I need some help organizing a tourney for Kentucky Employees Charitable Campaign

Each year, Kentucky state employees are asked to donate and/or help run fundraisers to benefit the Kentucky Employees Charitable Campaign (KECC). The charities that get the proceeds are the Christian Appalachian Project, Community Health Charities of Kentucky, Easter Seals Kentucky, Prevent Child Abuse-Kentucky, United Way of Kentucky, and WHAS Crusade for Children.

I work for the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet in Frankfort. Some of my fellow anglers and I would like to organize a tourney to benefit the KECC this year. We have been having some fun this year with co-worker tourneys, but what we envision will be much bigger in order to make a significant contribution to the charities.

I need some help with some details. I would greatly appreciate any help/advise you might offer. This will be an open tourney, but we are thinking to limit it to a certain number of boats so that it remains manageable. Some of you who have helped organize a charity tourney or particiapted in one may have some good ideas.

Location: Guist/Taylorsville/Herrington?
Number of boats/entries? [perhaps 50 boats?]
Entry fee amount? [We were thinking $60/boat]
Payback? [We were thinking 50%... this is for charity... ]
How to get sponsors?
Should donated prizes be a part of the payout or should they be raffled?
Should we try to get some food donated so people can eat after they come off the water?
Anybody have a scale we could borrow or should we find a bathroom scale that reads to the tenth of a pound?

This will probably be in September.

Thanks in advance,

John

You would need to post this thread to the Fishin.com Tournament Info Board. There's plenty of savy people on there that can help you out on this.:) Here's the link below for you.....

[URL]http://www.fishin.com/forums2/forumdisplay.php?f=177[/URL]

I think the best approach to drawing more boats is to get donations for the prize money then gaurantee the money paid out. If you print that you are keeping half the money fishermen will not come..... Get donations ,gaurantee the prizes, then keep all the entry fees. Also it seems to be easier to get donations from vendors if you say that it is for charity and that all the money they donate is being paid out.... Most of the events on cumberland that say they are keeping a percent of the entries seem to flop. No BOATS.... But guarantee the pay out and Bang they come out in force.....

You can contact Wes at Anglers Outpost he may be able to help some. Herrington is a real heavy tournament lake. I have fished several there this year. I am always ready for another. I will be fishing a am tourney next weekend and a pm right after. I can do what I can. But there definitly needs to be cash and prizes as always to bring out the boats!!

Thanks for all the help. Anybody else have any input?

I can tell you now that if you were to hold the tourney at Herrington I would probably be able to get you 5 to 6 boats to fish it if not more. Hey its a start.

I think Herrington would be the best location as many of us (organizers/volunteers/potential sponsors) are based in central Kentucky.

What do you guys think about the entry fee? Should we gurantee a minimum cash prize for 1st thru 3rd and pay out prizes for other places? Or should we pay a percentage of the total?