Donate your Clubs, Support the Veterans!

By Karen Snepp, Communications Chair Gather up those gently-used golf clubs that are wasting away in your garage! Details to follow a bit later, but we’re working on a used club drive in support of the EWGA Foundation’s 2010 “Drive for Dreams” funding initiative. This year’s beneficiaries will be two PGA of America-inspired player development programs serving injured veterans and their families: GIVE (Golf for Injured Veterans Everywhere) and SMGA (Salute Military Golf Association). The GIVE Foundation, administered by the Iowa PGA, is a program designed to train veterans and their family members in the fundamentals of golf in order to enhance their mental, social, physical and emotional well-being and improve the quality of their lives. The SMGA, founded in 2004 in Olney, Maryland, provides recreational therapy, through golf, to combat-wounded soldiers injured in Afghanistan and Iraq. The EWGA Seattle Chapter golf club drive will be facilitated by The PGA Trade-in Network, a PGA of America licensee program through which participating facilities collect donations and ship them to a liquidation outlet where the club donations are turned into cash donations to the EWGA Foundation’s “Drive for Dreams” campaign. Since the EWGA Foundation is a 501c(3) charitable organization, the fair market value of the donated clubs will qualify as a tax-deductible donation. Donated clubs cannot be more than five years old, cannot show excessive wear (e.g., rust or deep gouges), and must be from one of 10 brands (Adams, Callaway, Cleveland, Cobra, MacGregor, Mizuno, Nike, PING, TaylorMade, or Titleist). Irons must be sequential with at least six clubs.