Training room and main weight liſting stations
excitement for the communities that ran one. The initial idea to run our own
Chase the Ace was proposed by Nick Kiss, the president of the Dalhousie Rotary Club. Our two organizations formed a partnership, struck a com- mittee and launched the event that November. Over time, an additional 200-plus generous and hard-working volunteers came on board to help with the event.
How it works If you’re not familiar with Chase the
Ace, here are the basics: for one three- hour window each week, participants buy tickets (ours were $5, $10 and $20) and are entered in a cash draw. At the end of the three hours organizers se- lect one ticket from the pool, and the winner wins 20 percent of that night’s ticket sales. Of the remaining funds, 50 percent goes to the charities (in our case, the Recreaplex and Rotary Club) and 30 percent is retained for a final big jackpot, which continues to build as people buy tickets each week. In addition to winning 20 percent of the jackpot, the winning tickethold- er also draws a card from a standard 52-card deck. If they draw the ace of spades, they win the big jackpot. Until the ace of spades is drawn, the weekly three hours of ticket sales followed by
KABOOM! When NB Power announced it was decommissioning a nearby
power plant with two huge towers, a member of our board of di- rectors had a brilliant idea: we’d sell draw tickets, and the win- ner would get to hit the button that set off the explosives. We
called it Kaboom, we sold over 2,000 tickets and made $6,200. The winners were seven-year-old and eight-year-old siblings who, with the assistance of an NB Power employee, had the thrill of creating the big bang.
a draw continue, and the pot grows until someone eventually draws the ace of spades. Winners must be pres- ent to win.
What happened We set Thursday evenings from
6-9pm as our ticket sales/draw night. The first few Thursdays were busy. But as word got out and excitement grew, every Thursday our town was flood- ed with up to 10,000 people who ar- rived to purchase tickets and stay for the draw. Eventually, Thursday nights
were pandemonium as cars and people filled the streets and the Recreaplex (and a satellite location we set up at the local shopping mall). A team of seven bartenders sold drinks while a small army of people monitored the floor and sold tickets. People were really invested in the
contest. We had people from all across New Brunswick and from as far away as Toronto buying tickets and attend- ing the draws. One person purchased $4,000 worth of tickets one night! As time went on and the ace of
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January/February 2017 Fitness Business Canada 31
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