When there are multiple booster clubs being represented within a single school, it’s easy to understand why raising money might feel like an upward battle. It isn’t always easy when booster clubs tend to be placed side by side, hoping that community members will support your club over, or in addition to other booster clubs. Between sports teams, drama departments, music groups, and art programs, the number of possible booster clubs a community can help is endless. In a lot of cases all of the clubs end up trying to earn funding for their organization at the same time from the same sources. Before long, sustaining booster club funding starts to become more and more difficult. Instead of going through the fundraiser season with booster club competition, follow these Booostr.co ideas to turn it into a win win win when you coordinate booster club fundraising in your community.
Coordinate Booster Club Fundraising Schedules
One of the easiest ways to stay away from booster club competition is to coordinate booster club fundraising schedules. When your booster club sets up events or booths without double-checking on what other school booster clubs are doing, you run the risk of double, triple booking or worse! It is not the end of the world if two or three clubs are running activities at community sporting or holiday events, but if you are running a larger fundraiser that targets larger donation amounts – it can get tricky and even disastrous.
Determine what is on the agenda for each of your school’s booster clubs by creating a central calendar or communication system for all booster clubs. What does each group have in mind for fundraising ideas and when do they plan on taking action with it? Organize the sporting, music concerts or other larger types of events that can sustain having multiple booster club activities on site. Then use those larger eventsto coordinate booster club fundraising between all groups that are fundraising at that time of year. In addition schedule out each clubs major fundraising events throughout the quarter or semester to help ensure less overlap. In the event that there has to be two fundraising events on the same day, see if you can schedule them at different times of the day to make sure they are both successful.
When you coordinate booster club fundraising , keep in mind those decisions depend on what fundraising options the booster clubs plan on bringing to the table. By coordination schedules, not only do you keep from stepping on each other’s toes, but each club is able to meet their fundraising goals.
Collaborate With Other Booster Clubs On Special Occasions
Making sure that booster clubs stay separate and out of each other’s way is a good way to decrease booster club competition. This strategy works well for a lot of general fundraiser ideas; however, there are plenty of times when collaboration makes booster club life much easier all around.
Special holidays or community events might call for a very large and intricate fundraising idea, larger than what can be done by a single booster club alone. There’s only so much a dozen or so volunteers can do in a limited time span. It’s times like these where teaming up with one or multiple booster clubs can be very handy! By combining multiple booster clubs, more hands are on deck to iron out the finer details, a vast pool of family and friends are contacted to participate, and it’s a chance to grow bonds that might not otherwise have the chance. The results in many cases might be better than striking out on your own, even after the clubs split the proceeds!
Coordinate Booster Club Fundraising by Targeting Geography and Interest
Setting up a booster club to sell items or host an event to raise money is important and takes a lot of time and effort, but it’s only half the battle. The other half is to make your fundraising events appealing and relevant enough that to garner support through funding by the community. More often than not, your organization will hope that the right audience will happen by with a stroke of luck, eager to take part in the festivities. But your program isn’t the only one doing this. Before you know it, multiple booster clubs are targeting the same audience at the same time and you have a booster club competition on your hands! That doesn’t help your booster club or any other booster club that is also trying to meet their funding goals.
This is where it makes sense to target specific people by geography and their specific interests. Taking the extra time to tailor booster club fundraising events around interests or for a specific neighborhood will help booster clubs work around each other seamlessly.
Targeting Booster Club Supporters By Geography
How does this work with geography? Most towns and cities have multiple cultural backgrounds and districts that can be leveraged for a specific fundraiser that resonates with that neighborhood. If your community has an arts district, you can run an art related fundraiser. If your town has a strong agriculture focus, create a fundraiser around that agriculture item. There are plenty of booster club fundraising options within your community when you start to look a little deeper.
Targeting Booster Club Supporters By Interest
Targeting interests is even easier than geography in some cases. Stadiums, universities, and specialty store are examples of specific venues that can be targeted in order to reach specific target within your community. Take stadiums into consideration. They usually have a multitude of events happening all the time. This provides multiple great opportunities to focus on specific short engagement events with an audience defined by that event. They often host fans from two specific cities or schools or fans of a specific music genre that is heavy in one demographic. Reaching out as a nonprofit booster club, the stadium / event center or event promoter is usually more than willing to allow your booth for free as a way of supporting the community.
As you can see, communities that have a large booster club presence might have quite a few times that fundraising activities overlapped and goals were missed. Through booster club coordination and studying the makeup of your community, alot of the competition that occurs can be easily avoided. If you run or support a local booster club, consider taking the lead and organizing a calendar or communication chain between all of the booster clubs to ensure that this year’s fundraising efforts are a win win win for all!
