Fund raising doesn't have to be a hard job, though in most cases it is a lot of work. However, it can actually be a lot of fun and an evening that nobody will ever forget. One of the best ways to have one of those unforgettable evenings is to run a bowl-a-thon. If you're clueless as to how to get one of these on the lanes, never fear. The following tips should get you throwing strikes in no time.

There is one thing about bowl-a-thons that you should know before you even think about hosting one. The cost of a game of bowling these days has skyrocketed. Today, it can cost as much as $3.00 a game. If you have 40 or 50 people participating in one of these, each bowling your standard three game series, this can easily run you $450 just for what you have to hand over to the bowling alley itself. So if you're going to make one of these profitable, you're going to have to come up with some well thought up plans. One of the best ways to make money from a bowl-a-thon is to have two sources of revenue in order to collect your money for charity.

The first source of revenue is from the bowlers themselves. What you need to do is charge them, as an organization, a surcharge for each game they bowl. You might want to tack on as much as $1 or even $2 for each game. So if somebody is bowling 3 games and the alley is charging $3.00 per game, their fee comes out to $5 per, or $15 for the three games. Now, to make it worth their while, you need to have a prize fund for the winning team, which is determined by the team having the most number of pins knocked down in the three games. The best way to handle this is to do some basic math.

You have 50 people playing three games at $5 per game. That comes out to a total take of $750. Now, $450 of this goes to the alley, which leaves $300 left. Out of that $300, you give 33% back to the winning team, or $100. That comes out to $20 per person. I realize it's not a lot, but it pays for their bowling AND it gives them a $5 profit for the evening. This gives you a profit of $200, but this is ONLY for one source.

The other source will come from the guests who "wager" on who they think the winning team will be. They will bet on the team and the total pins. This way if there is a tie, the tiebreaker will be who comes closest to the total pins knocked down for that winning team. If you charge $5 for each wager and 50 people turn out to watch, that comes out to $250 additional collected. You can give the winner a nice 50% of that, or $125 and still have a profit leftover of $125. Add that to the $200 profit from the actual bowlers and you have a total profit of $325 for the event.

The above is the hard part. The rest is simply getting an alley, picking a date, sending out fliers and just spreading the word. Naturally, you'll also want to get a hold of some decent bowlers. Fund raising by hosting a bowl-a-thon is probably the most fun you will ever have.