Wow. They gave you a big job. That would be at least 4 or 5 jobs in the groups I've worked with (band choir, PAT, PTO - theater tried to avoid stage moms LOL). And I'm a big advocate for getting as much buy-in from parents as possible, so I'd see if you couldn't delegate some work, even if you are the contact persona dn everything goes through you to the coach (more parent going to the coach increase their hassle factor and decrease their attention on the team. Ask a few parents to help you as unofficial commeittee chairs to help organize things like your consession workers and report to you (not the coach) if that is okay with the coach.

Fundraising choices are driven by when the fundraiser can take place, when they need the money, what other groups are already doing (groups had to get administration aproval for all fundraising efforts and were not allowed to do something another group alredy did), the community and the amount of money you need to raise. The students are limtied to two fundraisers per year -- parent booster groups are not covered by that rule, but there is a point of diminishing return, so you want to pick 2 or 3 things that will meet your needs and not do 8 or 10. How many boys will participate and how much do they need to raise? A lot isn't a goal and stuff or just so we have more money never motivated a buyer. Set a dollar amount with reasons for raising it (uniforms, travel, meals, baquets or whatever). Goals and reasons motivate both the team and the supporters. Try to give folks something they can use and feel good about buying, make it a decent value ($20 for 4 frozen pretzels is a waste of 4 frozen pretzels and the kids time - I'd rather hand them a $20 bill).

Successful fundraising ideas here -- selling holiday greenery, spring bedding plants, fun runs or contests (donkey ball, dribble contest), barbecues or spaghetti dinnders, pancake breakfasts, discount cards (some are good and some stink). Those are off the top of head -- also saw Save the Monarchs doing a thing where schools can get 100 seeed packets for a $25 donation and then sell them for $1-2 and folks who plant them help repopulate the declining monarchs. Great return if you can sell a lot of them and a real feel good if people will plant them -- even throw them along the roadside.

Game day meals - our band. has 2 or 3 places the kds can order a meal form in advance, Those are typically set up in the summer so it is all in place before school starts, but the marching season starts early. If you ca delegate committee chairs, get someone to help set this up and keep is simple. For a smaller group like a basketball team, you mgiht do one option but rotate several. Try to negotiate a group deal for $5 per kid and keep sandwich or other selections to a few. Ask in advance about any dietary restictions. You are less likely to have vegetarian, vegan or GF among athletic boys, but could happen and peanut or nut and dairy allergies are just as likely.

Teamware -- takes some time and resaerch to set up. What do they want? Hoodies, jackets, blankets, lanyards, water bottles? Your team is small in comparison to other groups, so you options will be smaller too. This is another area that could use a person to do resaerch just on this.

Decorations -- there is always a mom who loved this job. The party planner. Find the and put them to work. Or get the cheerleaders/drill team/ pep or drill team to help (they often do locker signs for the boys, signs in the ygm or halls before a game). Otherwise, keep it simple.

I have run out of time for now, but I would say that if you can define some goals it would help define suggestions. If you can get some other parent to help so specific research on single areas, then you could work with the coach on approval and overseeing implementaion.

Organize, delegate, research and think through the plans with some other minds so you plans for/avoid as many problems as possible.

lascatx offered great suggestions and I agree with her comment that in most organizations these roles would be filled by more than one person. You said that you're the Parent Rep for your son's grade. Often there is an overall committee comprised of all the Reps and they work together to co-ordinate the various activities so that you aren't competing against each other.

While my kids were in school I was involved in many of the same activities, some years were easier than others and a lot depends on finding other parents to help.

Our various organizations sell all kinds of things for fundraising.: cookie dough, pumpkins, mums, poinsettias, pies, citrus, roasted corn. The music department has a full-day event where all the ensembles, large and small, perform, and the fundraising portion is a spaghetti dinner and silent auction halfway through. Services like car washes, of course. Selling Concessions at events. Ads in programs, including plays and the last concert of the year. (Not advertising your business, but "best wishes" to your/all kids.)

They've done special t-shirt sales for events where a donation (usually to a charity) gets you a t-shirt for that event.

But the main thing they do is memberships. If your kid is in a sport, you are expected to join the Boosters, and to do something like work in the little store or sell concessions for one or two hours in your kid's sport season. In music and theater, they encourage memberships.

We now have memberships payable when you register for school, and all memberships went up!

Get email addresses from all the parents in your group and use SignUpGenius or VolunteerSpot or whatever to solicit help and stuff!

Thank you all for your input! I read each one you wrote carefully and has already helped me a lot! I think the Booster Club board should have pushed for more memberships at the beginning of school. All clubs are set up in a room that you have to walk into-instead of in a lobby area or even in the hallway where people would have to pass by. I will have to look into that-for next year. I think the drawback from basketball is there are only 12 spots on the A team and 12 spots on the B team-so your kid might not even make the team. I agree if your kid is in sports, we should encourage parents to join.

