Managing a booster club is an important task often divided into multiple roles. With officer positions, you can delegate tasks and help the group to run more smoothly without putting too much stress on a single person. But, what do you do when there aren’t enough positions to fit your needs? How do you know when to create additional booster club management positions and how do you do so gracefully and with minimal disruption?
Creating more booster club management positions is a great way to get the extra help you need both now and in the future. While some leadership roles in booster clubs are short term, most are usually created for the long game. Lasting for months or even years if needed.
How to know when it’s time for additional roles
In many booster clubs, simply having a president, vice president, treasurer, and secretary is sufficient. But, in a growing and active booster club, you may find that some roles are being piled with work, and people are being stretched thin. By adding in additional roles you can reduce the workload and keep people from being overwhelmed.
With booster clubs being a nonprofit and people not earning a wage from the work they put in, being able to keep them happy and not feeling overwhelmed with booster club management positions, can keep them active with the group. You may find that people reduce their effort, enjoyment, and attendance when they feel overwhelmed. So this not only helps the people affected but also helps to keep your group active, happy, and thriving.
A lot of the time booster club volunteers will announce when they need help. Although not everyone is so willing to ask for help, a good number is. As someone in a booster club leadership position, it is your job to know how to manage a booster club and watch for the signs of struggle. Being able to spot them early is a great way to introduce help before a situation becomes too unbearable.
How to add more booster club management positions
If you’ve noticed the signs and decided to add in more booster club management positions, then it’s time to take that next step. Adding more people to the booster club management team. But how do you do that?
First, you should bring up the idea in a formal booster club meeting so that you can gather everyone’s opinions. Not only can you hear what others think about the idea, but you can also discuss ideas about what the role would entail as far as duties and responsibilities. You can also see if anyone at the meeting would be interested in volunteering for the position.
If the group decides to add additional booster club management positions, then the next step is to allow people to sign up and run for the offices. If only one person is interested this should be easy. If more than one person is interested in the position then you can choose who gets the job based on the booster club Bylaws.
Secret ballot and voting are some of the more popular ways to choose who is selected for booster club management. This is because it’s more fair to everyone involved. Your booster club Bylaws should have rules laid out explaining the proper process for choosing someone to fill these positions.
What kind of management positions are there?
If your booster club already has offices filled, you should be used to those jobs and have a great understanding as to how they work, but did you know there are so many other possibilities out there too?
You don’t need a vice-treasurer or a vice-secretary, you can add in completely new positions to the group that are just as (if not more) beneficial.
Jobs such as:
- Marketing positions
- Promotions positions
- Partner Management positions
- and more.
Each of these could come with a few jobs within itself. With any of these categories, you can have a leader that delegates over the other jobs within that section. Marketing or promotions could have someone specifically in charge of reaching out to companies or the community to extend your group’s outreach.
Running the booster club website and social media channels also count as promotion and marketing depending on how you use them. These things normally take a lot of time to make nice, at least a few hours per week or month. Keeping your website and social media updated can help to draw in more volunteers and promote various events and activities.
Creating booster club management positions
While booster clubs are all pretty similar each one is different and unique. The different activities, people, schools and mission statements are what keep you different and give you a common bond at the same time.
While each booster club needs to have the basic leadership positions as outlined in the Bylaws, everything else added on beyond that is completely up to the group. This means that you have the flexibility to create roles specifically designed to better your booster club.
This is great because if your group is more about promotion and bond building within the community, you can have someone outreaching to the companies and making flyers to advertise events. Or, if you’re more into the virtual world, you can create a job that keeps your social media and websites in good hands. For the booster clubs that are more focused on money and less about promotions, these jobs may not seem as important for the time being.
Being able to add and adjust job roles as needed is a great way to keep your booster club running smoothly and in the direction that you want it to go. While most of the time the new roles created are related to fundraising growth or growing community support, your group can create the jobs it needs.
By creating booster club management positions you allow more volunteers the opportunity to help. Just make sure that before you hand the title over to someone, that a proper list of duties and the other formalities are well covered so that it’s easy for them to jump into the position.
