Happy August Members. I’m writing my article a little early this month because it’s due while we are at our absolute favorite place in the entire world, EAA Airventure in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. If you ever have a chance to visit this amazing show, don’t hesitate to go. It’s so much fun. And we’ll get to see our friends at the Oshkosh Elks Lodge as well. It’s always fun visiting with other Elks and hearing about all the wonderful things they do in their communities as well.
We’ve been holding back on some of our donations lately, because of the large tax bills we always have in May, June, and July. Due to the way the tax is structured for charitable gambling, the taxes always get higher and higher as the months go on. We need to be fiscally responsible for sure and it’s quite a balancing act. We are committed to honoring our regular donations and we’re not broke, but gambling play always goes down in the summer because people are doing so many other things, so it’s to be expected somewhat. Starting in July now we’ll see much lower taxes again for a while anyway, thank goodness. And we’re going to be resuming our donations as well.
I hope you were able to come up on August 1st for National Night Out and the School Supply giveaway. We worked really hard getting 150 bags ready for any students grades pre-k through 4. The bags included pencils, crayons, an eraser, glue sticks, a folder, and a notebook – hopefully, enough to start their year with and help the parents out a little since back to school is always such an expensive time for parents. Our bike helmet/life jacket giveaway was so successful we tripled the amount for the school supply giveaway. I’m hoping it was a great event.
Don’t forget our Corn Feed/Car Show coming up in August – it’s always so fun. If you haven’t purchased your ticket for our Polaris Side by Side Raffle coming in September, we will hopefully have some tickets left for purchase during the car show.
Bingo has been doing well this summer as well. I think our players are very happy we decided to continue the bingo sessions in the summer months, this is something we haven’t been able to do really since pre-covid. Boy, I’m glad that’s over.
Speaking of bingo, we offer so many chances to play. Every Friday at our Lodge, Every Thursday at the Downtown Bar in Gilbert, every other Sunday (from September-May) at the Gilbert VFW, Two Sundays a month at Mike’s in Hibbing, and maybe one more location coming soon – stay tuned for that information.
As always keep sending those donation requests in, the ones we haven’t been able to donate to lately, we have kept and will revisit again as well. It’s honestly the best part of my job – giving away donations. Together we can all accomplish more.
Enjoy your August, hopefully your gardens are producing and ready soon to be harvested, mine is a jungle and I love it so much. Thank you to all of our members and our players who continue to help us do what we do. See you at the Corn Feed!