The following are fundraising ideas that came up during a breakout table at the Junior Golf Conference.

1) Contact Pete Bryden in Orlando if you have interest in selling subscriptions to ESPN The Magazine. Hal Yost mentioned this since he sold them for Pete at $40 and received $30 per subscription. His email address is: pete.bryden@espn3.com

2) The South Florida PGA has a Birdie Pledge Club. Kids get family and friends involved in this. The idea is to pledge money towards the number of birdies they have in a season. You might start at $2.00 a pledge or whatever you see fit. (I was thinking that it would be a good idea to add a page on your website which tracks how many birdies the players have had and have a meter showing the amount of dollars raised.) Meredith Winkelmann has more info on how this works mwinkelmann@pgshq.com

3) Ball Drop – this came from the Villages. They are selling 2000 golf balls with numbers on them for $25.00 each. It is a 50/50 type deal. The balls will be dropped onto an open field from a net hoisted by a fire truck. There will be a flag and hole in the middle of the field. The ball that lands the closest or in the hole wins half of the money. The rest goes to the organization. (they had heard of this when a group did it and used a helicopter to drop the balls) Roger from Vero mentioned that it might be a good idea to pay out the top 5 closest and maybe not quite so much!
Either way this could be a large event if you can get some teaching pros involved to donate time to give a clinic to kids that day and have the ball drop on a range! I do believe you would need some sort of raffle permit for this.

4) Lemon Bay adds a line on their annual membership dues invoices—donate $100 to junior golf. The member can check a box if they do not want to do this. They have raised a ton this way, very simple and cost effective. Cindy Claude could explain this more if you need, swim@ewol.com

5) Luis Crespo of The Saints at Port St Lucie has raised a bunch of money for the program by taking the kids to a local Walmart or Publix. He has gotten permission from these stores to set up a one hole putting area where people can putt. It does not cost them anything but they tend to donate money while there. One Saturday he made well over $1500 dollars. This sounds like a great idea, reach Luis at jrgappsl@gmail.com for more information.

Contact the FSGA if you have any questions or other great ideas.