BINGO! LULAC Council 10 reaches endowment goal

On Friday nights in west Davenport, as many as 150 people gather for bingo at the LULAC Center. The games are lively, the big jackpots draw regulars and “bingo jumpers,” and volunteers keep everything moving.

Proceeds from those Friday night bingo games are an investment in the future. Week by week, they help LULAC Council 10 build an endowment at the Quad Cities Community Foundation. The endowment recently reached a goal that will sustain the scholarship program for future years to come.

“This is a true milestone for our organization,” said Michael Reyes, a longtime LULAC Council 10 member and leader. “It’s a testament to the vision of our founders and the strength and generosity of our community.”

Council 10 is the Davenport, Iowa Council of the national League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC); it was founded in 1959 and is currently the largest council in the country in terms of membership. LULAC’s mission is to advance the economic condition, educational attainment, political influence, health, and civil rights of the Hispanic community. Council 10’s prioritizes educational attainment.  The endowment and the scholarships it support are essential to that mission.

“We’re a civil rights organization, and we know that education is a great equalizer,” said Reyes. “Education opens doors for young people. We want that to be the legacy of this organization.”

That vision dates back to the Council’s earliest days. It established an annual scholarship program in the 1970s and has since awarded more than 1,300 scholarships totaling more than $850,000 to local Quad Cities students. The scholarships are part of a broader commitment to helping young people pursue education, build careers, and strengthen their communities.

“Our leaders recognized that we needed a way to make sure these scholarships remained sustainable,” said Reyes. “We met with the Community Foundation. They helped us organize the fund and set a goal for what we’d need to maintain the fund and support the awards.”  

Reaching that goal took patience and consistency. Golf outings, bingo, trivia nights, and other fundraising outlets became the engine. Such long-term thinking guides much of Council 10’s work. The council is also developing Latino leaders through its multiyear LIDERAMOS leadership development program, now entering its fourth cohort. The Community Foundation provided grant opportunities to Council 10 to plan for a pilot program and subsequent cohorts . The goal is not only to prepare the next generation of leaders within LULAC, but throughout the community.

Reyes said that together, the development program, the scholarships, and the endowment reflect the vision of the council’s founders, many of whom were blue-collar workers who understood the power of opportunity and wanted to create something that would outlast them. “They wanted to leave a legacy,” he said. “They wanted growth for our community.”