A booster club annual checklist could be exactly what your group needs to start the new year off on the right foot. As the New Year arrives, you often see last-minute scrambles to get documents in order, high hopes for the New Year, and the promises to be better organized and well managed throughout the year. With the proper planning, it can be!
Booster club management and booster club leadership both play essential roles in the success of your booster club. Still, by using them both to create and maintain annual and quarterly goals throughout the year, your booster club can have a higher success rate.
Booster best practices often happen when a booster club annual checklist is followed and taken seriously. The checklist is a great way to view the past year and the upcoming year at the same time and use gathered data to create an easy-to-follow plan.
This checklist should include the following main target points:
- Taxes
- Budgets
- Strategies
- Organization
By breaking it down into these categories, goals, and steps can be set for each. This makes it a lot easier to manage a booster club. With there being multiple lines of information to follow instead of a jumbled pile of goals. It’s a lot easier to run a booster club because there are paths in place, so goals can be reached in the order of importance and time-sensitivity.
Booster Club Annual Checklist Item: Taxes
One of the most time-sensitive items to cover after New Year’s is taxes. January is when companies and organizations give their 4th quarter earnings report as well as begin filling out their previous year’s taxes. With booster clubs being run by volunteers, every person will be taking care of their own personal taxes during this time as well, meaning the more organized the booster club is with their information, the easier it will be on the already stressed volunteers.
Your booster club annual checklist should start with making sure that your booster club tax information is in order. If you keep good booster club leadership throughout the year and employ some good management tactics, you could be ready long before the ball drops. A last-minute double-check to make sure that the booster club checking accounts are balanced and that all of the numbers and reports match could be all that you really need to do if you kept a great record.
Use January as a chance to review your monthly, quarterly, and annual tax due dates.
Mark them on a calendar and include the need-to-know notes. Is it a federal or state tax? What information should you have ready by then to make the filing smoother? You should also make a note of who is going to fill these out.
Even if you have an accountant doing the actual tax filing on behalf of your booster club, you must do as much as possible to make their job easy. By making sure that the numbers match, you are saving them time, which in turn, saves you money as a lot of tax professionals charge a rate based on the amount of time they need to complete the paperwork.
Booster Club Annual Checklist Item: Budgets
Your booster club annual checklist should include budgets as they are a vital part, as well. Booster clubs are primarily finance-based, and by making budgets and estimating earnings for the year, booster clubs can have a successful year of earnings. Use this time to review and update your annual booster club budget.
Most companies have a team of workers who determine the budget, projected growth, and estimated costs for the upcoming year. They also look at the records of the previous year(s) to see if there are any trends or pitfalls to avoid and therefore plan a more successful strategy.
If you can see that a specific type of fundraiser didn’t do well, figure out what the exact cause for failure was. Were people simply not interested in it? Was it poorly promoted? Were the costs too high, or was it something else? Gathering this data and using it to your advantage can help you to be more successful in future fundraisers.
Booster Club Annual Checklist Item: Strategies
Strategies for the year are also incredibly important for your booster club annual checklist. These are the things that help determine what you’ll be doing to reach your goals. Do you need to work more on fundraising, marketing, or management? How will you improve upon what you’re currently doing?
Business management strategies often include a several point plan aimed at meeting their goals in the most efficient way possible. So think about your booster clubs goals for the year and build up from there.
If you want to improve upon your fundraising and marketing, then you will definitely want to consider refreshing your list of local partners. By doing this, you are using some great business management tactics because you will have an organized point of reference the next time you are planning a fundraiser. If you need to reach out to a business for the support of any kind, you’ll have contact information and important information at your fingertips.
Booster Club Annual Checklist Item: Organization
One of the best things that you can do to ensure booster club success is to organize your booster club. With proper organization, your booster club annual checklist can be completed easily and in a little amount of time.
Your booster club already performs some levels of organization with their daily routine. For example, the record books and minutes are both a form of organization.
For your booster club annual checklist, you should include reviewing our current organizational documents and updating them as needed. Look and see if the current organizational documents are in order and make any updates and changes if necessary.
You should also make a point of verifying important dates for the new year while performing your booster club annual checklist. This will help you to plot out the upcoming year on a calendar and give you a real visual timeline that can help with understanding when you should start planning, contacting others, and getting the ball rolling before the event gets too close.
When you take the time to plan and carry out a booster club annual checklist, you are not only helping the booster club catch up on anything missed for the previous year, but you are also helping it to succeed during the current year. You are using your time to improve upon the old ways and make a more beneficial course of action within the best interests of the booster club.
