It’s becoming a tradition of mine at our Bucks County Friends of the NRA Dinner to pick out the kitschiest thing I can find and aim to win it. Last year I got the NRA branding iron. The year before that the tobacco walking stick. This year was the NRA fan:
This was won on silent auction. Our silent auction items weren’t doing very well this year, so I managed to get it for cost. Friends of the NRA Dinners raise money for things like the East Stroudsburg South rifle team. Half the funds we raise stay right here in Eastern Pennsylvania.
There were 200 people at our dinner last night, which is a record for us. I’d note that’s a bigger turnout than Shannon Watts can draw to a national protest even with all of Bloomberg’s money. Our people also paid 45 dollars a person to attend (which really just covers the cost of the meal). We didn’t do as well in our raffles and auctions as last year, but that’s been typical for most dinners. In 2013, for obvious reasons, people were a lot more eager to open their wallets for the cause. Overall we’ll end up raising more than $15,000, which mostly goes to fund youth shooting programs.
That’s from one dinner, in one county. Our budget each year to promote the dinner? Five hundred dollars. Our staff? About ten volunteers. I’d challenge Shannon Watts to set up a dinner for Moms Demand under similar restrictions, and see how many people they can draw. Both Chester County, Montgomery County, and Philadelphia all have dinners as well, each raising that much or more (in the case of ChesCo, significantly more). Lancaster County has a dinner that draws 800. They can’t even seat them all in a room, and so have to resort to buffet hot seating. It’s standing room only during the auction. So, Shannon, up for the challenge?
Congrats on the dinner and turnout.
I wish we here in Las Vegas could attend FoNRA dinners, but the California-based coordinator only books venues that prohibit firearms carry. As a result, most of us cannot attend as we would be unarmed.
That would seem to be a problem.
Would you like to volunteer for FNRA and help with found a new committee? Your state or regional rep should be open to guiding you through that process.
The gripe in my part of the world is “I want to go but its such a long drive to to attend one”. Then they found a little local FNRA committee and end up getting 100 more people and raising $10k more than the big city.
Its work, but its fun work. You get to give guns away and then give money to help people go shooting.
Something else about FNRA dinners, they’re organized with very limited support from the state and national FNRA organizations.
We do this because we raise money for our state and our local groups. I’m proud to have helped two committees raise about $25k each here in KY. I have met the young men and women whom we have helped to go shooting.
I’ve spoken with Bitter to organize a little more organically between local groups. For example here in KY we really dont have much luck with online sales, but I know of a group in AK that does most of their sales online. If any of ya’ll want to pitch in reply here. I’m still trying to figure out what forum to use (leaning towards Google Groups) to help my FNRA groups talk to the folks in Bucks county, and the guys in AK, and maybe even inspire some people in NV to form a group.