What are good sellers at your concession stand?

Outdoor events: water, hot chocolate, popcorn, hot dogs, brownies.

At theater events we sell candy from Costco, all kinds of candy, and water.

Oh, Chick Fil A likes to do fundraisers; if you have one nearby give them a call. I think it's like you get 50% of the sale price or something! don't quote me on that.

Weve also had pizza fundraisers, where you sell coupons for a pizza, usually a take-and-bake pizza.

One of our teams sells a coupon sheet for $20 with coupons from about 15 local businesses, but we find that we use only a couple of them before they expire at the end of the post-season.

Pre-game meals, I think most groups order. We like to "shop local" so local or parent-owned pizza shops, Mexican/Tex-Mex, pasta, subs, sandwiches. Then some groups supplement by asking parents to sign up to supply water, dessert, fruit, or salad, depending on the price we got from the food vendor.

What kind of apparel are you thinking of? We also sell blankets, cushions and stadium years, thermal mugs, headbands, hats and mittens. The shirt and jacket and lounge pants (pajama bottoms) vary by year, there always seems to be something new that turns out to be popular.

Not sure if this is something you can do now, but our town's high school sells lawn banners that have the school's logo. This is after my kids graduated ,so I am not sure of the particulars.

As I walk through my neighborhood I see them displayed on the lawns. Not sure if this means that the child is involved in sports or just supporting the school and team spirit.

Many restaurants will do a "dining to donate" night where if folks coming in present a coupon (customized for your date/group), then your group will receive (usually around) %20 of the receipts that night (the receipts that present the coupon). If allowed, it works really well if the team can hand out the coupons in the parking lot the day/night of, so people walk in with the coupon and use it. Applebees, Bertuccis, etc. many national chains will do it, and where we are, many of the local restaurants will do it too. The Friday before Thanksgiving is a great night to get, no one wants to cook. Works even better with local places that do a lot of takeout (pizza/sub shops).

We've had good success with Soup/Cookie fundraiser sales as well, there are many outfits that do that -- you get in contact with them, and the rep will provide all the brochures, forms, etc. that are needed.

VolunteerSpot also works really well for getting volunteers organized and set up. You can get pretty far with a free version. You fill in the event, all the spots you need (say for concession workers) and then people can log into it and sign themselves up. Its easy to see how many full/empty signups there are. If its a repeating event, you can easily copy the timetable you've set up, for the next event. Good luck, as everyone has pointed out -- its a lot of work!

I'm on the board of my kids' high school athletic association. We have some major large scale fundraisers which supports all the athletic teams, but each team also does their own smaller fundraisers. The major fundraisers probably wouldn't pertain to your group. For example, we sell food at an internationally known event that is two weekends back to back in our tourist town that draws visitors from all over the world and we do a fundraising dinner at school w/silent auction. The sports teams individually do things like raffle off donated pro football game tickets, sell restaurant discount cards, and a mulch sale (very labor intensive but brought in about $20K for my son's lacrosse team). My neighbors' kids, who go to a different school sell wrapping paper, food items, holiday wreaths, etc. Pretty much most of the things already mentioned.

I also work in our concession stand. We offer quite a bit of choice: burgers, dogs, pizza, Chick Fil A sandwiches, taco in a bag, soft pretzels, fresh popcorn, French fries, ice cream, candy, cold beverages, coffee and tea. Chick Fil A is definitely our most popular among the kids and sells out every time. Remember though, this is for high school so we get a big turn out for games. For some lesser attended games, we don't have the full menu.

We use SignUp Genius and Volunteer Spot to organize volunteers.

edited to add that our concession stand is not a big money maker, but it's not designed to be. We do make a profit but keep prices reasonable,. In fact, just last week several customers expressed shock at their totals and then donated their change b/c they were used to paying more at other schools.

Soft pretzels, how could I forget! Big sellers!

You all have given me such good ideas, some we already do, but I am elated to know what you all sell for fundraisers.

4kid4us, yes, you are correct, in that, each team does their own fundraiser! And, I have been told the concession stand is not a money maker.

But, soft pretzels, huh? Sounds interesting! Hopefully I can look into how to get a hold of those.

We have Chick Fil A in town and I think you all who mentioned it, are correct in it would be a big seller-will have to check on that also. What is it about Chick Fil A?!?! LOL

I will look through the responses again-there are some good ideas and tips-I really appreciate your time in posting. I think our Booster Club needs revamped!

Maddielee, Too funny! I wonder if I could get away with passing out that form??

I think the coach sets the tone for a lot of these items. When my DD played volleyball in HS the coach had her act together. There was a parent meeting at the beginning of the year with mandatory attendance with check book and datebook by one parent. A check was written that night, I believe your daughter had a one day grace period if your didn't pay before she had to run and did not play.

