When you volunteer to lead a booster club, you’ll wear many hats. But when you distill the role down to it’s most important attributes, there are two: taking care of people and taking care of money.
Booster club leaders touch many people: parents, volunteers, instructors, alumni, and community members. You must motivate and lead by influence for your booster club to thrive.
In today’s noisy world of professional and social media, it’s hard to get your message heard. Thriving booster clubs know that clear, impactful communication with parents is vital to success. But how do you break through the distractions and reach your parents?
The answer is really not that difficult – you just need to be intentional when crafting your communications. Whether communicating by email, newsletter, Facebook or Twitter, these three best practices will help get your message read, not ignored.
Many booster clubs’ annual budgets are fulfilled through student payments and fundraising. Typically, families are asked to make an up front, out-of-pocket payment and to fundraise throughout the year.
The IRS has set high expectations for booster clubs’ fundraising. They require 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations to distribute funds equally among all participants. Specifically, no student may be denied the opportunity to participate due to their [in]ability to pay student fees or to participate in fundraising. I explain this in more detail in my recent post, Should Students Who Don’t Fundraise Get to Participate?
What can a booster club do?
In many ways, leading a booster club is like running a small business. With an entrepreneurial spirit, the booster president casts a vision for the organization’s future. From this vision, goals are developed for the midterm.
Photo by Katelyn Caldwell
Planning for the midterm is vital to a booster club’s sustained success. The process of midterm planning compels you to anticipate longer range needs that may not be evident through the organization’s day-to-day operations. By its nature, booster leadership may create a short-term mindset. With volunteers serving one to two year terms, it may be easy for them to assume the attitude to “keep the lights on” until they rotate out.
Let’s look at what’s important in creating a midterm plan for your booster club.
Elvis Presley was undoubtedly one of the greatest entertainers of our time. His most devoted fans know just how generous he was throughout his lifetime. What we may not realize, though, is the significance of his generosity to a booster club. Here are three lessons we can learn from Elvis’ generosity.
1. Elvis was generous toward people who could never repay him. Elvis Presley lived the greatest rags to riches story of the twentieth century. But even after becoming the biggest star of his era, he never forgot his humble upbringing. There are many stories of his random acts of generosity toward people who were not as fortunate.