Club/Team PTA grant money usage ideas

a few months back i hardly remembered to fill out a club/team grant request for table tennis club, but luckily i remembered last second, we requested the maximum amount of money ($500) and Mr. McCollum just stopped by my 8/9th period class today and presented an e-mail to me from Mr. Asher stating:

December 16, 2008
To: Table Tennis Club
Ariel Chen
Mr. Chris McCollum, Advisor

Congratulations! Your application for a Club/Team grant from the PTA has been approved in the amount of $500.

Description: Purchase of equipment.

Grant Conditions:
1. You must use the funds from this grant during the 2008-2009 school year.
2. You must submit a report to the PTA by June 15 detailing how you used this grant money and how it helped achieve the purpose and goals of your club. Next year's grant committee will use the report when reviewing and deciding on
grant requests for 2009-2010 school year funding.

Purchasing Instructions:
1. Purchase equipment as indicated on your grant request.
2. Submit either a bill for the PTA to pay the vendor directly or a bill and receipt showing items purchased and amount paid. Indicate to whom the reimbursement check should be paid. Please leave the document(s) in the PTA mailbox for processing.


so the purpose of this thread will be for all of us to give some suggestions on how to use this money because as the conditions state, if we don't use it all by the end of 2009, it will become invalid

We recently got a $500 grant from the school that we applied for. We are really greatful they can lend us money to use in our club. Now we have to figure out how to spend the money. We are thinking about buying a new table, some rackets and balls. So we are looking for reliable websites with cheap supplies but will last. The big problem is a table, we would like the spend minimum money on a good table. We might decide to order balls from zeropong and if anyone knows where we can get a lot of rackets for cheap, link us to it.

This was the cheapest racket I could find:
http://www.megaspin.net/store/default.asp?pid=j-beat
It's less than 7 dollars and you save 5% and free shipping when you spend over $130 so if we also buy a table from this site it will be around 475 dollars which will enough to buy a lot of balls. (This total includes 12 paddles and a 400 dollar table)

come on guys. more input would be appreciated. also lets think this over a little.

1) a new table is definite
2) so are balls

nets - not needed but we could use some spares... last time i checked we have just enough for all tables .. well we should buy one if the table we're buying doesn't come with one

paddles - i think we shouldn't buy any paddles at all honestly. we have enough paddles for each table and i believe almost more than 2 table's are usually dominated by club members that have their own paddles so the club paddles can be used by other members. also, honestly, if we do buy paddles we should buy pre-made ones that can actually give a good feel, grip the ball, make spin, etc. BUT in reality all the paddles that are the clubs will ... how do i put it .. die. so lets not waste money on paddles and just continue our pool of 10 or so dead paddles for the club members that just wanna come and play some ping pong with their friends every other week.

so i'm going to have to say

yes: table, balls
maybe: nets
no: paddles

feel free to agree or disagree

I think nets should be a no since we have nets. The nets will last as long as we take care of them. Paddles we could buy some new rackets since all of ours are like ripped sponge. Table and balls yes. I think we would have enough if we bought 8 Halexes, few bags of balls and a new table.

well since Mr.McCollum is buying like a new table for around 430 dollars, i think that we should like spend 20 on balls, and 20 for nets. we could save the 30 for the replacements of nets and balls later on.

Ivan Lin wrote:well since Mr.McCollum is buying like a new table for around 430 dollars, i think that we should like spend 20 on balls, and 20 for nets. we could save the 30 for the replacements of nets and balls later on.

lol nets dont break often and they are cheap, balls however breaks everyday

i still think we should get only enough paddles for two per table =X becuase we will know what table had the missing paddle and we can look for the person that took it

Theres absolutely no point of buying more paddles, they will be dead eventually too.

RaymondWu wrote:Theres absolutely no point of buying more paddles, they will be dead eventually too.

Things are meant to die but they are used for a good reason. Just like people. Lets not make more babies?
I think paddles would make our club members happier. Plus when you play with bad paddles it breaks the balls.

Paddles cost a lot more than balls. I rather break 100 balls than spend a lot money on paddles that will be used less than 45 minutes per club meeting. I don't think we could afford it anyway because we are getting a 430 dollar table. We won't have a penny left over if we do get them.

We need to think about other club members. There are club members without rackets that do stay longer than after 10th. We could use the remaining money for rackets because balls are rather cheap at Zeropong.

I don't really think we should rule out nets ...
We have nets that are barely hanging on and/or complete crap.

Pinkhas wrote:I don't really think we should rule out nets ...
We have nets that are barely hanging on and/or complete crap.

Yeah I know the issue with one net. We'll buy to replace that one but I think that's the only one. The nets will last as long as we take care of them.

oh about balls to save money, you guys can consider this. http://www.megaspin.net/store/default.asp?pid=g-balls-2-144 order 2 bags its free shipping lol
saves a lot of money in the future coz the ones from modells are ridiculously expensive

I think we should just get a table and balls. Members were supposed to have bought their own paddles a looooooooong time ago....I've also never seen a net be broken in my life, so I think that they're unnecessary to spend our hard-begged money on...

<this is a ninja, btw. 1337.

Sumgai wrote:I think we should just get a table and balls. Members were supposed to have bought their own paddles a looooooooong time ago....I've also never seen a net be broken in my life, so I think that they're unnecessary to spend our hard-begged money on...

<this is a ninja, btw. 1337.

Ive seen plenty nets either broken or damaged in some way >.>

Many of those nets have been replaced but I think there is one as I mentioned before. We have a table coming maybe before finals week and we'll talk about it after that.

i ordered 144 balls from zeropong last night. they should be here by next week, so we won't have a repeat of what happened tuesday lol

Ariel Chen wrote:i ordered 144 balls from zeropong last night. they should be here by next week, so we won't have a repeat of what happened tuesday lol

lol are the barriers cheap? we really should block it lol

barriers.....nah sounds like a bad idea. Thats just extra stuff for us to setup and a waste of money.

The amount of money spent on barriers will exceed the amount spent on balls we lost making that a bad deal for a club on a budget.

idk if u order da table yet, but i found a table thats like $150 or something like that in google shopping... can't give u the link cuz i think it will come out differently every time u search, but just search table tennis table and it will pop out... somehow... ;]

Chuqiao Li wrote:idk if u order da table yet, but i found a table thats like $150 or something like that in google shopping... can't give u the link cuz i think it will come out differently every time u search, but just search table tennis table and it will pop out... somehow... ;]

We already ordered a new table. But thanks for your help.

Chuqiao Li wrote:idk if u order da table yet, but i found a table thats like $150 or something like that in google shopping... can't give u the link cuz i think it will come out differently every time u search, but just search table tennis table and it will pop out... somehow... ;]

nice find, dam only 150 i can buy one if have space lol