This fundraising idea has been around as long as there have been two things: stadiums, and a need for money!  Obviously, I didn’t brainstorm this one one my own!  Corporate sponsorships are the bread and butter of most professional sports teams.

Here is how I made it happen for my high school football team at Linfield Christian in Temecula, CA when I was the Head Football Coach there.

One of my best fundraisers has been selling banners that we put up in our stadium.  We sold 3 foot by 8 foot banners for $300 each; spent about $75 to have the banner made.  This gave us a net profit of about $225.  The banners were sold by kids to the community.  Each kid was instructed to sell one banner.   I was at a private school when we did this, where many of the kids have great financial resources in the form of their parents!  Many of the parents owned their own businesses or there close friends did.

Coaching at Linfield Christian in 2004; making offensive adjustments.
Coaching at Linfield Christian in 2004; making offensive adjustments.

We collected business cards as the art.  We had about 60 kids in the program my first year of doing these banner sales.  Some kids sold none, some sold 4 or 5.  About $225 x 60 banners we sold = $13,500 was our approximate net income on this.  This was MINIMAL work on me!

The part I played:

A. Motivating kids and their families to sell banners.  I motivated them through meetings, phone calls, emails, and simple word of mouth on a daily basis.

B.  Wrote the banner sponsorship letter.  (30 minutes).

C.  Made copies of the letters to pass out to kids. (5 minutes)

D.  Served as the point person for questions about the banner sales.  (60 minutes total)

This is what our banners looked like.
This is what our banners looked like.

E.  Received and processed the payments and business cards over a 90 day period.  (120 minutes total)  Each time I received an envelope, I opened it, put the business name, contact person, contact phone number, email, payment received on to an Excel document.  I would turn in the checks to the business office once a week.  We had a total of 12 deposits I made.

F.  Took all of the business cards down to the local banner shop, gave them instructions on what to do.  (20 minutes)

G.  Picked up the banners. (10 minutes)

H.  Supervised the hanging of the banners after practice one day.  Used all 60 kids and 8 coaches to help hang the banners (15 minutes).

I.  Wrote a thank you letter to all sponsors and mailed them out (30 minutes).

Here’s the kicker, the very next year, we sent out letters to all of those who bought banners.  We told them they will get the SAME exposure but we had lowered the price to $200 since we already had the banner.

About 40 businesses signed up again at $200 profit per!  Easiest $8,000 I’ve ever made!!

See some attached documents for this.  I’m no longer at Linfield Christian where I did this Banner program.