Hello, I am Amber Morgan, the Vice President of Hospitality for the Richardson Area Band Club, non-profit booster club for the RHS Golden Eagle Band. As the band of a Title 1 school our organization is proud to say that we continuously have the lowest band fees in our district year after year, but that comes with a lot of unseen background work to reach out and secure donations so that our kids can continue to focus each day on learning and growing in their musical, academic, and personal lives. Unfortunately, like many other organizations that rely on donations, Covid and district activity restrictions resulted in our losing out on many different fundraising opportunities over the last two years. In order to help replace some of the lost funds and allow us to continue to support many of our students with band scholarships to cover the cost of fees in the future we have had to come up with some new ways to bring in donations this year.

This year we want to put together a fundraising opportunity that people are truly excited to participate in that wasn’t another version of “here’s a catalogue please buy something” and we also wanted to find a way that we could more easily include our elementary, junior high, and high school bands in promoting a single fundraiser that they can all work towards encouraging friends and family to participate in. I truly believe that seeing this new avenue of fundraising will help us towards meeting our yearly goal for fundraising.

Our marching show theme this year is “Connected” and focuses on the ways in which we have all become connected to our technology while becoming disconnected from each other and how we need to get back to making person-to-person connections. With that in mind, our “Connected Experiences” Raffle is seeking donations for family experiences. Our program starts with 6th grade band in the elementaries where students begin to play their chosen instrument and continues through 12th grade with marching band, four levels of concert band, jazz band, colorguard, and elective advanced music theory classes. Because of that wide age range, we are looking for experiences that would interest families at every age group.

Thank you for your consideration of donating to our organization!