tickets for the raffle prizes.
The donations did not stop coming in until the next day and we were able to tally our donation at $6308.46 CAD!
Thanks for all the encouragement and support toward us for our event and all you do for PC community!
