Consistent and strong annual revenue projections will keep your booster club afloat. If your booster club does not have an annual revenue plan, or only has a poorly planned strategy around annual revenue, it could lead to overestimation or underestimation.
If your revenue projection is overestimated, your club could overspend and end up breaking even or in debt. If grossly underestimated, you could act too conservatively and lose out on money making opportunities.
To avoid financial losses, and feel confident in your financial planning, you’ll want an accurate annual revenue projection. Here are the proper steps to projecting your booster club’s annual revenue.
Who Creates A Booster Club’s Annual Revenue Projections?
You’ll need a small task force to create an accurate projection. Here’s who we’d recommend:
- The Treasurer: The Booster Club treasurer is the best candidate for leading the charge here, as he or she likely has the strongest grasp on the club’s financial situation. The treasurer also ought to have access to relevant documents and information.
- The Vice President: The treasurer can select his or her fellow partners for this project, but we’d recommend keeping the group to four or five members. The next suggested candidate would be the club’s Vice President, because he or she likely has deep knowledge of the club like the president yet slightly more flexibility and time.
- The Head of Fundraising: The head of fundraising (if different from the treasurer him or herself) should also have a place at the table. Conversely, if there is one or more major fundraisers planned for the year the student directly in charge of each should be on the team.
- Communications Director (or Secretary): Likewise, the Communications Director will be a helpful team member. He or she can inform the taskforce of their marketing plans. If they plan to increase the advertising for a certain event, it’;s possible the number of participants (and hence the revenue) will rise.
Once the task force is assembled they can get started on these simple steps for revenue projection!
Know your Booster Club’s Financial History
The best way to start creating a strategy for projecting your Booster Club’s revenue this year, is to look at years past. Having several quarters’ or years’ worth of data will help inform your projections for this year and years to come.
When your Booster Club is transitioning leadership the outgoing leaders should definitely pass along any and all relevant records incoming leaders. If they don’t initiate a transfer of documents and information, be sure to remind them. Helpful documents from the past year or semester for gauging future revenue include:
- quarterly budget, cost per fundraiser (including receipts with specific expenses)
- revenue per fundraiser (with pointed data)
- quarterly revenue
- overall annual revenue
It would also be wise to compare last year’s quarterly and annual revenue to previous revenues. Are there any overarching trends? Does revenue tend to increase or decrease each year? Or is it entirely random? Knowing (and understanding) your club’s financial history is one of the best ways to confidently make future projections.
Break the Year into Smaller Time Segments
It’s hard to predict what you’ll make in a year. However, if you break the year into smaller samples it’s easier to calculate each and then add them up. We’d recommend starting with projections for each month, then moving to each quarter, and finally to annual revenue.
Monthly Booster Club Revenue Projections
The most helpful documents here are a calendar marked with each month’s planned events, expenses, and fundraisers and (as previously mentioned) records of each month’s revenue from years past. Take a look at the first month you’ll be in power, month X, and set it beside last year’s account of that same month. If your booster club plans to do everything exactly the same as the past years, you can estimate similar results (whilst factoring in overall trends or Booster club ARR).
However, any and all deviations from last year’s month X must be considered: changes in student body size, marketing strategy adjustments, increase in social media exposure, or even if the weather drops significantly this month X compared to last year’s (which could affect outdoor events).
When increasing expenses on a certain event or fundraiser, be conservative about its impact on revenue. Doubling the amount of posters in the hallways, posts on Facebook, and Instagram stories, will not necessarily double the event’s revenue.
Question: Great, so you projected the first month’s revenue–now can’t you just multiply that by 12 to get the whole year?
Answer: No! Each month and quarter is unique. December is typically jam packed with holiday themed fundraisers, meanwhile September has none. Not to mention, no one goes to school in the summer! Therefore, you must calculate each month and time of year individually.
Quarterly Booster Club Revenue Projections
Bundling the months into quarters will be very helpful. Because some booster clubs rotate their leadership almost annually in many cases, quarters are a great way to subdivide the year.
Moreover, the annual projection taskforce can evaluate how they’re doing each quarter, and assess any necessary changes for the following quarter. Comparing this year’s first, second, third, or fourth quarter to last year’s ought to present a more consistent standard than comparing month by month.
Like the monthly projections, reject the temptation to multiply one quarter by four—as each quarter will differ.
Booster Club Annual Revenue Projections
It is only when you’ve examined each month and each quarter, that you should project the annual revenue for your booster club. Remember: Revenue is different from profit. If you’d like to project your profit for the year subtract your predicted expenses from your revenue and the difference will give you an estimate.
Booster Club Annual Revenue Projections In A Nutshell
Projecting annual revenue will help you to gauge if your fundraising is on track throughout the year. If you do not have a revenue projection strategy you could lose money. When planning your projection, you’ll want to recruit the booster club Treasurer, Vice President, Heads of Fundraisers, and Communications Director.
This task force ought to look to past years’ revenues to help inform their projections. Project your revenue for each month, add in sets of three to find each quarter, and add all four quarters to find the annual total.
