5 Ways to Manage Booster Club Grants

Just as there are different kinds of booster clubs and ways to raise funds, there are many ways for booster clubs to distribute grant funds they raise among different groups. I’ve observed numerous clubs take different roads in managing budgets to meet their individual needs. Understanding the five most common modes of funding allocation can help board members choose the system that will best benefit the club, school, and students. 1. Monthly: Booster clubs evaluate requests for funding and … [Read more...]

What Happened to Multi-sport Athletes? (Part 2)

In part one of this post, I questioned the role of specialization in sports. I mentioned that many American parents encourage specialization over well-rounded development in the classroom and on the field. In other parts of the world, it’s not like this. Cedar Attanasio, who helps edit many of the posts on the Boosterland blog, shared this anecdote from his time studying in Hong Kong with Chinese and Cantonese students. “In Cantonese, there’s this term, quan cai, which means ‘well-rounded … [Read more...]

What Happened to Multi-sport Athletes? (Part 1)

Should students play a single sport, or diversify? In this post I discuss the decline of the multi-sport athlete, and the implications for a 21st century workforce. I use sports as an example--but this post applies to other activities as well: theater, orchestra, debate, etc.  I list a few of the assumptions that fuel the single-sport phenomenon, including some that booster clubs may take for granted. In my next post I’ll talk about multi-sport athletes in the past, and how their 20th century … [Read more...]

Does your help hurt?

Creating Dependency In developing countries, aid programs give things and services. They compensate for the state’s shortcomings in education, food, or shelter. I was reminded of this by a Forbes article which highlighted the failures of an NGO in Eastern Europe. By pursuing the classic charity model--giving locals things they didn’t have--the NGO created dependency on their services (mostly clothing and food programs). They choked development. Recognizing this, the NGO switched gears. Instead … [Read more...]