West Rowan Middle School Bands

We need your help. My name is Anissa Winn, I started the West Rowan Middle School Band booster club 2 years ago by passing a hat around and collecting $26. At the beginning of this school year, we had raised $6,500. We had an awesome first 2 years. This year we decided to offer an out of town trip to our 7th and 8th grade band to compete and a carowinds trip/competition for the 6th grade. We added fundraisers each month so parents could raise the money to go instead of having the extra cost. Most of them raised everything they needed for the trip to pay for the 3 day event to Williamsburg, VA, the bus and the hotel. As of last Sunday, I became aware that our bank account was missing money. As I write to you, our Treasurer, who we all befriended as a loyal parent, has been arrested for embezzling funds and has drained our account. Come to find out, she never even deposited the cash that was supposed to go in the bank all year.  We even had to cancel a major fundraiser scheduled for Feb because the deposit was never made.

Here we sit with a check due for our event for $9,000 and a bill from our Nov fundraiser for $714 that was never paid. We also have to pay for the hotel and bus, which the deposits for this are now gone.  The bus payment will be $2,784, and the hotel bill will be $3800. We are very sad that we were taken advantage of but have made all necessary actions to secure our accounts, emails and all access to our monies. If you can find it in your heart to help us out in any way, you are helping children continue to engage in music, get exposure to competition, and also help give the parents that have worked so hard to raise these funds a relief. Thank you for supporting our Band!