Sheldon Scruggs| Times Herald-Record
Debbie Klein, Lisa Perez and Beth Gottlieb were at it again. They bought their tickets. They dropped them in the canisters next to the prizes they coveted. Then they affixed their ticket stubs to cardboard. When the calling started, each woman was able to see, at a glance, if she had the winning ticket for a prize.
The name of their game is tricky tray. These three sisters run the tricky tray circuit as card sharks or pool hustlers would, moving from town to town to play the game. They were at a tricky tray in Mount Carmel the night before, and now they're at the tricky tray fundraiser for St. Joseph's School, in Middletown.
"This is our version of 'girls-night-out,'" said Perez. "We don't spend a fortune, and — we win!"
Perez's sister Beth added, "This is our downtime, our bonding time." She explained that they do Monticello Raceway and Atlantic City, but tricky trays are their favorite thing to do together. "We talk. We always see people we know, and we socialize. It's a poor person's version of Atlantic City, and you don't have to travel far."
The last sibling, Debbie, chimed in, "And we have our husbands' full support."
No one is exactly sure when or where tricky trays got their start. However, they were very popular during the ’50s and ’60s when suburbs sprang up across the country. Back then they were called Chinese auctions, perhaps because the game was thought of as secretive and mysterious. Today, the names tricky tray and penny social are used in order to avoid the racial overtones. By any other name, the concept is basically the same. Penny socials are so called because, once upon a time, each ticket cost a penny.
Tricky trays seem to have a special niche for organizations when money is not available to buy supplies. Without money in the budget, the tricky tray fundraiser is the most popular and fun way to raise enough money to buy whatever is needed.
In simplest terms, a tricky tray is where participants buy tickets and place them in containers next to the items they want to win. Once everyone has had an opportunity to put tickets in containers, the drawing and calling for prizes begins. A designated person announces the serial number on the ticket drawn. If the number on a person's ticket matches the ticket drawn, that person wins that particular gift.
The tricky tray fundraiser seems to be the most popular way for cash-strapped organizations to raise enough money to buy whatever is needed.
St. Joseph’s is a small parochial school in Middletown. The principal, Richard Jackson, said that the $3,000 yearly tuition doesn’t cover all the costs of educating the children. So, the school has fundraisers (of one kind or another) throughout the year to help meet some needs. This year, the need is for a few laptops. Jackson turned to his “go-to” person, Teresa Beaver, who is the chairperson of the parents association.
“It takes a lot of work to pull off a tricky tray,” Beaver said. “I’ll group together some parents to form a committee, but if I have a dozen people who volunteer, only three or four will actually do something to pull this off.”
The baskets that are auctioned off are thematically designed. That is to say, the children in each class are assigned special items their parents will either buy or donate for the baskets. For instance, some third-grade classes are assigned cleaning products. The parents will buy cleaning products and the children will bring them to school. Some fourth-graders may be assigned snack foods, and they will bring in only snacks foods, and so on.
The biggest chore is contacting community businesses for donations. This is where putting together a tricky tray can be, well, tricky.
“It’s not easy convincing businesses to give up their products for free,” Beaver said. In the end, however, they all contribute for the sake of a good cause and the publicity that giving brings. St. Joseph’s got dozens of businesses to donate, among them car dealerships, shopping centers, restaurants and clothing, shoe and toy stores.
All the prizes are sorted out and wrapped. It’s a chore that is done over several days and by a select group of people who know how to wrap better than Santa’s elves. Each basket is elegantly cocooned in clear or tinted cellophane so that the items inside are easily seen. Once the ribbons are tied on, the baskets have an aesthetic of their own.
Pakanasink Elementary School, in Circleville, had a different need. Its playground equipment was old, splintered and hornet-infested.
“There was no money in the budget this year for new playground equipment,” said Donna Geidel, the principal of the school. “We’ve had a series of fundraisers to reach our monetary goal, and this (tricky tray) is our fourth one.”
The mechanics of putting the Pakanasink tricky tray together was the same as St. Joseph’s School. However, this one was much larger.
Close to 600 people stood on line to pay a few bucks for their entrance fee and starter tickets. There were literally thousands of gifts, from the dollar prizes in the penny social to the more expensive ones in the tricky tray. Almost 300 businesses and hundreds of parents donated prizes from autographed photos of Don Larsen and Phil Rizzuto to high-end prizes like the electric guitars and cameras.
After 90 minutes, when all the tickets were in the cans, the calling began. As in all tricky trays or penny socials, a person with a microphone picked the winning tickets from the cans for the corresponding prizes. The winning serial numbers were announced. Then, “runners” delivered the prizes (whatever they were) to the winning ticket holders. Both Pakanasink and St. Joseph’s used students as runners. It went on that way for two hours until the last gift was gone.
By the time the smoke cleared and the people were gone, the school netted $10,800 against overhead costs of just $400.
Sometimes, an organization may use another host organization as a venue to raise money for a charitable cause. That's what the Pine Bush Sisters of Hope did to raise money for the American Cancer Society.
The Sisters of Hope held their tricky tray at Pine Bush High School. The fundraiser's organizer, Lois Grossi, said they had over 170 items on the penny table and more than 40 baskets of hope, each filled with themed goods such as Avon products, gardening items, toys and the like.
"We were a little disappointed with the turnout," Grossi said. "Around 100 people showed up. But we are pleased that we made close to $2,000."
Grossi said that two people told her they were going to another tricky tray in Warwick, but saw that the Baskets of Hope penny social was for a good cause and came.
“They won nice baskets, too,” she said.
With so much money generated at these tricky tray/penny social functions, it is reasonable to consider how safe they are.
“We have diligent people floating around to keep an eye on things,” said Geidel. “We’re not worried.” As the principal of her school, Geidel acts as one of those diligent watchers and was often seen scurrying from one place to another during the course of the event. Her biggest problem was a familiar one – stopping the children from running in the hallways.
Beaver, also, did not express any concerns for trouble. She quickly pointed to the school’s burly principal. “He’s security,” she said.
It should also be noted that in both schools, the proceeds were not counted until the last participant was out of the building.
Grossi said that the people who are attracted to tricky trays are basically honest and usally come to the events in families groups. She said they want nothing more than to have a good time.
“Someone lost a wallet with $85 in it at our penny social. It was turned in and the owner retrieved it with every dollar accounted for.”
From the looks of things, people have a good time at tricky trays/penny socials. They spill into schools and churches from distant towns and villages all over the Hudson Valley. And, most of them don’t go home empty-handed.
Tricky trays are viable enterprises that succeed in doing exactly what they were designed to do – make money. Both schools are still a fundraiser away from reaching their financial goals, but of all their fundraisers, the tricky trays each held was the most profitable. As one St. Joseph’s parent put it, “These make more money than the candy our kids sell door-to-door.”
As long as there are charitable causes to champion and financial needs to be met in schools, the tricky tray fundraiser will be around.
