Fundraising Events
Here are some of the fundraising events that are held on a regular basis
The Golf Tournament
The first De Anza Lions Charity Golf Tournament was held in November 1988 at Deep Cliff Golf Course in Cupertino. An amazing thirteen golfers attended. After playing the course, dinner was served and awards handed out at the Cupertino Senior Center. Among the goody bag prizes were tickets to the Monta Vista/Cupertino High School football game. (It seems ex De Anza Lion George Fernandez was the Cupertino High School principal and Lion Eli was the football head coach).
Held now in mid June, at The Golf Club at Moffett Field, the De Anza Lions Club hosts over 100 golfers of all levels. With golf contests, 3 divisions, a cocktail hour, an awards ceremony, buffet dinner and a cold beer tent, it is a major fun(d)raiser. Profits from this tournament make up about half of the club’s annual charitable funds
The Crab Feed
The first Annual Charity Crab Feed was held in December 1996 at the Lions Blind Center in San Jose (now called Santa Clara Valley Blind Center). A joint effort of the Sunnyvale Sunrise Rotary Club, the De Anza Lions Club and the Fish Market Restaurant proved to be an outstanding success. Soon we outgrew the limited space at the Blind Center and moved to the cafeteria at the 3Com corporate building in Santa Clara, until that facility turned out to be too small as well. So we moved on to the Campbell Community Center for a couple of years, and finally to St. Williams Church in Los Altos. Beginning with about 200 guests in ‘96, the event was expanded to 2 seatings of 300 people each, which were close to sold old each year.
Rich Owens, friend of De Anza Lions, continues to put together a rockin’ Dixieland Jazz band for the event, as he has done since 1996 – the ‘Thrown Together Jazz Band” members all gladly “sing for their supper”. The Fish Market still donates and maintains quality foods and service, while friends and family of both service Clubs, along with numerous youth groups, continue to provide excellent table service.
Local businesses and restaurants repeatedly donate amazing raffle and silent auction items. In recent years, the Firehouse Brewery has donated their handcrafted beers and ales. The Fish Market supplies the fresh cracked crab and often helps to cook it. The donated pasta in marinara sauce will be cooked and served by fellow lions. Garlic bread and lemons will be prepared in the morning of the event and fresh garden salad accompanied by Louie dressing is being served as appetizer. In 2017 the De Anza Lions Club for the first time hosted this event without a partner service club. The amount of guests was reduced to 400. It was a great success. Held towards the end of January, this fundraiser generates about half of the club’s charitable funds.
Thanksgiving Food Drive
Thanksgiving Food Drive The first ‘Food Drive’ started sometime in the early to mid 1980’s. At that time, one would not have called it a ‘food drive’ – Members of the De Anza Lions Club just went to a grocery store, bought a shopping cart full of groceries that make up traditional Thanksgiving dinners and delivered them to a few low income families in the San Jose area. Later, the club started soliciting customers for food donations at the Sunnyvale Pak’N Save store, handing out a list with the items typically used for a great Thanksgiving dinner and the event took off as an Annual Food Drive. Very soon, thanks to the generosity of store customers as well as the store management and employees, more food for more families could be collected and the list with addresses of families-in-need grew longer.
From the early beginnings when the club helped a handful of families, this event has expanded so that in 2017 the club was able to provide more than 160 low-income families with 2 generously filled grocery boxes each, containing ingredients for a festive Thanksgiving meal and food for several days beyond.Since 2010, our partner in this collaborative effort has been Lucky’s grocery stores. Collections sites are the Santa Clara Lucky’s at El Camino and Lawrence, and the Saratoga Lucky’s near Saratoga and Prospect. Collected food items are stored, sorted and packed into pre-labeled boxes at the Odd Fellows Lodge in Sunnyvale. Each year this event is held on the weekend before the Thanksgiving Holidays, from 8:00am to 5:00pm (Saturday and Sunday), with deliveries to the families and institutions on the subsequent Monday.
Cash donations are also welcome and gratefully accepted; the money is used to supplement the food boxes with any items missing to round out the menu. Surplus food is donated to a food bank or to the Sunnyvale Community center.
Recipients of the Thanksgiving food baskets include dozens of individual low-income families, as well as ‘Even Start Family Learning Center’, the domestic violence center, Young Parent program FUHS and the Horizon Program.
We appreciate with gratitude that Lucky’s has been our partner in this effort since 2010.
