Casino Night, Alpha Tau Omega’s philanthropy event, is one of the ways the fraternity raised money for the Urban and Shelley Meyer Fund for Cancer Research this past year. Credit: Courtesy of Alpha Tau Omega’s Casino Night
A night at the casino isn’t strictly fun and games but rather a mainstay fundraiser for local cancer research.
For 18 years, the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity at Ohio State has raised money for various causes through an annual Casino Night event, which took the shape of a week-long virtual auction this year due to COVID-19. The event, combined with fundraising efforts throughout the year, raised $51,939 for the Urban and Shelley Meyer Fund for Cancer Research — double the amount from the previous year.
From April 5-11, Buckeye Cruise for Cancer — another organization that supports the Meyer research fund — partnered with ATO to auction off signed sports memorabilia from Urban Meyer and past Ohio State football players. The event also included a 50/50 online raffle where half the money was awarded to the winner and the rest went toward the fundraiser.
Zachary Gonzalez, president of ATO’s Casino Night and a fourth-year in finance and economics, said Casino Night is the fraternity’s signature philanthropy event. He said they normally rent out the Archie M. Griffin Grand Ballroom in the Ohio Union to host the mock casino and a live band. The event typically draws around 750 people and raises around $5,000 to $10,000 of the total $55,000 to $60,000 raised throughout the school year, he said.
“A lot of family and friends come from around the country, as well as alums,” Gonzalez said. “It’s really just a really fun night of fundraising and getting to see people that you haven’t seen in a while.”
Gonzalez said this year, the goal was to raise $50,000 between the Casino Night and the fraternity’s other fundraising efforts. The pandemic-friendly virtual auction raised $1,325 of the total $51,939. Additional funds were raised during the year through T-shirt sales, fundraising bingo boards shared on social media and call-a-thons.
Last year, the fraternity donated $25,000 to the Urban and Shelley Meyer Cancer Research Fund, Gonzalez said in an email. He said the majority of fundraising for Casino Night usually happens in March when ATO members sell event tickets to family and friends, but COVID-19 restrictions and shutdowns hindered the fraternity’s fundraising efforts last spring.
Hoping for more normalcy, Gonzalez said he started planning for this year’s event last summer by booking a room in the Union, updating previous donors on what the fraternity donated and speaking to alumni for suggestions about fundraising during COVID-19.
However, as the year progressed, Gonzalez said an in-person event seemed unlikely, so the fraternity transitioned to an entirely online event.
“I was a little bit optimistic at the beginning of the year. I thought we would be normal, we would be able to hold an event,” Gonzalez said. “We ended up booking the Union for April 3, was our event date, and as we got into second semester, we realized that it was probably not going to be normal.”
Gonzalez said planning the virtual event was hectic because they had never done an online event in the past. To get started, he said he reached out to some individuals at the university and people in other chapters who had held online events before for advice.
“A lot of it was just trial and error, figuring out how to be creative, how to get people to be excited about an online event,” Gonzalez said.
On Jan. 22, ATO was placed on interim suspension pending an investigation into endangering behavior, violating university rules or state, federal and local laws and failure to comply with university or civil authority.
Preston Rice, a third-year in business real estate and president of ATO, said when the fraternity was placed on interim suspension, one of the first things they did was reach out to the university to request a modification to their interim suspension conditions so they could continue their fundraising efforts.
“The chapter worked very well with the university to request modifications to the suspension because if you don’t request those modifications, you cannot complete those events,” Rice said. “So, that was the first priority. That modification was, ‘We can’t let our charitable contributions be affected by that because that is the importance of philanthropy. That’s the importance of the chapter.’”
Gonzalez said he feels that being a part of this event means being a part of something bigger than himself.
“The last two years of students haven’t seen an in-person event,” Gonzalez said. “So for me, this year was all about kind of carrying on that tradition, making sure that they understand the importance of it, so when I’m gone next year and they’re holding the event, they understand what it is that we’re trying to do and serving the community.”
