The Calgary Dino’s football program has its 27th annual “Fifth Quarter Association” fundraising dinner tonight featuring guest speaker Duane Forde. Over the past five years the event has raised anywhere from $225 000 to $325 000 for the football program. President of the association Harry Anderson is hoping for a similar result from this years dinner. But the real hope of the association is to ‘raise the bar’ to the Laval level.
The Dino football team largely relies on corporate and alumni support to run the program in the amount of approximately 1 million dollars annually. The fifth quarter association contributes to a ‘scholarship’ endowment fund and a ‘operating cost’ endowment fund.
Harry Anderson told the Calgary Herald that it was hard to compare Laval and Calgary. “Every dollar that comes into that program goes out in terms of spending (Laval) and that’s not how the Fifth Quarter works. We endow significant portions of the money we raise … so it’s not just there for one year, it’s there for years after that.”
Anderson claims and endowment minimum of $10 million is required to begin competing with Laval money.
Head Coach Blake Nill thinks they can be at Laval’s level noting it was one of the reasons he took the Calgary job. Nill claims zero full time assistant coaches compared to Laval’s 5 full time assistant coaches. “The cost of running an elite program is difficult and the funding is generally not what’s needed.”
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