YouTube makes sharing video easy. Creating a YouTube account for your club, you can help showcase the work of participants, benefactors, and volunteers. Filming, editing, and posting videos takes time and energy but there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit -- simple videos that booster clubs can make. What’s great about YouTube is what’s great about online video in general. Ditto for what’s not so great. PROs Easy to digest. Videos grab attention in a way that an 800 word blog post with … [Read more...]
posted on February 14, 2014 by
30 Things to Tweet your Booster Club
You understand Twitter, you want to make it a part of your booster club's social media strategy, but you're hitting some writers block? Don't dismay, we've got a huge list of things to post. Photos of your participants doing things Rainouts Photos of sponsors and/or their business Playoff schedule Arch rival updates Articles about your club in the local paper or segments on local television Photos of volunteers doing things Updates on alumni (Did they get a music scholarship? … [Read more...]
posted on January 30, 2014 by
Statistics Show, Volunteers Get The Jobs
Despite falling unemployment rates, the job market in the U.S. still looks bleak for many. Some attribute this to high numbers of “discouraged workers” — those recently out of work who have, for whatever reason, temporarily given up on finding a new job. Disheartening as this may be, it presents a valuable opportunity for your booster club and the “discouraged” (or the recently retired, on maternity leave, changing careers, going back to school) to work together for mutual gain. In a recent … [Read more...]
posted on October 14, 2013 by
How to Write Booster Club Bylaws Like a Founding Father
If you’re drafting a set of bylaws for the first time, don’t worry. Anyone who’s taken a high school civics class or worked for an institution intuitively understands bylaws. Like the U.S. constitution or an employee handbook, bylaws enumerate rights and responsibilities. The process of writing bylaws is like a structured conversation about what those responsibilities should be and how the club should conduct business. How to structure bylaws and what to include will vary depending on the club. … [Read more...]
posted on September 24, 2013 by
11 Life Lessons of Theater
If “All the world's a stage, / And all the men and women merely players,” then there’s no better place to prepare for life than in the theater. I made this list of 11 theater lessons as a reminder of how much performance art can help the development of our young people. This post, like my 31 Life Lessons of Sports post, is designed to help booster club leaders articulate the value of extracurriculars. Sometimes we forget why we toil to support programs. Even when we do, it’s hard to articulate … [Read more...]
posted on September 23, 2013 by
You Do Not Have It Covered: 20 Tasks for Volunteers
Sometimes a volunteer catches you flat footed. “You guys need anything? Can I help out?” There’s certainly a lot that you, a booster club leader, need to do. You could use some help. To-do lists are so tightly spooled in your head it feels like they’re going to start fluttering out. Yet it feels like more effort to train this volunteer than to do things yourself. You’re tempted to tell them that you have it covered, or that there’s nothing small enough for them to take on. Don’t give in. Do … [Read more...]
posted on August 26, 2013 by
Booster Club Officers
Chairperson? Officer? Here are booster club board member responsibilities. In this post, I take a look at the most basic and most specialized booster club officer positions. Maybe you are starting a booster club and you’re asking yourself “how many officers do I need?” Maybe you are joining a booster club, and you’re asking yourself “what do all of those titles mean?” Think of the booster club officer positions less as people and more as collections of responsibilities and skill-sets. They need … [Read more...]
posted on August 22, 2013 by
Kill Bad Fundraisers
Sometimes fundraisers stop generating value. Good booster clubs must know when to kill them. Behind the Ben and Jerry’s ice cream factory lies a peaceful graveyard of discontinued flavors. Marked by grey headstones, they sit memorialized on a windswept carpet of fallen leaves. These ideas were put to rest after they ran their course, buried but remembered. For Ben and Jerry’s, the graveyard’s humor suits their quirky brand image, a kind of anti-corporate, self-deprecating humor engraved in the … [Read more...]
posted on August 15, 2013 by
How Good Record-Keeping Saves Nonprofits from High-Turnover
Watching the 2000 film Memento again, I realized that high-turnover volunteer organizations such as booster clubs suffer from serious amnesia. In the film, 30-something Leonard can’t create new memories because of brain trauma suffered during an assault. Imagine a person who can’t remember the lessons of the past, or the opportunities set to present themselves in the future. Lacking a system of good record-keeping, that’s the situation of most booster clubs. In Memento, Leonard compensates for … [Read more...]
posted on August 13, 2013 by
Robert’s Rules of Order for Booster Clubs
Why Most Meetings Suck... ... And How Robert Can Help Open the unabridged Robert’s Rules of Order (RRO) and you might feel intimidated. With 75 sections and over 600 pages, it’s a monster. Written in the 1870s by a general named Henry Robert, it’s a time-tested tome of organization and efficiency. It’s kind of like the dictionary of meetings. But like a dictionary, you don’t have to memorize every definition to be conversant in this language of efficiency. Also like a dictionary, you’ll never … [Read more...]
