changing our shamrock event! help!
 

hey everyone!! i'm the vp community service of my kd chapter. we have done a basketball tournament as our shamrock event to raise money for prevent child abuse for YEARS, and while it looks like a great event on the surface and we always raise a good amount of money, we just need a change, and it is VERY complicated to put on. also, relying on our university for facilities is not working out and we're trying to come up with something that we can have near campus, not on campus so we don't have to rely on anyone that works for the school and don't have to deal with aramark when it comes to food. sooooo here are what the other chapters do: alpha gamma delta--bbq bash (they just changed to that last year from a mr. university pageant), adpi--run for ronald, dg--anchor splash, pi phi--karaoke/airbands/dance competition, phi mu--spaghetti dinner.

we're leaning toward the idea of a wing fling/war of the wings competition, but i would really like to have more options to pitch to the chapter! please tell me what yall do and what you've seen other chapters do for their main philanthropy events...i could really use the help! again, we don't want to do anything we would have to host at the university. thanks everyone!

Some of the cool philanthropy events chapters do here could be held on or off campus. You could do a Monte Carlo/Casino night, some sort of olympics (DZ does Jello Olympics), or a dance marathon. For the athletic events, check with your city's parks and recreation department and see if they have an area where you can hold your event. It might be a less restrictive option than having it on campus, and since you have had issues with that in the past this could be an option for you.

What about holding a 5k run/walk and children's (half mile or 1 mile) fun run. (Aka a "Shamrock Shuffle") They're pretty simple to operate. I organized one for my kids' school.

A trivia night might work, too.

Maybe it's because I'm ready for dinner, but I really like the wing idea. :) That's also something that could easily get non-Greeks involved.

adpi has their run for ronald :/ we definitely don't want to cause any pan problems! also, i guess i should have listed some of the fraternity events: zbt has most smartest greek (an actually reaaalllly fun trivia knowledge bowl), ato has bachelor bid, sig ep does a haunted house, sigma chi obviously has derby days, ka has kickball...the others arent that successful lol

A few years ago I saw an article in the Angelos about a really cool Shamrock project that Mizzou did: a paintball tournament.

Beta Gamma used to do a road block/shake the can collection for Shamrock Project. They tried to do a bridal show one year, but it didn't go that well.

I've also seen people have some success with a spaghetti dinner or taco dinner. My pledge class did an all-you-can eat taco dinner for a fundraiser on a Sunday afternoon. People could eat in at the house or order carry out. It was a huge success. We had to run out for more ingredients twice. We had lots of fraternity guys who came over for dinner. Our dining room was full. (That was a very long time ago, though.) You could also do a fish fry if its during Lent.

A Mardi Gras masquerade ball might be really cool.

Thurtene is an organization at Washington University that holds an annual charity carnival. It's a huge event, though.
http://thurtene.org/Home.html

Another charity that I'm involved with conducts a Night at the Races to raise money, and it's really a lot of fun for everyone.
http://www.nightattheraces.com/

You'd need to find a location to hold it in, though.

Our shamrock is an all-you-can-eat pancake dinner-it's lots of fun and delicious! Good luck :)