The A+ Scholar Wine & Food Tasting Extravaganza has gone over the committee’s expectations and sold 702 tickets, yielding a little over $30,000 for scholarships.
According to David Boudreaux, vice president for institutional advancement, the event was a great success in terms of the number of tickets sold, the participation of the patrons and the generosity of the food and wine vendors and the band. Boudreaux said the A+ committee set a base goal of selling 600 tickets.
“The A+ Scholar Wine & Food Tasting Extravaganza was a great success. It was beyond our expectations. I think everyone had an excellent time,” Boudreaux said.
Twenty vendors attended the A+ Scholar Wine & Food Tasting Extravaganza event this year.
“I enjoyed the food and loved both the live and silent auctions. This event provides a great opportunity to meet and greet a large number of people,” Gary Palmer, of Charter Media, said. “This event is for a great cause, and a big hand goes out to Dr. Boudreaux for helping to put on the event, however it is the recipients of the scholarships who are the big winners.”
According to Boudreaux, there are some commitments that have still not come in, the auction sales are being totaled, and so far the event has just surpassed $30,000, which was the goal.
“I am very pleased with that because I know a lot of people worked hard, and it is very positive,” Boudreaux said.
Boudreaux said he does not know how many scholarships they will be rewarding until the people in scholarships make their request. He said they will definitely be able to award the same number as the previous year and a few additional ones because of the departments who came on as gold sponsors for the event.
“We will look at the dollar values we have and the request and do our best to honor it,” Boudreaux said.
The departments who came on as gold sponsors were: College of Business Administration, College of Education, Department of Biological Sciences, Department of Family, Consumer and Agricultural Sciences, Department of Languages and Literature and the Department of Nursing.
Boudreaux said both the live and silent auctions went well and had great participation. He said the live auction brought in $6,000 and the silent auction brought in $5379. Boudreaux attributes most of the programs financial success to George and Shirley Picou. He said they have been generous supporters of A+ by donating most of the items auctioned off and helping to find additional items.
“The tremendous turnout for the program shows the public supports the University; there was good food, good wine, and a good time was had by all.” Gene Reichard, auctioneer, said.” I have been the auctioneer for all the A+ Scholars and I can not remember a bigger turnout. A ‘thank you’ should go out to Norm Swarner for starting this event eight years ago.”
According to Boudreaux, distinct items in the live auction that sold for a good price were the luxury suite for the Hornets’ home basketball game, a package of sixteen tickets in the suite, went for $2,000, the fishing trip for three at the Cajun Resort outside of Golden Meadow went for $1000, and the Windsor Court overnight stay went for more than $700.
Boudreaux said he really enjoyed the live auction, but his favorite part was greeting the University’s supporters who enjoy the event and help get additional support for the next year’s event. He said it is great to have supporters and the goodness of the people is overwhelming.
“This was my first A+ event. It was a combination of great fun with the mix of the silent and live auction, the interesting food and wines and a mixture of great company,” Stephen Hulbert, University President, said. “This provided me with an opportunity to meet many people from the Nicholls community I have not met. I enjoyed the event. It is a nice way to raise dollars for student scholarships and give people a fun evening at the same time.”