Each year, the Sacramento Region Community Foundation helps local nonprofits raise money to support their programs and advance their missions during a 24-hour event, known as the Big Day of Giving. All participating nonprofit organizations are eligible to compete for prizes that may boost the size of a gift, making the donors’ generosity more impactful. The Mandarins participates in this event each year.
The Mandarins offers three performing arts programs which are available to interested students and young people, ranging from first grade students to college:
- Mandarins Drum and Bugle Corps is the flagship and remains the most well-known of the programs for young people age 16 through 21 years of age. Every summer, our Drum Corps presents an original musical piece combined with a highly choreographed show performed in a stadium environment. In June, the Corps begins an intense summer tour, performing before thousands of appreciative fans in California and throughout the United States, appearing in such prestigious locations as Lucas Oil Stadium (Indianapolis), the Alamodome (San Antonio), and the Mercedes-Benz Stadium (Atlanta). In 2018 and again in 2019, Mandarins Drum and Bugle Corps became a Top 12 World Class drum corps, earning a 10th-place finish at the DCI World Championship Finals and was featured nationwide in the “Big, Loud, and Live” presentation at selected movie theaters across the United States.
- Mandarins Academy is a series of instructional weekend sessions focused on raising the performance level of students in middle/high school and college. Instruction in brass, woodwinds, color guard, percussion and/or drum majors is offered. Mandarins Academy partners with the Sac State School of Music to help strengthen local band programs and provide music directors with an additional instructional environment where students focus on individual and specific performance techniques. The program is complementary and supportive of band programs in the Northern California and Northern Nevada regions.
- Mandarins Music Academy was created in 2015 in response to the loss of music programs in local schools throughout the Sacramento region. It is an after-school beginning music program for elementary school students and is offered at elementary schools which do not have music as part of their core curriculum. Beginning with just one school and eleven students in the 2015/16 school year, the program has now grown to fifteen schools and 250 students in the 2019/20 school year. Mandarins Music Academy now offers beginning band to grades four through six and beginning choir to first to sixth graders. Each semester, the students give a concert showcasing what they have learned. Each student also has the opportunity to play/sing in our Honor Band, in exciting venues such as the DCI Capital Classic Drum Corps Show in June. The Mandarins charges a nominal tuition and a sliding scale and a scholarship program for students who want to learn but whose parents are not able to afford the tuition.
The Mandarins’ annual operating budget for these programs exceeds one million dollars! While some of these needed funds are raised through member and tour fees, paid music gigs, workshop and camp fees, tuition, bingo revenue, sponsorships and grants each year, the Mandarins relies on generous and ongoing individual and/or business donations in order to continue to offer our programs to interested students and performers at a price they can afford.
Please consider supporting our programs by making a donation on the Big Day of Giving on May 7. Or if you would prefer, your donation can be scheduled now and will fund on the Big Day of Giving on Thursday, May 7. No gift is too small. One hundred percent of every donation received is used to directly support the children and young adults enrolled in these programs; In other words, “It’s All for the Kids!” We thank you for your support.
