Tennessee

School Fundraising in Tennessee: A Practical Guide

Tennessee school fundraising looks completely different in a Nashville suburb than it does on the Cumberland Plateau, and the advice that works in one place tends to fall flat in the other. Here is the practical shape of it, and where a recurring model earns its place.

Misty Gaunt Fundraising partner, GoodFundraising.org 615-414-3837

Two very different states, one set of forms

Tennessee runs long and thin, and school fundraising runs along with it. In the metro areas around Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville and Chattanooga, a booster club may be a small business with an officer slate, a bank account, a tax preparer and a volunteer coordinator who does nothing but volunteer coordination. Out past the interstate exits, in West Tennessee farm country or the ridge towns of East Tennessee, the same job title means one parent with a checkbook and a folding table.

Both groups get handed the same district paperwork and the same fundraising catalogs. That mismatch is the root of most of the frustration I hear on the phone.

The metro group's problem is competition. Every team, club, choir and grade level is asking the same families and the same local businesses, often in the same six weeks. The rural group's problem is arithmetic. There simply are not enough households in the community to run a product sale twice a year without going back to the same twenty people.

Booster clubs and PTAs are not the same animal

Worth spelling out, because the distinction changes what kind of fundraiser fits.

Booster clubs

A booster club exists to support one program: football, band, baseball, cheer, wrestling. It has a narrow constituency, which means a small pool of families but very high motivation inside that pool. Booster money tends to be spent on things with hard deadlines, like a competition entry fee or a bus deposit. In larger Tennessee districts a booster club may be formally incorporated and carry its own insurance. In smaller ones it may operate under the school's activity fund with far less structure.

PTAs and PTOs

A PTA or PTO serves the whole building. Broad constituency, much shallower motivation. The parent of a kindergartner and the parent of a fifth grader do not care about the same line items, so PTA fundraising is usually pitched around something everyone benefits from: playground equipment, library books, teacher supply grants, a technology cart.

The practical difference: a booster club can ask forty families for a real effort. A PTA has to ask four hundred families for something small and easy, or it gets nothing. A fundraiser that requires explaining, chasing and collecting is workable for the first group and close to impossible for the second.

The Tennessee fall problem

Anyone who has lived through a Tennessee autumn knows the calendar. Football starts in August heat. Marching band competition season stacks Saturdays through September and October, and the band travels further than the team does. Cheer runs alongside both. By the time the weather turns, half the families in the building have already been asked for money three times, worked a concession stand and driven to another county on a Friday night.

That is a wonderful culture and a terrible fundraising window. It concentrates almost all of the community's willingness to give into the exact ten weeks when everyone involved has the least free time.

Then spring arrives and there is nothing. Baseball and softball boosters need money in February and March, when nobody has run a fundraiser since the fall and the whole cycle has to start from a cold audience.

Why a recurring model suits Tennessee groups

Here is the model in one paragraph. Every participant gets a personal tracking link, called a Health Hero link. When someone orders through it, your organization earns 20% of that first order. When that same person reorders later, your organization earns 10% of every reorder, for as long as they keep ordering. Nobody handles cash, nobody stores product, and orders ship direct from LiveGood to the buyer.

Three things about that matter locally.

First, it works at small scale. A rural group with a thirty-person roster is not disqualified. The earnings are proportional to customers, not to whether you can fill a gymnasium.

Second, it works when families are scattered. In Middle Tennessee it is normal for a school community to be spread across two or three counties, with parents commuting in different directions. A link travels to an aunt in Knoxville and a coworker in Clarksville just as easily as to a neighbor.

Third, the products are priced a few dollars above cost, so a supporter who buys is saving money against retail rather than donating. That is the part that makes the reorder realistic, and the reorder is where the 10% lives.

What to actually do with this

1. Decide who owns it

   One officer, named out loud at a meeting. Recurring fundraisers fail when they belong to the committee in general rather than to a person in particular.

2. Start with the motivated core

   Not the full roster. The families who already show up. Twenty engaged participants beat two hundred names on a list.

3. Launch outside the fall crush

   Late spring or midsummer, so the recurring line is already building before football and band season take over the calendar.

4. Report the reorder number separately

   Your treasurer should see first orders and reorders as two lines. The second line is the one that tells you whether next year is easier.

A local number, not a call center

I am reachable on a 615 number, which covers Nashville and much of Middle Tennessee, and I would rather talk to a booster treasurer for ten minutes than have them guess from a web page. If the model does not fit your group, I will say so. Some programs genuinely are better off with the event they already run well.

If you are in the Nashville metro specifically, the suburban districts have their own quirks and I have written those up separately in fundraising for Nashville and Middle Tennessee groups. If you are on a booster board trying to build something that repeats year to year, start with booster club fundraising instead.

Misty Gaunt

Misty helps schools, teams, churches and nonprofits set up recurring fundraisers through LiveGood. She will look at your roster and tell you whether the model fits before you commit to anything. Call or text 615-414-3837.