Charity Tournament – Sunday 26th February 2017

On Sunday 26 February 2017 we will be holding the first formal Charity Tournament. It will take the form of a mixed doubles round robin handicap tournament. There will be no need to find a partner to enter, and if the genders are not equal we will improvise.

It is intended to become an annual event on the last Sunday of each February.

We did a fund raiser for the Refugee Council a year or so ago and it worked really well. This year the proceeds will be donated to Smile Train https://smiletrain.org.uk/donation. My hope is that we will give to a different cause each year. There will doubtless be debate about this, but I would prefer it to a third world charity if only because money goes so much further there. Other tournaments will continue to be held throughout the year to raise much needed money for the club.

The actual entry fee will be £3 to cover balls and tea. I would ask for a minimum donation of £7, i.e. a total of £10, and hope that many members will give more. The donation should be covered by Gift Aid, which means higher rate tax payers can, if they remember and can be bothered when doing tax returns, claim back about 18% of the donation.

If anyone would like to do any further fund raising on the day it would be greatly appreciated. Please let me know richardcolbey@hotmail.com.

On a personal note, part of my reason for doing it is that my Mum died on 29 February 2012, and it is the sort of thing she would have liked- even more so if the donations went to a cats’ home, but that’s not going to happen. Of course lots of other members will have lost parents and, except for me, this is not in any sense a tournament about her.

Richard