Boy Scouts target new donors with shotgun event

By Nicole Lucht

Friday, Jan. 30, 2009 | 2 a.m.

It’s good to hear there are Las Vegas businesses still able to give to organizations dependent on outside funding, such as the Las Vegas area council of the Boy Scouts of America.

As a former Girl Scout, I know that the skills developed and the lessons learned are never forgotten.

And as the country struggles during this recession and looks forward to a stronger economy, these boys will hopefully continue following the Scouts’ law of being helpful, thrifty, loyal and trustworthy as the leaders of tomorrow.

The Boy Scouts are hosting the Sporting Clays Classic, a shotgun-shooting competition that helps support the organization for much of the year. Local businesses sponsor four-man teams to compete for prizes and bragging rights during the event.

Two weeks before the Feb. 6-7 shooting event, the council had raised $200,000 from participating area businesses. The contributors will be taking part in a shooting competition, complete with target practice and clay disks, as well as a live demonstration by Metro’s SWAT unit on how it would handle a hostage situation.

There will also be a bourbon tasting and an auction.

But while the fundraiser is for the boys, there won’t be any in attendance.

Most of the participants from the 40 businesses will be bringing their own firearms, firing not only at clay targets, but at stationary ones as well. There will be several fun shoots and the opportunity to fire a muzzleloading rifle like those used in the Revolutionary War, said Jim Schmidt, finance director for the local Boy Scouts organization.

This is the second year for the event, designed to appeal to a new market of donors, he said.

“We don’t want to hit up the same ol’ sponsors again and again,” he said. Almost 200 people are expected at the event at Desert Lake Shooting Club in Boulder City.

Bally Technologies, one of the companies sponsoring the event, is more than happy to oblige, said Bruce Rowe, director of strategy and development for the company.

“There has never been a (better) time in our country that we should be supporting organizations that built the values of this country,” he said. Some leaders lost sight of those values, and there’s no better time than now to reinforce them, he said.

“Young boys will find leadership, positive or negative,” Rowe said.

The money will be used to organize new Scout groups and train Scout masters, finance the camping program and maintain campsites, Schmidt said.

“Sponsorships are good this year, but it’s been a challenge with the economy,” Schmidt said. “We’re happy, but not satisfied.”

There are 34,000 boys involved in the council’s Scouting program, which stretches as far as Mesquite and Kingman, Ariz., he said.

Let’s just hope the bourbon is tasted after the shooting or during the auction.

• • •

I must digress. When my editor sent me the release about the event, he made a special note that they would be shooting clay pigeons, not real ones.

As a known newsroom enthusiast and rehabber of the lovely rock dove, or as the French say, “pigeon,” I told him I would only call them clay disks. And you can bet that if they were shooting actual doves, as they destructively do in Pennsylvania, I’d have written a different column.

The disks don’t even look like pigeons. But I’d rather have them shooting at clay than birds any day.

Fortunately, Schmidt, the Scouts’ finance director, called them “clay targets.”

In other news:

The Gastric Band Institute of Las Vegas is hosting a clothing exchange Jan. 31 for its patients who have lost weight through bariatric surgery.

Patients who no longer fit clothes in their wardrobe have donated hundreds of items to the institute’s closet so that those in transition can easily find clothes that fit.

For a day, the institute will transform into a boutique where patients can try on the clothes.

The institute is offering the service as a response to the added expense of clothing during the recession.

Since the institute opened in 1989, more than 4,000 surgeries have been performed there.

• • •

St. Rose Dominican Hospitals released its list of 14 charities the nonprofit hospital group recently gave a collective $218,000.

This is the 18th year St. Rose awarded the grants to other local nonprofit organizations.

“St. Rose has been committed to providing quality health care to our local community for more than 60 years,” Rod Davis, president of St. Rose Dominican Hospitals, said in a statement. “Awarding these grants to other not-for-profit, health-related organizations enables us to work collaboratively toward improving the health and well being of the residents of Southern Nevada.”

The charities were: Boys & Girls Clubs of Las Vegas, Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada, Dr. Joel & Carol Bower School Base Health Center, Giving Life Ministries, Helping Kids Clinic, Living Grace Home, Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth, Positively Kids, Poverello House, Safe Nest, Saint Theresa Center, Salvation Army/Adult Day Center, UNLV Center for Health Disparities Research and UNLV School of Dental Medicine.