Annual Giving Event: A "Me and My Guy" Tailgate Party

Our council says it has expenses of  over $200.00 per girl.  For that money, our council owns and runs three camps, one of which has a barn full of horses, it recruits and trains leaders and it provides programming.  The council gets its money through cookies, user fees, donations and fundraisers, and Annual Giving.

Our parish hosts Girl Scout troops at all levels and we have over seventy girls among all the troops.  We asked our families to donate when they registered, but few did, so we decided to hold a tailgate party and to charge admission.  While we only had about fifteen girls come, they had a good time and we raised $150.00 toward our service unit goal.

If you are thinking about trying such an event for your service unit (we invited ours but no one came) I have the following suggestions:

1. Find two or three other leaders with whom you can work.  These may be other leaders from your school, or the one you roll your eyes with at service unit meetings.   Try sending an email to other leaders in your service unit--maybe they want more activities for the girls as much as you do.
2. Keep it simple, at least until you've done a couple of these events, and keep the cost low.  If we had a lot of money in this party, we would have been disappointed at the turn-out; as it was, we just enjoyed the fact that everyone had fun,and we raised money.
3. Don't be afraid to take the lead; lots of people are willing to follow, or chime in.  This party was my baby--I emailed the other leaders, tossed out the suggestion and then everyone chimed in with suggestions and additions.  

So what did we do?

Opening

When the girls got there, they could either socialize or we had come Saints and LSU coloring sheets for them.  Once most of the expected girls were there, we did a typical Girl Scout opening with the Pledge of Allegiance and the Girl Scout Promise.  This was followed by us giving directions for making pom-poms. 

Making Pom-Poms

 We had pre-cut cheap plastic black and gold table clothes into squares, and had given each girl two sets of eight squares.  They layered them black, gold, black...and then, when they had the stack squared up, rolled the top down two turns of about an inch each, and then clipped them with clothes pins.  Next, the girls made straight cuts from the bottom toward the rolled top.  Once the whole thing was fringed, the rolled top was then rolled from left to right into  a coil and then sealed with duct tape to make the handle.  

Snack Time

We had planned that snack time came later, but we had the snacks and drinks ready to go and as folks finished their pom-poms, they helped themselves.

Photo Time

One of the leader's husband is a professional photographer.  We had a photo area with a Mike the Tiger cut-out and the girls and dads posed with their pom-poms.  In return, the dad gets the email addresses and can send out promotional stuff with the pictures. 

Cheers!

What are pom-poms used for?  Cheering of course.  One of the moms took the girls outside and taught them a quick cheer.  While they were outside, we talked to the parents about Annual Giving and passed out pledge forms.  Then the girls came back in they performed the cheer.

Outside Games

We then took everyone outside and had some relay races and some free play.  Everyone had the chance to try the teamwork boards.

Cupcakes

After the girls came in and washed up, we had cupcakes for them to decorate.   We had two colors of frosting (purple and gold) and sprinkles and candy corn.  Talk about a sugar high!

Closing

We closed by singing "Make New Friends"

Comments:

As we were planning this party, we hoped that it would be a Service Unit event with dozens of girls there, but it quickly became apparent that we were not even going to have a majority of our girls.  Nevertheless, we wanted something that we could easily scale up or down as RSVPs came in.  The leaders supplied the food, though we could have taken from the troop funds, but we just considered it part of our Annual Giving contribution.