The Poplar Bluff Technical Career Center will be hosting a Car & Motor Show this Saturday with the goal of starting a foundation to benefit the Center and it's students.
TCC Director Charles Kinsey said the goal is to run the car show for a couple years while working on setting up a 501(c)(3) foundation with a focus on getting new supplies for programs or funding trips to conventions.
The thought for the foundation came up when automotive instructor Denni White approached Kinsey about wanting to take his students to SEMA Show in Las Vegas, which is an event that features some of the premier automotive products and techniques in the world. White told him the students could compete there and learn about some new tools coming into the market. However, Kinsey had to tell him TCC didn't have the money to send a handful of students and a teacher to Vegas.
“None of that's available to us because we don't have funds for that,” White said. “The first event that I thought we could put together was a car show.”
Kinsey said they started looking at a way to have a process and a pathway outside of the school's money revenues to offer those kinds of opportunities. Once the foundation is up and running, Kinsey said it would also consider new equipment such as welding helmets that students may need or benefit from. In the long run, he said it could also look at offering students scholarships to continue their education past what TCC can offer them.
However, in the moment, Kinsey and White are focused on making the car show a success that can start bringing in some money for these efforts.
Kinsey said the reason a car show is the first project is because some of the teachers most invested in the overall goal were car people, but he'd also seen research that car shows can bring in a decent amount of money.
“There's some models of success across the state at other career centers that have car shows to supplement what they have going on at their facilities,” he said. “There's some models where people are raising in $20,000-$40,000 a year on these. I can see when it's 10 years down the road, it being a major activity that's going to draw in a lot of people.”
Kinsey said so far this year through the sponsors, they've already brought in about $5,000, which he said is good for a first year.
The event will be held in the high school parking lot so it can also serve as a way to bring people into TCC and see what's going on at the Center. White said TCC has gone through something of a re-branding over recent years, not in the name but in what's being offered and how it's being taught.
To reflect that, most of the departments in TCC will be contributing to the show in some ways. Concessions will be made and sold by the culinary students, the cosmetology department will be offering face painting, White's students will be showing some of the cars they've worked on and the graphic arts students are making T-shirts.
“Every year we're going to grow is the plan,” Kinsey said. “As we fill up the parking lot, we'll have the opportunity to show every field, even if it doesn't necessarily meet the auto fields.”
White said the show is open to more than just cars, but rather anything with a motor that people want to show off.
“We're not trying to do a regular car show,” White said. “We want anything with a motor. If it's a car, if it's a boat, side by sides are real big, four wheelers are real big, even if it's a tractor. Really that's what we want; anything that somebody might be interested in. Car shows are a lot of the same people and a lot of the same things. We want to get a lot of different interests. It's a little more exciting.”
Kinsey said the goal with the foundation and TCC as a whole is to make it not reliant on the administration that's currently in place because over the years that's going to change. While the foundation is still theoretical, he wants to make something sustainable.
“If we set that up well, it will carry itself on perpetually no matter who the students are or who the teachers are,” he said. “It'll be something that'll just be done. That takes a lot of leg work and a lot of foundation to build rather than just slapping a car show together.”