Caller: “SB 1-3-6-9”; Players: “Bingo!”
When I think of charity bingo, I have images of a Parish Hall with volunteers running the game and the parish priest calling out the numbers as parishioners mark their cards and at some point one of the lucky ones shouts “Bingo!”
Bingo came to the United States from Europe in 1929 and was quickly embraced as an inexpensive form of entertainment during the Great Depression. It was about this time that a Catholic priest in Pennsylvania facing diminished offerings to the collection plate began to use Bingo as a way to raise funds for his parish’s charities. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Since that time churches, synagogues and a wide range of charities from the Veterans of Foreign Wars to the Elks Clubs have used Bingo to fund their many and diverse charities. We in the Catholic Church have also used the proceeds to fund our schools and provide scholarships for the less fortunate.