When it comes to fundraising, the athletic boosters at Stiles Middle School in Texas strive to create the best volunteer experience possible.
Led by Lauri Smit, a five-year veteran of the Stiles Middle School Athletic Boosters, she is dedicated to making Stiles’ athletic fundraising easy and stress-free for both her volunteers and the parents of student athletes.
“Five years ago, we piloted FanFood for concession sales at our track meet,” said Lauri. “Following that first event, we quickly realized other ways that we could use FanFood to support our students and fundraising initiatives. At the same time, our district actually implemented a cashless mandate, so our timing couldn’t have been better.”
From reducing headaches around cash and check-handling to replacing previously-manual tasks, see how Stiles Middle School’s athletic boosters made their fundraising more efficient with FanFood.
After a long day of school and competition, there’s nothing more a parent wants than ensuring their student athlete gets fed.
Before FanFood, player meal purchases required parents to write out checks that students would hand-deliver to the coaches, only for them to pass onto the booster club parent. The process was manual, effort-intensive, and occasionally left the booster club tied up with bounced checks.
With FanFood, it’s now easier than ever for Stiles’ Athletic Boosters to receive orders and payment from parents for player meals.
“We first used FanFood ahead of a spring track meet, and the parent response was tremendous,” said Lauri. “In the morning, our parents could pre-purchase meals from our concession stand for their students to pick up that afternoon. When I arrived and opened the concession stand, our volunteer staff already had over a dozen FanFood orders fulfilled!”
The same model works for meals that the booster club gets from local restaurants: parents order and pay through FanFood, which simplifies the order fulfillment and accounting for the booster club. Currently, the Stiles Athletic Boosters offers player meal pre-purchasing for their football, volleyball, and basketball athletes.
To maximize booster club donations, the process must be borderline effortless.
“Our parents are always looking for ways to donate, but don’t always know how,” said Lauri. “With FanFood, we can now accept donations at events, while parents are purchasing their student’s meals, or at virtually anytime.”
At the checkout page, parents can add an optional “tip” that goes directly to the booster club. With safe and secure payments, parents can feel confident placing their donations via credit card.
Lauri says that the school’s coaches saw tremendous value in digital donations through FanFood. Altogether, FanFood drastically improved the booster club’s ability to accept donations from their community.
One popular fundraiser the booster club operates is yard sign sales. Managing fulfillment year-round, the booster club needed a way for parents to order their yard signs.
With FanFood, parents simply purchase their yard signs online and pick up their purchase at the school during home games.
“I enjoy being able to manage the setup and reports by myself. Volunteering at our booster club is not normal hours, so with FanFood I appreciate the ability to handle everything within one system.”
