The Bowl-A-Thon is the most successful fundraising event for Junior Achievement nationwide. Over its 19-year span with the event, Chattanooga has ex-perimented with several “Bowl-A-Thons” including “Shake, Rattle & Bowl,” “Strike it Rich,” and “Ghosts and Gutters,” before settling on the successful “Strike for Education Rock 'n Bowl” format to take place in August each year. The popularity of this event grew from just 35 teams and 210 participants in 2003 to 75 teams and 450 bowlers for the 2010 event.
This year’s Rock 'n Bowl event will take place at the Holiday Bowl on Brainerd Road August 20 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m., 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., and August 21 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Renee Penney serves as the special events director at JA and comes from a background in banking, where she was a special events coordinator. The way Rock 'n Bowl works is that JA recruits teams to bowl with them from company teams made up of co-workers to individual teams of friends, family, church groups and others. They ask each bowler to raise $125 for JA, and there is a $100 registration fee for a team of six, which includes two games of bowling, their shoe rental, and a T-shirt.
Bowlers raise the minimum $125 by selling $5 tickets for a chance to win six grand prizes. These participants can also have an online campaign they send out to friends and family that live out of the area to help them raise money. The funds from Rock 'n Bowl go to purchase the kit materials for JA’s K-12 programs that volunteers take into the classroom for economic education programs. Each kit costs an average of $25 per student.
Penney says JA has a volunteer base of business people, community volunteers, retirees, students, civic groups, churches and other nonprofits that bring the program into classrooms for the students. They serve Marion, Catoosa, Walker and Hamilton counties in programs which cover everything from what makes up a city and how money flows through a community to their encouragement of entrepreneurship and teaching kids about success skills.
The high school programs focus on the success skills and helps them develop problem solving, thinking skills, negotiation, personal finance, be entrepreneurial, explore economics, and do job shadows. In the elementary school program, JA has programs that involve economics for success and focuses on career options, determining the students’ interests and skills, and starting with the student and moving outward to the larger world, they learn how economics plays a role in their lives. Penney says a lot of their classroom volunteers from community businesses participate in Rock 'n Bowl.
“It’s wonderful seeing the companies that provide us with so many of our volunteers supporting this event. JA volunteers care about the future of our students; they are aware of the obstacles that many of them face and are willing to be part of the solution,” Penney says. Options for companies to help JA’s Rock 'n Bowl event include lane sponsorships and corporate sponsorships, but primarily the bulk of the money is raised through the bowlers. Penney says the goal of this year’s Rock 'n Bowl is to have 120 teams. They have several competitions within Rock 'n Bowl to encourage the spirit of competition including the Battle of the Banks, Car Wars, the King Pin award (which goes to the top individual fundraiser), and new this year, the Battle of the Bean Counters, in which accountants and CPAs work to raise the most funds for this event.
There are also 10 top fundraiser prizes, incentive prizes and door prizes for all that meet their goal. Last year’s prizes included two $250 MAPCO Mart gift cards, two round-trip airline tickets, a foursome at the prestigious Council Fire Golf Course, a three night, four day Carnival Cruise and a one year supply of Pepsi.
The money each bowler raises counts toward prizes, but they also have the Strike for Education Cup to keep in mind. The team during the three time sessions that wins their time session with their bowling scores gets medallions, and then the team with the overall highest bowling score, that meets their team fundraising goal of $750, are eligible for the Strike for Education Cup. This traveling trophy will have their name engraved on the base and will stay on there wherever the trophy goes next year.
At the event, there will also be a frozen T-shirt competition for the men, a hula-hoop contest, a scavenger hunt, face painting and balloon art and more for families, children and adults who attend. JA is not a United Way agency, and all the funds raised stay in Chattanooga. JA of Chattanooga is a non-profit organization dedicated to teaching students about the economics of life through free enterprise education. JA is still in need of door prizes for the event, bowling teams and classroom volunteers for the 2011-2012 school year.
Bowling teams can sign up online at www.jachatt.org, and those interested in volunteering can contact Megan Dearing at the JA office.