What Does Boosterland Share from Board Meetings?

Behind the Scenes

Visitors Parking Spot PhotoOver the past several months I have visited dozens of high school booster clubs. Most have strong web presences, and list the dates of their open meetings. Boosterland has also benefited from many phone calls with booster club officers across the country.  Although we started contacting booster clubs that were easy to find online, we welcome invitations from those who are just starting out or don’t have a strong web presence.

Just a Fly on the Wall

When I visit a meeting, I try to be non-intrusive. Your time with fellow board members is scarce, and I respect that. I don’t interrupt meeting agendas. I don’t hand out flyers or make a pitch about Boosterland. I do briefly introduce myself at the beginning of meetings. If asked, I gladly share insights gleaned from speaking with other clubs. Board members often find an outside perspective helpful, especially for agenda items that haven’t come up in that club before. With permission from the President, I’ll keep a copy of the agenda or handouts from the meeting for my research. In addition, some treasurers have volunteered budgets and revenue details, which help me understand the mechanics and priorities of the different clubs. After meetings are adjourned, there’s usually a handful of board members who stick around to discuss booster club strategies with me.

Share With Others and Stay Transparent

Boosterland is thankful to clubs for opening their meetings to the community. In return, we make sure lessons learned from these meetings don’t get swallowed up in a personal vault. It’s our responsibility to share what we learn with other booster clubs through the Boosterland blog. We’re also committed to keeping the blog free. The larger our population of readers, the more we can build on solutions that no individual or club would come up with in isolation. By sharing the experience of individual clubs, we can help others build on stories of success. We hope these lessons prevent booster clubs from repeating each other’s mistakes, while enabling clubs to try new things. In this way, Boosterland works with individual clubs to increase information, decrease the cost of improving ideas, and lower the risks of trying new ideas.

Not A Watchdog

As volunteers, you may not always be aware of some of the laws that govern how your club operates. There’s all kinds of legal fine print about how booster clubs are expected to operate, much of which we discuss on our blog.  However I am neither a lawyer nor a cop, and I’m not writing exposés.  When I learn about legally or ethically questionable practices, it is NOT my role to report/expose your club for any of these things.  I have the same primary goal that you do: provide young adults with opportunities that lead to well rounded learning.

Respect Anonymity and Authorship

In most cases, I can share valuable information without using names of individuals or club names. Character descriptions and quotes on Boosterland come from actual people. Tips in blog posts combine multiple perspectives, ideas aggregated from advice we’ve gathered from many booster clubs. Unless the information is already published or on the web, I’ll ask permission before I name a club or publish a quote with an attribution.

Thank You for reading and sharing on Boosterland. If you have any questions or suggestions about our sharing philosophy, or would like to invite us to a board meeting, please drop me a line. You can also contact me if you want me to remove links, update a dead link, or edit an attribution.

 

 

 

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