Although this was a nice experience for our students and friends to participate in, we believe the 10 percent give back night through this organization was far too much work and effort for such a small return. Between friends, family, students and instructors we racked up $2,172.30 in sales the day of the fundraiser.

We promoted the event via the web and social media, conned friends and family in to spending money at Chilis' and spent money to print coupons that had to be handed out. This was a good lesson learned and we will not repeat this type of fundraiser again. In the end we could have simply asked all the people who spent $20 that night for $5.00 toward the cause and ended up with over double the funds. 

ORIGINAL PROMOTION ARTICLE

Help our students succeed by eating at Chili’s Thursday January 10th 2013 any time from 11:00am to 11:00pm. On this day Chili’s will donate 10% of your purchase to MARTiAL YOU when you present the MARTiAL YOU night coupon shown below.

If you have friends, family or co-workers that may want to participate, print out our coupon sheet. 4 Coupons on one page. Cut them out and hand them out. Click the small page on the left to bring up the adobe PDF of the coupon page to be printed.

The promotion is designed to increase business for the restaurant on that day and as a reward, 10% of the sales associated with coupons are donated to us. There is no need to purchase anything in particular, just bring a copy of the coupon in with you and give it to your server before paying. You’re not charged any extra, it just lets them know that 10% of your sale will be donated.

For more information about how Chili's does this, visit the QDI page here to read all about the program.
http://www.qdi.com/chilis/chilis.htm

MARTiAL YOU is participating in this promotion to raise enough money to purchase updated equipment for our students. Currently about 90% of the training equipment in use by our students is between 8 and 15 years old and needs to be replaced. This includes the dense foam flooring they train on each class, which is literally deteriorating and falling apart from use.

Meet the Dojo!... Below are some pictures of the classroom we are fundraising for. The room is rented by the Bangor YMCA from the Columbia Street Church and houses all of the martial arts programs offered through the YMCA. Though this space is fantastic to have and a great asset to the program, we believe it is somewhat of an embarrassment as well.

MARTiAL YOU fully supports the martial arts programs run through the YMCA and we want these programs to succeed. Unfortunately the YMCA has not been able to allocate funds to programs for many years. Because of this nothing ever gets replaced unless it is donated. We would like to see every single worn out item swapped for a new one so the students have a decent facility to train in. Simple as that! 

Forward view of the room as you enter. Doesn't look too bad from a distance. The room is roughly 20'W X 45'L	Rear view of the classroom. Still not bad looking from a distance.
Say hello to the dense foam flooring in use. This particular type of flooring is not ideal for martial arts training and is more suited for a weight room gym floor.	Not bad looking far away but look closer and you see how much this floor has degraded. The black foam particles are breaking free and usually end up ground into student uniforms and on their feet. This needs to be gone!
Some pieces of the flooring are so bad they no longer stay attached and are missing parts. This floor needs to be gone now! We estimate about $2,000 to replace this old foam flooring with new 1" thick EVO based foam flooring that is suited for martial arts training.	Here are the current free standing kicking targets available. Every single one of them is at least 9 years old or older and not one will adjust properly anymore.
After a closer inspection we can see that most of the free standing kick bags leak water from the bases and this one is cracked badly. The foam top is worn so bad it needs to be trashed.	Above we have a picture of one students feet after a class of moving around on the old flooring. Below we have a pile of kicking shields used for power kicks. Some are at least 10-12 years old and can no longer be used as they where intended.
As you can see the pads pretty much need to be thrown away.	This one has material that is literally degrading and flaking apart.
These are a bunch of focus pads used to practice kicking accuracy. They too are so old and worn that even after attempted repairs the internal stuffing and foam is coming out as the material falls apart.	Another look at some of these pads

It is our goal to raise between $1,500 - $2,000 in order to replace the foam flooring with a new EVO based matting and keep our students safe and healthy while they learn. Anything raised above the cost of the flooring will be used to replace as many pieces of equipment as we can to give them a better experience. Realistically this promotion may help us kick start the amount we need by bringing in about $50 - $200 depending on the sales associated with our Give Back Night coupons. We don't know what the average daily sales are for this particular restaurant but we hope to get a lot of people there that day to generate a few thousand dollars in sales. 

If you would like to help us reach our goal, head over to Chili’s on Stillwater Avenue in Bangor January 10th. And don’t forget to bring a coupon in with you!
To see our current fundraising needs check our donations page or watch our video right here: