The Athens Rotary Club is going to drawdown on someone.

Although this might sound like a pistols-at-dawn kind of thing, it’s nothing that unfriendly.

A “drawdown” is a sort of ticket musical chairs in which the person holding the last number on the board goes home $5,000 richer. It’s also a way for Rotary to fund scholarships to Athens State University and make donations to local charities.

Fund-raising Chairman Jackie Greenhaw and his committee launched the event Friday by distributing two tickets to each Rotary member with instructions to either purchase the tickets for $100 each or sell them.

The return on their money is a prime rib dinner at the Athens Senior Center Dec. 14. The evening will also include a silent auction and live auction. Members are being asked to donate a gift for the silent auction. The live auction will feature large donated items.

Former Athens State coach Larry Keenum will be the master of ceremonies for the event, which begins at 6:30 p.m., and coat and tie are optional. The silent auction will be closed at 9 p.m.

The drawdown employs a large board on which numbers corresponding to those on tickets are displayed. Over a period of time, Keenum will pull tickets from a spinning wire basket and call out the number. That number will then be removed from the board. The holder of the last ticket number on the board wins the $5,000 cash grand prize.

Working up to the grand prize there will be a few lesser prizes given away throughout the evening, according to committee member Cary Payne.

“Right now, the Rotary Board has one fund-raiser, and that is selling chicken stew at the Fiddlers Convention, but we’ve been looking around for something where there could be more community participation,” said Payne.

“We were looking for a good fund-raiser and thought this might be it,” said Greenhaw.

In the past, Rotary has made donations to such organizations as Boys and Girls Club, Boys State and Girls State, and Camp ASCA. Rotary member Martha Jo Leonard said that requests for donations are carefully considered by the organization and there are no set recipients every year.

For more information on purchasing a ticket, to make a donation to the auctions, call Greenhaw at 232-6643.