Quincy, IL High School Rifle program can use your help

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jholtman
Posts: 50
Joined: Wed Oct 06, 2004 8:47 pm
Location: Quincy, IL

Quincy, IL High School Rifle program can use your help

Post by jholtman »

QHS rifle program has been around since 1937 in Quincy, IL and competes at the local, state, and national level. We teach safety and marksmanship to approx. 40 new high school aged students per year. In 2010 our school board completely cut our funds and we are now funded only by donations. With the cost of travel and fees, our expenses can become quite large.
If you are a past QHS student or would just like to help out our program, Please donate to the Scholastic Shooting Trust operated by the Potterfields at Midway USA. They are currently doing a 3:1 match until June 30th. For every dollar that you donate, they will donate 3 dollars to our account! You can find our account at the link below

http://www.scholasticshootingtrust.org/ ... ntId=47593

Thank You
Jim Holtman
QHS coach[/url]
randy1952
Posts: 468
Joined: Tue Aug 22, 2006 10:48 pm

Re: Quincy, IL High School Rifle program can use your help

Post by randy1952 »

jholtman wrote:QHS rifle program has been around since 1937 in Quincy, IL and competes at the local, state, and national level. We teach safety and marksmanship to approx. 40 new high school aged students per year. In 2010 our school board completely cut our funds and we are now funded only by donations. With the cost of travel and fees, our expenses can become quite large.
If you are a past QHS student or would just like to help out our program, Please donate to the Scholastic Shooting Trust operated by the Potterfields at Midway USA. They are currently doing a 3:1 match until June 30th. For every dollar that you donate, they will donate 3 dollars to our account! You can find our account at the link below

http://www.scholasticshootingtrust.org/ ... ntId=47593

Thank You
Jim Holtman


QHS coach[/url]
I have been running a Junior Program for 20 years and unfortunately for us we have had to survive on just donations and grants. I think you have one great thing in your favor and that is the number of kids you have involved. Get the kids and parents organized into a fund raising committee and come up with a formal plan and assign parents & kids to complete certain fund raising tasks with goals. If you have volunteers willing to take on the tasks your ahead of the curve, but unfortunately now days most people at the very least have to be directed. People generally will just sit on the side line and hope somebody will do all the work.

The attitudes might be different in your area, but in our area the gun owners are generally very apathetic. We have raffles every year and is our biggest fund raiser, but unfortunately most gun owners at first aren't willing to give any support until I explain to them that unless we get more kids involved in formal shooting programs that the long term future of gun ownership in this country is questionable and at best only one in 10 of those will give any support.

They are willing to plunk down a thousand bucks for an AR, but won't contribute the equivalent to a carton of 22LR ammo. A great many of these guys don't even learn to shot these toys especially when they find out that spraying bullets is expensive. I suppose if your fairly well to do or the US government you can afford to spray bullets. I have had gun owners tell me that they don't even care about the future of shooting. I had one guy tell me that if he loses his gun he'll just do more fishing.

The unfortunate part of our area is that there are relatively very few restrictions to gun ownership and the gun owners have gotten complacent and spoiled. I hope things are different in your area, but the main point is that you can't let these attitudes stop you and just soldier on. You'll have great success by getting all those kids and parents directly involved and if you have a leader willing to take on that task your chance of success will look better and don't try and tackle this yourself you'll burn out.

Good luck!
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