Supporting a team, or other school function, is a great way to make new friends while positively contributing to your community . To do this, booster club’s must work together and incentivize booster club volunteers to accomplish tasks, like planning a bake sale, seasonal budgeting, electing leadership roles, or coordinating the student section at a hockey game. These shared experiences help bond the team and also teach each member valuable skills like fundraising, finances, organization, administration, and leadership.
But, as you can probably imagine, accomplishing all these things requires many brains and a strong task force. Recruiting volunteers is one of the best ways to expand your booster club and multiply its reach.
Recruiting isn’t always easy though. People will wonder why they should give up their free time to help the cause. So, here are the best ways to incentivize booster club volunteers.
Incentivize Booster Club Volunteers – Explain What and Why
As previously mentioned, volunteers will need to know why joining the booster club is worth sacrificing their freetime. If you want to incentivize booster club volunteers, you’ll need to use specific, wide-spread messaging to pique their attention.
It’s hugely important to be specific when recruiting new volunteers. Specificity will give potential volunteers an idea of the work they could be doing and how exactly to get involved. And if you’re not sure what tasks Booster Club volunteers should be helping with, check out this list.
- Weak recruitment message: “Volunteer to join the booster club, it’ll be great!”
- Strong recruitment message: “The [high school name] football team booster club is looking for volunteers to help out with our spring fundraisers! You could paint faces, flip hot dogs, or help lead the student section at games! Sign up at the blue booth next Tuesday at lunch to join in the fun—all grades welcome!”
Likewise, you want your messaging to be wide-spread. A recruitment message to incentivize booster club volunteers does you no good if no one sees it. Consider using school bulletin boards, local Facebook pages, Booster club Instagram and Twitter accounts, or asking the school administration to send out an email blast or make an announcement over the loudspeaker.
Another great opportunity to incentivize booster club volunteers to join in, is to set up a Booster Club booth at sporting events, theatre performances, or band concerts. This is particularly effective because anyone attending the games clearly already has an interest in the team, troupe, or band they’d be supporting.
Once potential volunteers read or listen to your recruitment message, they’ll know something about what the booster club does, how they would be helping, and how/where they can sign up. The more they know, the more likely they are to be excited about joining.
Emphasize the Communal Aspect
There are many ways to boost your resume and ample clubs, groups, and organizations to join that look good.
- Question: With so many options, how can you incentivize community members to volunteer for your booster club?
- Answer: Being part of the booster club is an excellent way to make friends and memories, all while supporting a great cause.
It’s very important for supporters who supported the booster club in previous years to carry on traditions and memories. This makes the new, hesitant volunteers aware that they’re joining something that is established and enjoyable.
Likewise, the booster club management ought to do their best to make the booster club an enjoyable and friendly environment. This can be achieved by organizing several non-work events, like everyone (including volunteers) going out for ice cream or having a pizza party.
Finally, the most important part of a booster club is providing practical help to whatever school entity it is supporting. Having many members makes it easier to raise funds, connect with local businesses, organize transportation, advertise for upcoming events, and all sorts of other things. Newcomers will be incentivized to join your booster club if they know it is a group of community members who work together to get real things done.
Sharing Stories Can Incentivize Booster Club Volunteers
One of the best ways to emphasize the communal aspect of booster clubs is to share stories. Stories show the booster club’s legacy and allow prospective volunteers to envision what their semester could be like if they joined.
Sharing stories can mean talking in detail about past events that were fun or comical when engaging with the local community to recruit new volunteers. Or a booster club can put one person in charge of posting live-updates from games on the booster club’s official Facebook story, Snapchat story, and Instagram story.
The booster club might even consider creating an annual video highlighting their achievements and activities throughout the semester (or, in other words, sharing stories). A video is easy to watch, can be shared across many platforms, and could incentivize booster club volunteers to join. If your booster club would like to make a video, but isn’t sure how, here are some tips.
Using Photos in Advertising
Sharing stories can even be as simple as adding photos to bulletin postings, posters, or other advertisements on Social Media. Visual images give context to the group’s activity. If a there’s someone in the community who’s never heard of the baseball booster club before sees an advertisement to “join the booster club” they probably have a lot of questions.
Adding specifics (as previously discussed) will help answer some of the newcomer’s questions. What’s more, adding a photo of a group of booster club members all dressed in the same color and cheering at one of the games will give them a better idea of what they could expect going to a baseball game, while being a member of that booster club might feel like.
In Summation
Anyone who is or has been a member of a booster club knows how fun it can be to collaborate as a group to achieve goals and support the team. When you’re looking for new volunteers it’s important that they know this and that your advertising conveys this as well.
When you incentivize booster club volunteer newcomers, it’s important to share specific on what the booster club actually does, how volunteers help, and where they can sign up, emphasize the booster club’s communal aspect, and share stories and photos from past events to really paint the picture.
