Admit it or not, cheerleading fundraising is an unavoidable annual activity for your cheer squad. It is important to financially support your cheerleading squad as they play an important role in your school. This group of mostly young, gracious, and energetic girls boosts the morale of your school’s sports team.  Here are some cheerleading fundraiser ideas you can use to get started.

The cheerleading squad is also a school ambassador, as it officially represents your team and school as well. However, these representations and morale-boosting tasks don’t come free. Cheerleaders need money for uniforms, there are expenses when they travel for competitions, there are expenditures for food, and there are expenses for training.For help with your cheer fundraising, visit Fundraising Zone.

With all these expenses, running a fundraiser is of high importance. Running a fundraiser can be tough, but with some knowledge, it can be just a piece of cake. Read on and learn about the x simple ways to bring your cheerleading fundraising to success.

4 Steps to a Successful Cheerleading Fundraising

• Planning
• Draft a Budget
• Promotion
• Follow Up

Plan Your Cheerleading Fundraising

Planning is an essential phase for every successful fundraiser. In the planning phase, everything must be documented, and all requirements need to be clearly identified. Planning ensures that everything is on the right track.

Form teams that will be responsible for specific tasks. Identify a leader who will manage the entire cheerleader fundraiser event. Create a team that will handle financial management. A promotion team will handle the marketing of your fundraiser. Lastly, create a follow-up team that will be tasked to inform everyone about the progress of the cheerleading fundraising, and sending your deepest gratitude after a successful cheerleader fundraiser.

Draft a Budget for the Cheerleading Fundraiser

A budget draft is essential to keep track of the fundraiser’s finances. It creates a clear image of the expected financial result of your cheerleading fundraising activity. A budget draft helps you determine your initial budget and how are you going to make a profit.

Preparing a budget draft also helps, especially when you plan to look for cheerleading sponsors for financial assistance. Presenting a draft budget to prospective sponsors will help you convince them to support your cause. Most sponsors are businessmen who look for financial plans before giving out donations.

Promote your Cheerleading Fundraising to Success

Promotion is the key to get as many participants, volunteers, and most especially sponsors who will help finance your cheerleading fundraising. There are many ways to promote a fundraiser, and it can be done traditionally or digitally.

Traditional Promotion

Traditional promotion makes use of flyers, posters, and sponsorship letters. Traditional marketing is an effective way of advertising your cheerleading fundraising. However, it will require printing advertisements and sponsorship letters, which will need upfront costs. If your fundraiser campaign is on a tight budget, this may create a financial issue. However, desktop printing can be a low-cost alternative.

Digital Promotion

Digital promotion makes use of the power of the internet, and it doesn’t require print advertisements as flyers, posters, and even sponsorship letters are digital. Email marketing is still one of the most effective digital marketing tools used today. Almost everyone has an e-mail address, and people do check them every day. If your promotion team has 20 volunteers and each sends a cheerleading fundraising email letter to at least 50 people they know, that’s already 1,000 prospective donors. You get the picture of how much money the squad could raise?

Social media marketing is also a popular and highly effective digital promotion tool. One of the most popular is Facebook, and you can reach a worldwide audience with just a single Facebook fan or group page. Upload videos and pictures of the cheerleading squad for content, then post your digital flyers, posters, and other fundraising campaigns. Share the cheerleading fundraising Facebook page and see donations come in.

Follow up with your Supporters

Following up with your supporters is an important task that can bring success to your cheerleading fundraising campaign. Participants, volunteers, and supporters will either make or break your fundraising campaign. Let them feel appreciated not by just saying a simple thank you, but include them in your digital promotion as well.

Take pictures with them and share with them your Facebook page, this way, they will see your utmost gratefulness for their participation. If you used the cheerleading fundraising email letter campaign, send a follow up thank you letter. Send thanks to everyone regardless of who supported your campaign or not. This way, both supporters and non-supporters will more likely participate in your next cheerleading fundraising campaign.