Mark Lazarus, the vice president of Myrtle Beach Grand Prix and Action Amusements in Myrtle Beach, S.C., has perfected the art of spending a little to gain a lot. In his case, he spends $5 per season pass to enlist service organizations, school PTAs, and athletic teams to sell his season passes for him.

It’s a simple enough system: For every season pass that a group sells, Lazarus gives that group $5. It’s a great fund-raiser for the groups, and it has boosted season pass sales tremendously. Lazarus says that he distributes more than $10,000 every year through the program. That’s a lot of season passes.

Lazarus started the program eight years ago, when his park was relatively new and he was looking for an inexpensive way to build his business. “We had to go through the school administration to get approval, and then we were allowed to go to each individual school and lay out the program for them,” he says. “At most of the schools, we do it through the PTA. The PTA distributes the money and they use it to buy computers, classroom supplies, whatever they need.”

Myrtle Beach Grand Prix works mostly with elementary and middle schools. “Their PTAs are more active and for our park, the majority of our season pass holders are from that age group. They are not high-schoolers. But our program is open to anyone—civic clubs, organizations, softball clubs, and lacrosse teams.

“What we do is set the season pass rate and we send a stack of fliers to the school, and they put them in the teachers’ boxes and distribute them to the kids in class to take home. It explains the benefits of the program, and there’s a form. They write the name of their school or organization and send it in with a credit card number or check, or they can call in on the phone. Once it arrives at our place, we keep a file and a running count of how many season passes were sold through the school or organization, and in the spring we write them a check.

“At one time, we color-coded the fliers to the different schools, but that got to be too much,” he says. The park also experimented with having schools sell the actual pass, instead of handing out fliers, but according to Lazarus, “The teachers did not like being responsible for the tickets.”

Myrtle Beach Grand Prix has set up a three-tiered pricing system for season passes. “This year it’s $42.95 plus tax for pre-season sales (through Christmas), then it goes to $52.95 from Christmas until our opening day, and it’s $62.95 after we open,” he says.

The park only offers the fund-raiser to schools in the fall, so buyers get the lowest price as long as they send in their forms by Christmas. “If a group comes to me after Christmas looking for a fund-raiser, they have to sell passes at the $52.95 rate, but they still get the $5 back. I guess the only drawback to the program is that after we first started doing it, the people who bought season passes from us and then learned about it from the schools started buying their passes through the schools instead of getting them straight from us. But we consider that the good PR we get from it is well worth the money we lose.”

The season pass fund-raising program has proved so successful that Lazarus adapted it for groups looking for donations. “We get groups that come in and want a donation for a particular event, and what we do is give them the opportunity to raise the money they’re seeking. I tell them, ‘I won’t give you the money, but I’ll give you the opportunity to earn the donation. I’ll give you a voucher that you can hand out and for every voucher that is redeemed at the gate, I’ll give you $2.’”

Typically, the voucher gives people an incentive to visit the park by offering a reduced price admission. For example, the park gave a teen group organizing a Christian concert vouchers that offered half-price admission on a particular day. “They distributed them everywhere, and they brought in 1,000 people that day. They got $2,000 for their cause, and they had a good time.“It helps bring in people who maybe would not have come to our business, and those people may become season pass holders, or at least, come back another time.”

At this point, Lazarus says, the season-pass program has accomplished its goal. “We’ve built a base of customers now over the years and I guess we could stop, but we see it as a community thing. It’s a way for us to contribute to the community and be a good supporter of education. And with the budget constraints these days in the schools and the teachers needing supplies for their classrooms, it really helps them out. And it’s a great PR tool for us.”
—Frank Elliott