One of the battles that band boosters, music boosters, and every name variant of a parent group that supports the performing arts faces – possibly the BIGGEST battle – is finding new and different ways to generate revenue for their Organization.
Each and every booster org I’ve been involved with has suffered from most (if not all) of the following limitations:
- Not enough time or bandwidth to accomplish everything
- Parents are volunteers, with varying levels of abilities, talents, and competencies
- Fundraisers often involve logistical limitations, staffing and manpower, facility usage, scheduling flexibility, etc
- The parents end up doing ALL THE WORK
- Limited profitability when compared to expenses/effort
Also remember – some performing ensembles do not have a captive “booster” group supporting them (I’m looking at you independent ensembles!). Sometimes we are working with an over-worked, stressed-out, frazzled arts educator that is just trying to get through their performing season in one piece!
Therefore – these support groups need to be placing a HUGE EMPHASIS on fundraisers that relieve the pressure on all of the points above. Something that saves time, relies very little or not-at-all on parental intervention, is absent of staffing, facility or equipment usage – while maximizing profitability and the upside potential of a windfall “chunk” of cash.
Smaller, incremental fundraisers that take time, energy, and work to support are unavoidable, but consider a crowdfunding campaign as a way to identify a need and obtain a large amount of financial support.
