From the point of view of Matt Grooms, Assistant Basketball Coach at Rocky Mountain High School
Fundraising has always been an inefficient process. It can be tedious and, frankly, it can be dangerous for our kids. Unfortunately, fundraising has become a necessary part of high school sports programs. To meet our budget requirements, we coaches must seek funding from sources outside of our school. If we don’t fundraise, it is nearly impossible to provide our players the best possible experience. Our teams need equipment, practice gear and we have to travel.
In the past at Rocky Mountain, we utilized traditional fundraising methods. I’ve been on both sides of fundraising, both as a player and a coach. As a player, I ventured into the cold Idaho evenings selling cookie dough and coupon packs door to door. It wasn’t easy. And I was a bigger player. I can’t image how intimidating this process would be to an undersized freshman.
As a coach, we do our best to set up our players for fundraising success. But once the player leaves our locker room, there is very little I can do to help them.
Until we made the switch.
A few years ago, Rocky Mountain moved from traditional fundraising to the more modern online fundraising. And it was easy.
Today, we do a big part of our fundraising through an online team store. Like most programs, our players need to buy specifically required apparel. We also offer spirit packs to players and parents that want to show their support by wearing our school’s colors. An online store allows us to put all these items in one place.
Utilizing an online store for our program has been a game changer. By adding a couple bucks to each item, we able to raise a large part of our budget in a safe and easy way. No more door to door sales. No more hoping for the best. We get a very accurate estimate of how much money our online store will raise and can plan accordingly.
Now, as a program, we take that door to door time and invest it in our community. This year we spent it volunteering and raising money to buy turkeys for families in need. It was an awesome team building experience.
And as an added bonus, taking advantage of an online store has saved our coaching staff countless hours of work. These are hours that we are now putting in to developing our players and perfecting our game plan. The online store takes care of itself. The store collects all the order information and payment. The gear is ordered, printed and delivered straight to us. All we do is hand out the prepackaged orders to the players on our list. We are the heroes without all the work.
To learn more about online stores, click this link. Or you can send Select Printing an email. We would be happy to get you more information and figure out exactly what your team’s needs are and how we can help.