From my experience
as a past president of a baseball booster club, there
are two things you need to do to bust through fund raising barriers.
If you must have a better response I'll cover the first thing you
need to do:
1. You will have a better long term success
funding your baseball field projects if you start with your 'reason
for being'.
Think this through. You'll use this to market your program.
A fund raising message without a reason for being is just too vague
to get many folks to commit money to your program.
Here's
how you come up with a clear statement for your program's reason for
being. This works whether it's little league, PONY,
high school, or college. Whether it's boys or girls. Whether
it's baseball, softball, or any other sport or activity.
Complete
the sentence below: (this helps you develop your fund raising message)
"My program helps
(whom?) do (what?) better than any other program in the world by (how?)."
Here's
how I used this for a youth baseball team I worked with:
"This program
helps young men develop life long habits for success by combining
athletics, character building, and personal responsibility.
The program is run by experts who don't just teach baseball, but have
demonstrated success with 6 straight years of championships and 7
players with college scholarships."
You need to think
about your own program and complete the sentence. Develop your
own fund raising message.
I worked with
this and settled on two short phrases:
- Developing
lifelong habits for success
- Helping
young men develop lifelong habits for success
Then I talked
with some of the players about the character building part of the
program. Here's what they told me they were learning in their
own words:
- Discipline,
Diligence, Respect, Friendship, Teamwork, & Personal Responsibility
I put these ideas
into every flyer, every handout, every fundraising letter, and every
verbal message about the team whether it was for fundraising or not.
I used it enough it just became part of what I said about the program.
In a future article I'll cover the second thing you need to do that
gets folks to reach for their wallet or their checkbook and make YOU
a donation.
Have fun!
Yours for better play more often,
J.
Reiner
Jim Reiner
Publisher, Editor, & Groundskeeper
The Ultimate
Baseball Field Renovation Guide
For
a more examples and further discussion of this article see
the complete explanation of this hidden secret of successfully funding
your projects.
