Hi there! We do a fall carnival/bingo night & a spring bingo night. Years ago our PTO then invested in a bingo machine, it blows the balls up & you call out the number & place it on the board in its numbered spot. We purchase rolls of 25 cent tickets & bundle them into groups of $5, $10 & $20. We re-use those tickets each year until they can't be reused then we purchase more. Each bingo card is $1 (4 tickets) we also have our concession stand open that is ticket only ranging from 2-tickets to 8 tickets) The only cash handled at our events are when they purchase the tickets at the door.
We place brown paper bags with crayons in them on each table for the guests to use to mark their numbers. This year I purchased 3,000 paper bingo cards from the cheapest place I could find them which was wholesalebingosupplies.com for like $50 & those will last us at least 2-3 years.
Our school is Pre-K-8th grade and for each bingo event we have each classroom (30 classes) pick a basket theme & the students bring items for their class basket theme & those baskets are what is given away to whoever gets a bingo. We usually have 30 baskets if some classes have enough items for 2 baskets we may have more. For some baskets that are really neat we will set them aside for a silent auction.
We just had our fall carnival/bingo night this year we didn't have anything for the silent auction but we raised over $6,000 that is after expenses such as the bingo cards, & concession items.
Our bingo nights are our huge huge events!!! I am always amazed at how many people love to play bingo. We advertise it outside of school too, we will have people come that don't even know anyone at our school.
Thank you for posting this. We were going to hold one, but now turning into a can of worms. I searched internet and husband said it was illegal to hold in NJ (he's an attorney) ; but didnt want to get into the stature and research of it. do you happening to know the website you found it on?
Does anyone in California do the Bingo night and allow children to attend? It looks like the California Penal Code says minors cannot participate, I am trying to find documentation for minors to at least attend but not play.
We hold "Bingo for Books" around the same time as Dr. Suess day.
PTA pre-sells pizza. We usually get a deal from one of our business partners. We don't mark up the price too much since we feel it is more important to get the parents there rather than making a ton of money.
The night of Bingo, parents pick up their pizza and find a table. We bought bingo stuff several years ago.
When someone wins bingo, they get a ticket and at the end of the night, they get to pick out a book from several titles we have available.
You do need a license in NJ just for Bingo. And it is against the law to charge for Bingo admission, cards or anything even donations if you are going to have kids under the age of 18 in the building!!!!! We found out the hard way, but we weren't too late!!!
Did you have to get a license to hold this event at your school? Our PTO is planning a bingo bash and someone said we couldn't have it in our school cafeteria??
