Pittsfield Cleanup Day: RCS and interested members are invited to join our crew cleaning up the area around the board office.  Downtown Pittsfield, Inc.’s Annual Downtown Pittsfield Spring Cleanup will be held on Friday, May 17, 12 to 3 pm. Each individual/team should make sure they bring gloves, water, rakes, and brooms.  Registration deadline is Wednesday, May 1, 2024. T-shirts, if you don’t have them, displaying BershireRealtors will be available for participants.  Please email Sandy@BerkshireRealtors.org to sign-up!

Join the battle to raise funds for great causes in Berkshire County!

Coming up, the REALTOR Community Service Committee is preparing for our annual Battle of the Bartenders fundraising extravaganza, with locations throughout the Berkshires!  We hope you will start planning on ways to participate!  We have Proprietor’s Lodge set for Thursday, May 23^rd  in Pittsfield and are working with the new Common Pub (formerly Brickhouse) in Housatonic for the Thursday before (tentatively).  We are still working on the final details for the north event, but hoping for Thursday, May 30^th.  We do want to get our teams ready to roll though…

Team Information: Teams by May 1st if possible to leave lots of promo time!

• Every team can have 2 Realtors minimum and can also have 1 affiliate member for no more than 3 behind the bar at any time.
• We will draw teams live on Facebook May 2nd to determine the order that you can select your timeslot.  Some regions will have ½ hour slots, others up to 1 hour, depending on the number of teams interested.

What we need from each team? Only two little things!

1. We need a photo of team members… either together or separately, that we can use in promotion.
2. We also would like a fun team name to promote as well. We will of course mention your real names and company affiliation in the promotion. Last year we had The Hot Shots and The Boozy Brokers lol. If you were part last year, you are welcome to reuse your team name!

We are incredibly excited about this event. We’ve heard about team shirts, specialty drinks, team raffles, party giveaways… this is sounding like it’s going to be SO MUCH FUN while supporting great causes.  We’ve had a lot of questions since this is a new experience for some teams.  Here are the basics of this wildly fun event!

• During your shift, you will be behind the bar making drinks and earning tips for the charity. There will be a staff bartender on hand to assist and handle the money. They are in charge!
• You can raise funds in advance if you are so inclined, but everything needs to be in your tip jar by the end of your shift to be tallied into your total count (or given to staff in advance)
• All teams are welcome to invite one affiliate to participate with them to boost tips and make this an inclusive board event. We have affiliates that are joining teams to help!
• You can get creative with your teammate and office mates to generate fun and money during your shift.
• If you are promoting a specialty team drink, any unusual ingredients need to be planned for in advance and brought with you (talk to staff, so we can advise the bar). This is not common!

Finance Details:

• We love cash and checks for donations… there will not be credit card donations taken that night.
• We have created a Board Venmo account, but please know that this is a business account and there is a Venmo transaction fee of 1.9%+$0.10 that will be deducted from the donation before tally.
• Alternatively, you can have people send you money to your personal Venmo account if interested, but you will need to write a check at the end of your shift for the donations collected. We will have a sign out with our QR Code but you can remove that sign if using your own.
• Donations are not tax deductible UNLESS a check is made out to the charity directly for tax purposes. (We still count direct donations in your total as long as we collect the checks)

FYI – Guests who attend will pay the bar their tab in the usual manner and also can order food if desired.  The bar/restaurant will retain all money for drinks and food, we only retain a tip at the bar … and a % of sales the host has offered us. The host can make that donation directly to the charity for tax purposes.