Big Brothers Big Sisters of York hosts Bowl for Kids Sake fundraiser
Vaughan Weekly
March 5, 2014
By Jeff Doner
Bowlers flocked to Woodbridge Bowl for the A&B Courier Bowl for Kids Sake Sunday and showed off some amazing skill for the annual Big Brothers Big Sisters of York fundraising event.
“When we have this event, people love it and you see the same people coming year in and year out,” said Sarah Dane, president of Big Brothers Big Sisters of York. “People say it’s such a great event. It’s a great winter activity where you can come out and have a lot of fun.”
This year teams assembled did their best to come out on top in terms of fundraising and their bowling score.
“We’ve been doing Bowl for Kids for a number of years and Vaughan is always one of our greatest events,” Dane explained. “We’re thrilled to have all the teams out here today. We’re a little bit shy this year in numbers, which is a little distressing for us, but the community events are all tremendous and the City of
Vaughan has been incredibly good to us. The Mayor has recently sent a gift from his Gala to us at the end of 2013 in celebration of our 100th year and that was a tremendous gift for us to receive.”
As one of eight bowling events across York Region for the 2014 series of the Bowl for Kids Sake, the event had some big and little brothers and sisters on hand and also some fantastic door prizes.
With an annual fundraising target of $150,000 from all of their bowling events combined, the non-profit organization is currently sitting at about $60,000 raised with just a few more events left to hit that mark.
“This is our largest revenue producer annually. The series brings in the most amount of money and we raise our own budget year to year,” Dane said.
“We don’t have sustainable funding, although we’re fortunate to have some great partnerships. We’re one of the United Way partner agencies, which has been great and we’re so thankful for that. York Region has also been very good to us and continues to support us, but funding is getting harder for us, so events are important.”
Dane explained that numbers are most likely down due to the climbing number of causes and charities in the community.
“We have to look year to year at how we can tweak it, make it a little different, how we can make it fun and how we can gauge our businesses and communities in not only helping us fundraise, but actually helping us deliver our programs,” she said. “We’re also looking for more mentors in the nine municipalities we serve in York Region…we’ve got close to 100 kids on our waiting list.”
Dane was also quick to praise the support and hard work from everyone that has participated already.
“We’ve got a good group here today, a few more than we thought we might get, but it’s still down from last year. However, it’s not necessarily the number of bowlers, but how much we can raise in total.”
Dean Smalley from the event title sponsor A&B Courier said it’s an event that he looks forward to each year.
“We’ve actually been involved with Big Brothers and Sisters for a very long time,” he said. “We started out as a smaller sponsorship and then about four or five years ago we asked them if they were looking for a title sponsor because we’d like to get involved.”
Smalley and his brother decided they wanted to be involved in helping the organization long-term and came out with a 10-year agreement as the event’s title sponsor.
“My brother and I were raised by a single mom, so we understand we know what it’s like for these kids. We believe in it and look at it as an organization that is proactive in helping solving a problem before anything happens,” he said.
“By Big Brothers setting up and putting mentors in place for these kids, these kids end up becoming positive role models to others which is a benefit to society.”
There are still bowling events to take place in Richmond Hill, Bradford and Markham and it’s not too late to sign up a team and participate.
For more information, contact 905-726-2149 (ext. 324) or email neil.haggarty@bigbrothersbigsisters.ca.
