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Maximize Your Booster Club
Tips to excite your boosters about fundraising,
helping your program succeed
Big-Time Boosters
- Well-run, well-attended booster clubs make a huge difference
for some football programs.
Innovative Fundraising Ideas
- Here are some fundraising ideas your booster
club can consider to raise anywhere from a little to a lot of
money to support the football program. |
Fundraising. Lots of wins. New equipment.
Playing time. Coaches and booster clubs have lots of things on their
respective agendas and rely on each other to make them happen. For
one side or the other, some aspects of the experience may be a bit
distasteful. For some coaches, fundraising is a chore that distracts
from team preparation. For some boosters, you can never win enough
games.
Yet few successful high school football teams are built without
great coaches and great boosters working in tandem. While most would
agree that winning is the best way to excite the boosters, every
team cant win every game. You want to build a relationship
with your boosters based on mutual respect and teamwork, and building
on the tradition of the football program.
1. Involve your boosters in the culture of your program
All of the coaches with successful booster clubs we spoke to outline
their philosophies to the booster club and involve them in the daily
routine of the football program in a significant, meaningful yet
non-intrusive way.
The result is boosters understand their support role and work as
a team to raise the funds and provide the support needed to complement
the program. None of the coaches we spoke with do a great deal of
fundraising themselves, yet their boosters bring in substantial
amounts of money because theyre vested in the program; they
feel a strong sense of ownership.
2. Give your boosters a feeling of ownership
Once you establish the boundaries for your boosters, based on philosophies,
and sell them on the team concept its not about playing
time for any one player - grant them a sense of ownership in your
program.
Make sure your boosters can always communicate openly and honestly
with you about the program. Everyone wants their son to play more,
but coaches are less likely to hear those complaints when your boosters
are fully involved as a team united behind your team.
Allow them to participate in team meals, or help you set-up or host
team events where everyone players, coaches, boosters and
other friends of the program participate.
Make sure they know where their efforts and money
are going. If you can separate booster clubs by sport, more parents
are likely to get involved to support their son. If you cant,
make sure boosters know what they can do to specifically benefit
football.
3. Set ambitious goals and articulate them to your boosters
Boosters with a sense of ownership in your program will be eager
to help you get what you need for success. Tell your boosters what
you need based on realistic goals for your program,
and listen to their ideas on how to raise the money.
Schools we spoke with used casino nights, golf tournaments, local
discount cards and program book sales to raise money. More importantly,
the boosters we spoke to made their ambitious ideas for how to raise
money for the football program into reality by working hard and
working together.
4. Involve your players at all levels
Boosters are program supporters who start off as son supporters.
When they see the team concepts ancillary benefits for their
son not playing time, but leadership skills, personal growth
and pride their excitement for your program increases.
Most schools we talked to mandate the players understand the importance
of fundraising and get involved. Hoover High requires each student
to sell a page of the game program a 320-page program. Others
involve the players in fundraising projects and make sure they understand
the results new equipment, new uniforms, team dinners.
Player involvement brings them closer to their parents and, more
importantly, when your players believe in the team concept and working
together for common goals, on and off the field, you have an advocate
in the house of every booster whose also a parent.
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