The teams had HUGE family by in because it was a family atmosphere with varsity parents taking the younger families under their wings and grooming them for leadership positions. We did not sell anything, had mandatory concession stand and game job (score book, line judge) training at a scrimmage game, and were expected to pull our weight. It worked out great and we all have very fond memories of these days. This coach had high expectations for everyone involved. The girls excelled every year and we all had fun doing it.

So after all of that, see if parental expectations can come with the kids position on the team. Is each team responsible for XX amount of $$? Is it a reasonable amount per family if divided up versus having to sell something? Is your school in an area where that would work? Make sure parents understand that there are expectations of them with a child playing sports if possible.

Subway or local deli's will often make deals on meals. I have also had parents bring in meals if the mom mix is right--are there ones available to deliver and clean up, etc.

For senior night and sectionals, the parents were responsible for making a poster for their daughter. This may not work if you have kids without family support. Moms decorated the buses for weekend tourneys.

Just remember you are doing this for your kid and their friends. Have fun with it!

olliesmom - you have received great ideas for organizing and fundraising for boosters. I have been part of high school booster groups, and have sold everything in the book. I am curious how much you must raise for a middle school team(s)? We have no booster groups for the middle school kids (Nor Cal public school). Uniforms get used for years, the kids buy a sweatshirt if they want one (coordinated by the coach), and we carpool to away games. A $90 fee for each player covers the cost of referees, equipment, uniforms (used & returned) and insurance. If a family can't afford the fee, it is covered by the PTA. There are no decorations or meals involved, and no concessions. The kids have an absolute blast - and their families just show up and cheer them on! Amazing how much things like this vary from place to place...

Our middle school has one athletic booster group that helps with all the sports. Sometimes particular clubs do additional fundraisers but in general the money is split between the sports depending on who needs what. Money is split for uniforms, busses, travel etc. Uniforms are worn until they wear out. Kids can buy their own sweatshirts, etc.

Most of our money comes from very unhealthy food sold at concession stand sales :) Parents are asked to donate the water, pop, candy, chips, etc and then they have parent volunteers work the concessions for football, volleyball, basketball games etc. Our last football game netted $1400 in concessions! But volleyball games make about $50. It all adds up. We also have a local pizza joint that will sell us pizzas at a discount that we then sell by the slice.

Our middle school cross country team makes extra money parking cars for the big high school sponsored races in the area. We help and they give us a piece of the proceeds. Chick fil A night is popular here too, but I think it's 15% of the proceeds.

Cheerleaders decorate the lockers before important home games. I'm not sure about meals.

Good luck!

My gosh, I can not even imagine handling everything that they are giving you. I have been active in PTA Boards, Aquatics Booster Club Board and Scouting. Aquatics is probably closest to what you are doing. For several years I did Registration and then Secretary for a number of additional years. We asked for voluntary contributions for our sport, basically just enough to cover our costs, but in California public schools it was determined that it was illegal to require payment to join a team a few years into my involvement. Not that we ever required payment before the ACLU became involved, but once we had to announce that payment was voluntary the donations took a nose dive. Depending on the team we had payment of 95% to 50% of cost from our athletes, apparently boys parents value sports more as the boys teams always had much better donations . In addition to our snack shack which was our biggest money maker, similar set-up to legomom23, one of our favorites was a car wash. We would ask a parent to head up the car wash each season and request that each player sell 10 tickets at $5 each. Most sold the full 10 tickets, plus we would get locals that saw the car wash signs come through. We were able to hold the car wash in a grocery store parking lot. We picked a date and a back up date in the unlikely event of rain, I understand in some areas of the country this would not be practical. Another successful fund raiser was a taco man at the game. No money out of our pocket and we received 50% of the profits. We sold the tickets prior to the games and at our concession stand. We did this every home game, it was very successful with basically no work on our end. Strangely enough it did not really cut into concession sales. We also did the restaurant deals, a couple of times each season. They were not huge money makers but the families enjoyed them and every bit helps. About the time I was leaving the Board, the remaining Board members and coaches were putting together a Tournament, this can be a huge moneymaker. Every team has to pay to play, I think about $300 and then you make extra money on the concessions. The last two years that I was involved our Booster group moved our apparel purchases to MyLocker.net, for everything except swimsuits and parkas. This was so much easier than doing it ourselves. and we made a bit of money. When we did our own
ordering we just charged our cost. Others have given you great ideas on things to sell, we tried to stay
away from that as the school itself seemed to have cornered the market
on the cookie dough/magazine/chocolates and such. Good luck, if it were me I think that I would want to consider this position as one to coordinate other volunteers, that is just too much to expect one person to do.