Parents of the Blue Jackets fundraiser wildly successful

The Parents of the Blue Jackets annual fundraising dinner and auction to support the Lovell FFA chapter members was held on Saturday evening at the Lovell Community Center and raised just over $20,000 on auction items and ticket sales.

The money earned will go toward helping the FFA members with contests, trips, equipment, official dress and any other needs throughout the year.

“It seemed like a pretty good turnout,” member of the Parents of the Blue Jackets and key event coordinator Charis Bischoff said. “We are always very appreciative of how much our community continues to show up for these events and the kids. It was a great event overall, and it’s just a fun time for everyone to gather.

“Scheduling the event at this time of the year can be challenging around school activities, spring breaks, calving, branding and farmers getting ready to get into their fields or their ability to quit early with the days getting longer to attend.”

The Parents of the Blue Jackets group is mainly made up of parents, alumni and supporters of the Lovell FFA chapter and was first organized in 2013.

With school budgets for programs being cut and already relatively thin, the group wanted to gather like-minded individuals to be able to help come up with ways to provide funds for the students and their projects or events.

“It gets expensive to participate in some of these things for the kids, and to alleviate parents having to keep digging into their pockets to cover things that the school isn’t able to, we wanted to be able to help,” Bischoff said. “While sports and other organizations are important, ag in our community is super important, and those are the kids that we want to come back and help sustain the community.”

With the majority of the auction items being items that the FFA students made themselves through the school’s metal, woodshop or other classes, they provided unique and one-of-a-kind items, along with baked goods and other donations from the community.

On top of helping fund specific needs for the kids throughout their high school FFA careers, the organization offers scholarships to graduating seniors who have participated in FFA at Lovell High School.

“Seniors can apply for a scholarship if they have been involved with our program,” Bischoff explained. “Obviously, we want to encourage these kids to go to college and further their education, but sometimes that’s not in the cards for certain kids, and our scholarship opportunity is a little bit different because we just pay it out directly to the graduate.”

The group wants to make the application process as smooth and easy as possible for the students and the money attainable for them to use as they choose.

“We are so thankful to the people in our area for being so generous and supportive and helping provide these opportunities for these kids,” Bischoff said. “The Parents of the Blue Jackets are happy to do what we can to make this possible for the students, but we couldn’t do it without the support from the community.”