School will open in weeks and now is the time that Booster Club organizations everywhere are planning for the kick off of their respective seasons. With these trying economic conditions, Booster Clubs will need to become more creative than ever in their fundraising efforts. Local businesses and individual families may not be able to contribute to your budget as they have in seasons past. The monies are just not available so now is the time to look at other options to fund the requirements of your club.
While in the past it may have been easier and monies were more readily available to purchase items needed for your student athletes, things have changed dramatically. There are more and more non-profit organizations, such as Booster Clubs, competing for the limited donations available. You need to think about how your request for financial contributions will actually benefit those you are soliciting. For example, if you ask for ads in a booster club program, you need to be able to tell them how many programs are purchased throughout the season. If you are asking for $200 for a full-page ad, be prepared to tell the advertiser what the circulation is during an entire season. Your attempts to find donation dollars must be treated as a business proposition, no longer a community service expectation. If your football team draws 500 fans per game and there are 5 home games a year, their advertisement is reaching more than 2500 potential customers. Plus many families purchase only 1 program but are read by multiple family members so more than 2500 people will have visibility to their advertisement. So a $200 donation costs less than one cent per view. Those types of numbers can be most persuasive as you ask for advertising dollars.
Also, think outside the box on how you can raise funds for your organization besides straight requests for donations. In our towns, the student athletes actually spend a weekend outside local stores doing a coin drive. Wearing their uniform jerseys or other identifying apparel, they have cans clearly marked with the booster club name for collection of spare change. They hand out team schedules for receipts. Our musical booster club took it one step further with some members playing an instrument or members singing acapella. These “begging for money” fundraisers could raise over $1000 in one weekend and are fun for the kids and painless for the donors. Just make sure you get permission from both your town and the merchants who will be allowing solicitations in front of their businesses. Also make sure you enlist lots of fellow parents to help you oversee this project.
There are many other creative ideas for funding your booster club budget as well as creating great team spirit at Celebration Ideas Online.
Carol is married with four grown children whose family loves to celebrate everything! She works full-time as an account executive. Carol has been active with the kids and all their activities over the years. She served as a PTA President as well as President of numerous school booster clubs and sat on both school advisory boards as well as scholarship selection committees. Her favorite hobby now that the kids are all on their own or off to college is her web site: Celebration Ideas Online. It was started as an album of family celebrations and has since developed into a resource center for anyone looking for celebration ideas. Her site also has good advice on the celebrating the college search and application process, developing Booster Club ideas and making GREAT college care packages. Visit www.celebrationideasonline.com/index.html. and start creating your own terrific family celebrations and traditions.