As the season creeps closer and closer, the time of high school band fundraisers will soon be upon us. It’s a perfect time to plan and coordinate whatever campaigns that band boosters deem worthy…
We love crowdfunding as an easy method that band directors can use to not only raise money, but also raise awareness and community support, while giving the kids a great teambuilding and growth exercise. When it comes to marching band fundraising, it doesn’t get much easier than crowdfunding.
Here are 3 tactics that can be brought to your band fundraiser to maximize results:
(1) Add value for the donation
With a little bit of preplanning, band directors and band boosters can build out a menu of earned benefits encouraging larger donations. For instance, for a donation over $100, award a special edition T-Shirt, a concern program mention. For larger donations, consider experiences like “special ensemble concert brought to your place of business”, “help conduct the final Sousa march of the spring concert”, or “have your family’s name sewn into the hem tag of our new uniforms”. The sky is the limit!
(2) Leverage local business relationships to support your campaign
One of crowdfunding’s big benefits is the visibility that a well-promoted campaign can bring to your organization. Local businesses are general open to partnering with quality school or independent programs, and a large marching band that travels around and represents the community well throughout the year.
Think about ways to engage with these local businesses. For instance – if you approach the local hardware store (where your marching band booster dads invariably purchase ALL of the supplies for PROP CONSTRUCTION, right?) and ask them to donate a few bucks per donor that supports your crowdfunding campaign. Consider capping their donation commitment up to a certain dollar amount to protect them. In exchange, offer them some sort of logo placement or an advertisement in your program book, or a logo on that new equipment trailer you are shooting for.
(3) Put on your “PR Hat”
When you survey the backgrounds and talents of your band parents, you will probably have a couple with some sort of advertisement, copywriting, or Public Relations background. These are very useful skills to bring to bear for your program in a variety of ways, but to promote a crowdfunding campaign that could be GOLD.
These parents are probably skilled in obtaining coverage from local media. Mentions on the radio or in online/print publications could be extremely helpful. It’s relatively simple to wordsmith a decent press release and to circulate that to local outlets to grab some coverage. It may open up avenues to a more in-depth article or interview with your director and boosters. These experiences increase the overall visibility of the program, and it costs NOTHING.
