Forte Offers Advice On Paying For Drum Corps

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With the economy the way it is, more and more students are finding it harder to raise the funds to march with the corps of their choice. Many corps offer sponsorship programs, scholarships, fundraisers, or work programs to help their members raise the funds to participate each year. Students are getting more and more inventive on the methods used to fundraise their dues and tour fees.

Forte helped launch a Facebook Group called ‘How to Pay for Drum Corps’ in an effort to collect ideas to share with their corps members and the drum corps world as a whole. A sampling of this list is available for download on their webpage, www.fortecorps.org/news.htm

The Direct link for the PDF file is www.fortecorps.org/media/pay.pdf

The PDF is full of ideas to help ANY corps hopeful raise their money, not just Forte members. While, some of the ideas are specific to the Dallas-Fort Worth area where Forte is based, the concepts can be applied (with a little research) to most any area.

Here are a sampling of the ideas shared in this document:

— Send sponsorship letters to friends, family, church, school, and local community. Sample Sponsorship Letters are available from most Corps

— Get some friends together and sponsor a Car-Wash for donations. Bring out your instruments and show people what you are fundraising for

— Write a letter to your State Representative, Congressman, Mayor, or other Political figures from your area.

— Restaurant Coupons – Finding a local restaurant that you can help promote by selling coupons for a meal at their restaurant. Most restaurants will provide the tickets to you at a discount for the meal, and donate back any un-cashed-in coupons.
— Neighborhood Chores – Pet Sitting, Dog Walking, Lawn cutting, Baby Sitting

— Taste Tests. Many companies are looking for High School/College Age Students to taste their products. Many of these companies provide cash for your participation.

and many more ideas! Forte will update this document when new ideas come in, so feel free to share your experiences with Chris Green, Corps Director – director [at] fortecorps [dot] org or through the ‘How to Pay for Drum Corps’ facebook group.

Posted by on Monday, March 1st, 2010. Filed under DCI Open.