It’s almost Flamingo-ing season!

TL;DR
– Bring snack and drink donations to registration on Friday (7/24)
– In-person Flamingo-ing starts Monday (7/27)
– Flamingo Telethon on Wednesday (7/29)

A Quick Flamingo Primer
Flamingo-ing is our largest fundraiser of the year and a really fun team-building event! Each band section has pink plastic birds, called a flock (the larger sections run multiple flocks). Each evening during Flamingo-ing, sections head to neighborhoods in the Anderson HS vertical team and place the flock. The sections have developed their own unique appeals to homeowners around the idea that should the homeowner make a donation, they can take care of those pesky birds for them. The goal is to move the flock quickly from house to house. All kids are back at Anderson by 9 pm and headed home shortly after.

The idea here is that the kids work together, get to know one another, and raise money for the band’s activities at the same time. Flamingo-ing provides over half of ABBA’s yearly operating fund. Parents should be aware that the best time to go flamingo-ing is in the evening when people are usually at home. This means your student will be out until past sunset.

This year, in-person Flamingo-ing will start the first evening of Summer Band, Monday, July 27th. The 8 sections are split into A and B groups:
-A group of sections (Low Reeds, Percussion, Flutes, Trumpets) will Flamingo in the evenings on 7/27, 7/29, and 8/3
-B group of sections (Low Brass, Guard, Clarinets, Mellophones) will Flamingo in the evenings of 7/28, 7/30, and 8/4
-All sections will Flamingo in the evening on 8/5

Flamingo Telethon
We also have a telethon component of Flamingo-ing! The Anderson Band & Guard partner with Fan-Pledge to make it easy for friends and family from outside our vertical team footprint to support the program. The telethon will kick off on Wednesday, July 29th during the Summer Band day, and will run for about 3 weeks. It’s a great way to expand our fundraising reach and adds another dimension to the friendly competition between sections.

Flamingo Central Donations
Parents, we need help with snack and drink donations for Flamingo Central. We want to have water, Gatorade, prepackaged snacks, and baked goods waiting for the kids each evening when they return from Flamingo-ing. To make this happen, we count on donations from our parent community. We appreciate your help with this!

– Ryan and Kim Tamblin