The fund is named before the menu is
Look at the club calendar and you will notice something odd about the way a dinner is written down. The dish is not the headline. The fund is.
- Rouladen, for the Spinal Cord Injury Fund
- A fish boil, for the Aerie 281 Building Fund
- An Indian dinner, for the Kidney Fund
- A steak fry, for the Heart Fund
That ordering is not an accident. The dinner is the fundraising method, not a restaurant service that happens to give some money away afterwards.
Where the money goes
Some of it stays in the building. The Building Fund pays for the roof over the two halls, and a fraternal club without a building has no way to raise anything at all.
The rest goes out. The Eagles Memorial Foundation covers education, medical and dental expenses, hospitalisation and psychiatric care, and since 1947 the Eagles have given a total of $4 million in benefits. The Eagles Diabetic Research Center funds research; one of its physicians recently won a prestigious award for work on women's cardiometabolic health.
Why the RSVP matters more than you would think
Members buy the food and cook it themselves. The chair of a dinner is a person, named on the calendar, working out how much beef to buy on the strength of who has rung up.
RSVP dates are usually three days before. Turning up without one is not a disaster. Ringing ahead genuinely helps, and it costs you a phone call.
Coming to one
You do not have to be a member. That is the whole point - a fundraiser that only members attend does not raise anything. Bring whoever you like, and come hungry.
Enquire About the Hall - the form reaches the club, and so does the phone.