BoosterHub

Booster Club Alumni Are a Gold Mine for Fundraising

One critical part of your booster club’s success is maximizing your audience for fundraising. A great way to do this is by leveraging club alumni. Alumni are a defined audience already familiar with what you are doing and passionate about your activity.

You should make a point to not only communicate with them but seek their support and even lean on them for booster club fundraiser ideas. Here are a few ways you can make the most of your alumni network:

Keep a List

Like most things with a booster club, staying organized with your alumni list is important. Task one person with keeping a list that includes updated contact information and is refreshed every year.

Adding one more thing to your administrative duties may seem like a burden, but keeping a current alumni list is well worth the effort.

Keeping the list on paper or in a spreadsheet is always an option, but an easier way to streamline the process is through booster club software, like BoosterHub. With such software, you can easily access and organize lists, send communications, and more.

Communicate Updates

When booster club members leave the organization, that doesn’t mean they no longer care about what’s going on. More often than not, alumni appreciate regular updates about what’s going on with the club.

It’s a good idea to send a quarterly newsletter to update them on the club’s progress and pass along support opportunities. Your newsletter could include things like:

Updates from the school
Information about current club leadership
Showcases featuring the sports team or individual students
Photos from the last fundraiser
Regular progress reports

Communication with alumni does not have to be a one-way street — you can also encourage them to get involved, provide feedback, and send their best booster club fundraising ideas.

Send Invitations

Alumni may not be active members of the booster club any longer, but that doesn’t mean they want to be excluded. Club alumni should be at the top of the list for fundraiser invites and other events. Events allow alumni to reconnect, meet the new leadership, and hear first-hand updates about how the club is doing.

Consider customizing your invitations (even if they are digital) so that alumni receive a special invite. You may be surprised by how engaged alumni are and how much they can boost support at your events.

Ask for Support

Many booster club alumni want to be involved and support the club after they leave, but they won’t necessarily be proactive about it.

As a current club member, make a point to ask for support from alumni. This approach can include asking for donations, asking for help spreading the word about an event or fundraiser, or asking for booster club membership drive ideas.

Club alumni want to see the organization succeed, so you are likely to find more than enough helping hands when you need them.

When you are running a booster club, maximizing your reach and your supporters is critical to your success. Engaging alumni is an easy way to find a group of interested supporters, so make it a habit to reach out and keep them informed.

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Our Club Has Been Using Charms and Has Student Accounts — Why Is This a Bad Idea?

There’s a lot to like about Charms Office Assistant. This program has been a music program stalwart and can help schools and boosters communicate with students, manage assessment data, and collect payments. We get the appeal of using Charms to support your band’s billing activities — the system is already in place, and you can collect payments from students and parents all in one platform. However, Charms wasn’t really designed for booster clubs. It was really designed to be used by the school or music director. Most booster clubs are non-profits. The activities and best practices are different. For instance, non-profits can not fundraise for the benefit of one person. They must fundraise for the group as a whole. Also, fees can not be mandatory in a non-profit. You can certainly say “100% participation is highly encouraged,” but you can not require anyone to pay to participate. By replacing Charms with a purpose-built booster solution, your club can:

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Round Rock Volleyball Is Ahead of the Game by Using BoosterHub MVP

After each sports season, the coaching staff gets together to review what went well and what they can do better next year. Often, coaches will turn to league winners for inspiration. During this process, they analyze film, look at stats, and explore ways to incorporate these insights into their own coaching strategies. Your athletic booster club can apply these same principles to get better at fundraising during the off-season. On that note, let’s turn our attention to the Round Rock Volleyball booster club and how they’re delivering for student athletes with BoosterHub.

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Is SMS a Good Way to Communicate with Donors and Booster Club Members?

Finding effective ways to communicate with donors and members is a problem as old as your school’s rivalry with the neighboring high school football team. And just like that generation-spanning rivalry, you never seem to be able to maintain the upper hand for long. During your time as an athletic booster club member, you’ve probably tried a variety of communication techniques, from phone calls to flyers and even email. If that’s the case, you know that none of these strategies are especially effective for relaying information to your membership. While you’ve probably considered using SMS messaging to talk to donors and booster club members, you may be hesitant to make yet another change to your communication strategy. But trust us — SMS messaging is the way to go. With the right SMS messaging tools in place, you can effortlessly share information, keep parents in the loop about upcoming events, and make 2023 your most productive fundraising year ever.