Archives for August 2013

Spend It This Year

What should a booster club do with an unexpected surplus? I attended a booster club meeting this spring where board members discussed this desirable dilemma in the context of their own school’s athletics program.  Some members wanted to save the surplus as a safety. Others wanted to spend the funds on useful items--neither essential nor frivolous--such as tractors to cut grass on athletic fields and netting to protect track athletes from stray lacrosse balls. After listening attentively to … [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...]

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...]

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...]

Contest! Prizes! Booster Club!

Boosterland is giving away $500 and an iPad mini. Here are the details: Spring is the time for booster club scholarships, but now is the time to start thinking about them. We’re hoping our contest gets students working on these types of projects now. Then, in the spring, they can recycle them for scholarships from their local booster clubs. Boosterland is looking for talented teens for our booster club arts contest. We’re awarding $100 prizes in each of the following … [Read more...]

5 Ways to Help Your Booster Club—After the Fundraiser

How do you help a booster club aside from fundraising? If there isn't a fundraiser or a concessions shift open, what are you supposed to do? These 5 tips are for booster club supporters who are not sure how to help. Board members will have no problem finding work for themselves (see #3). But I hope they can pass some of these suggestions on for that volunteer who doesn't have a role yet. 1) Drive Students: I know school budgets often don’t cover transportation. Many clubs end up spending a lot … [Read more...]

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...]

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...]

The Problem with Competition Between Booster Clubs

In sports, competition brings mixed blessings. In fundraising it can bring disaster. Would another booster club “steal” your fundraiser? I've seen booster clubs encroach on existing fundraisers, and it is ugly. In one Northern California town, High School X produced a successful crab feed fundraiser in March. The next year, the booster club from High School Y did a crab feed in February. X and Y were in the same town, in the same school district. There’s nothing wrong with borrowing … [Read more...]

Is Competition Good?

What’s the point of competition in high school sports? What are the teachable moments, and what are the costs? Subjective as the possible answers may be, I've been thinking about the purpose of competition. My interest was sparked by this funny scene in Billy Crystal’s 2012 comedy hit, Parental Guidance. (Click on the image to launch the video). (In the video, Billy Crystal’s grandson is pitching at a little league game. The grandson strikes out the batter, but he’s not “out.” Upon … [Read more...]