Thursday, April 16, 2009

Put Fun in Fundraising for Your Youth Sports League

As a child I always dreaded our sports team fundraising
campaigns. We were expected to go out into the community
and sell citrus fruit, nuts, wreaths, and a multitude of
other items each year. Believe me it was complete drudgery
and I looked forward to it about as much as getting a tooth
pulled.

Our coach would get us all huddled up and hand us the sales
packets and say something like "Go out there and sell lots
of stuff." Off we would trudge and try to hawk our wares
completely unprepared for our foray into sales. If we had
been told something about how to sell? It would have been a
whole lot easier.

Teach your kids how to sell. Prepare a script for them to
learn and rehearse it with them until they are comfortable.
It is very hard to sell something with little or no
preparation. This will go a very long way toward promoting
sales and boosting the confidence of your sales people.

Reward your students for their effort. This can be as
simple as posting a list of sales leaders at every
practice. This will promote an atmosphere of competition
and is something that they are already accustomed to if
they are actively participating in a sport.

Set mini goal points and when one of them is reached
surprise the leaders with a fun activity. Perhaps you might
contact their parents and organize a father/son,
mother/daughter, or any combination day out. Head out as a
group and go bowling, get pizza, go to a movie, or some
other fun related activity. This reinforces the ethics of
working hard to achieve a goal an being rewarded is
associated with accomplishment.

Once the final goal is reached you might reward the entire
team for their effort. You might take one practice period
and let your team have a night of fun. Forget all the
drills, forget the calisthenics. Just an evening of fun
play the game. You might prefer to have no interruption of
practice and call a special practice instead.
Another thing that would be a big hit to your players and
parents is a game where everyone gets to play. Pick 2 team
captains and let them choose their team members and then
play against each other. Perhaps you could set up a real
game complete with cheerleaders and allow the public to
attend. The idea is to reward their team spirit and
accomplishment. Just make it fun.

If you spend a little time developing the sales person in
your kids, and rewarding them for their effort you will
find that your fundraiser profits will rise along with the
sprit and enjoyment of your sales force.
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