Creative or highly effective funding mechanisms

[ouooga]

Also I'll play. Charity poker tournament. Host a corps hall or seek private venue in exchange for sponsorship. Winner takes half of pot. Pair with optional silent auction and/or cash food/bar.

 

For added results, invite local media to attend or hype event in week leading up in exchange for sponsorship.

[BoaDci]

I think selling purple colored napkins on the black market would be ideal, or corps could buy mass amounts of lotto tickets.

[garfield]

In just about every city there is a AA ball team, or a college team, or a local little league circuit.  Some cities, like mine, have a coordinator who organizes drum lines and other performance groups to perform at games.  

Related, most college clubs, and surely the pro leagues, offer ways to man a sales booth at their games.  It takes a few volunteers...

 

[garfield]

1 hour ago, ouooga said:

Also I'll play. Charity poker tournament. Host a corps hall or seek private venue in exchange for sponsorship. Winner takes half of pot. Pair with optional silent auction and/or cash food/bar.

 

For added results, invite local media to attend or hype event in week leading up in exchange for sponsorship.

This is actually a great idea, and brings forth the memories of the number of Sertoma "Regattas" I attended and worked.

You're right: a private venue and a "membership fee" is a ticket to beer, brats, and poker.  Be great in an old Elks hall, or Lions, or...

Of course, today you'd also have to have a "powderpuff" version (can we even say that any more?) for women only.  A closed venue and a membership fee can offer all kinds of "entertainment".

I know a guy who's wife was so upset with him being at home after he retired that he rented a storefront in the center of town, put up an electronic stock ticker, put in beer taps, subscribed to every "man" magazine related to cars, hunting, and home improvements and sold "memberships" to his buddies.  He opened the doors each morning at 6:30am - the same time he used to arrive at his office - and his retired buddies showed up for morning coffee, lunch sandwiches made by his wife, afternoon football and poker games.  He closed the doors at 6:30 pm and went home to his wife.

Now, if there's not a corps-funding business idea in that, then I don't know where to look. 

 

Edited March 11, 2017 by garfield

[Fran Haring]

13 hours ago, garfield said:

In just about every city there is a AA ball team, or a college team, or a local little league circuit.  Some cities, like mine, have a coordinator who organizes drum lines and other performance groups to perform at games.  

Related, most college clubs, and surely the pro leagues, offer ways to man a sales booth at their games.  It takes a few volunteers...

 

Back in the 1990s, some friends here in the Baltimore area were involved with a color guard.... the group ran a food concession for one of  the big local high school football rivalry games at Baltimore's Memorial Stadium on Thanksgiving day. I volunteered to help out... I have never cooked that many hot dogs in my entire life. LOL. We were very busy, but had a great time... and the guard made a nice pile of cash!

[ouooga]

Alright, we have food trucks. In the off season, run a food truck. Or rent it out to another food truck and accept rental income. 

 

Side note: I've thought for a while that modern day food trucks might be better equipped than the traditional drum corps food trucks.

^That in mind, eventually work to get a newer, more modern food truck for the corps. Rent it out or run it yourself (obviously different overheard and income opportunities there, so it's cost benefit time) and eventually work your way up to a few. Now you have a higher values revenue stream and you improve a corps' ability to feed members in a situation where a food truck breaks down. 

[craiga]

I have just a few thoughts to share on this topic of fundraising.  To my knowledge, all of this is in the public domain now so I don't believe I am betraying any confidences.  I think one of Boston's first steps was to increase dramatically the size and scope of their BOD.  I think it is at or close to 50 members now, and it is a great mix of Boston area drum corps people and movers and shakers from the corporate and financial world in the city of Boston. The corps established Inspire Arts & Music, with the mandate of increasing the organization's outreach in the city.  Staring first with establishing a series of high school music festivals, then on to acquiring other, existing festivals, establishing a FREE brass program and a FREE percussion program for local city kids run out of the new corps hall in Hyde Park, aligning itself with the Blessed Sacrament WGI organization, and more recently, 7th Regiment and acquiring the recording studio and Fleetwood Records business.  They also opened their own musical instrument store, which is not just a mail order operation, but is actually a physical walk in retail space in the same building, which also houses a working community theatre.

Now, you might ask where does the money come from if most of these activities are free to the local kids?  That's where the corporate involvement comes from.  You can't just ask a successful company for money...you have to SHOW what you do with it.  So, if you, say, are able to present a powerpoint to a ABC Investments, XYZ Mutual Insurance Group, John  Smith Financial Group, the City of Boston, etc and SHOW how you are impacting kids on a local, regional and national level, that yields results.  So much results in fact, that several other drum corps ask you to show them what you have done (and some folks here would be astonished to know which corps).

When I was last involved directly with the corps, I remember working the bingo in Cambridge.  That was fine for simple cash flow at the time, but the folks on BAC's BOD deserve tons of credit for their work in diversifying both Boston's financial reach and operational depth.  I have seen on other threads comments about BAC "coming into money".  Nothing can be further from the truth.  It has been a painstaking, multiyear process by the BOD who literally have the motto "We will never die".  There is nothing wrong with car washes and bake sales, but at the end of the day, it is all about community outreach and engagement.  It is the long game that matters.

[Ghost]

Boston also has an investment type club that purchases their musical instruments.  When they sell the items, the investors earn a dividend.  At least I think this is the short version of what is done.

[soccerguy315]

14 hours ago, ouooga said:

 

I know PC does a golf tourny (is that different than an outing, I'm no golfer). Do other corps do this?

Crossmen do a golf tournament as well

[ouooga]

4 hours ago, craiga said:

I have just a few thoughts to share on this topic of fundraising.  To my knowledge, all of this is in the public domain now so I don't believe I am betraying any confidences.  I think one of Boston's first steps was to increase dramatically the size and scope of their BOD.  I think it is at or close to 50 members now, and it is a great mix of Boston area drum corps people and movers and shakers from the corporate and financial world in the city of Boston. The corps established Inspire Arts & Music, with the mandate of increasing the organization's outreach in the city.  Staring first with establishing a series of high school music festivals, then on to acquiring other, existing festivals, establishing a FREE brass program and a FREE percussion program for local city kids run out of the new corps hall in Hyde Park, aligning itself with the Blessed Sacrament WGI organization, and more recently, 7th Regiment and acquiring the recording studio and Fleetwood Records business.  They also opened their own musical instrument store, which is not just a mail order operation, but is actually a physical walk in retail space in the same building, which also houses a working community theatre.

Now, you might ask where does the money come from if most of these activities are free to the local kids?  That's where the corporate involvement comes from.  You can't just ask a successful company for money...you have to SHOW what you do with it.  So, if you, say, are able to present a powerpoint to a ABC Investments, XYZ Mutual Insurance Group, John  Smith Financial Group, the City of Boston, etc and SHOW how you are impacting kids on a local, regional and national level, that yields results.  So much results in fact, that several other drum corps ask you to show them what you have done (and some folks here would be astonished to know which corps).

When I was last involved directly with the corps, I remember working the bingo in Cambridge.  That was fine for simple cash flow at the time, but the folks on BAC's BOD deserve tons of credit for their work in diversifying both Boston's financial reach and operational depth.  I have seen on other threads comments about BAC "coming into money".  Nothing can be further from the truth.  It has been a painstaking, multiyear process by the BOD who literally have the motto "We will never die".  There is nothing wrong with car washes and bake sales, but at the end of the day, it is all about community outreach and engagement.  It is the long game that matters.

This is exactly where success can come in with this. Diversify within the business of what you do. I just finished a great book, Marketing Outrageously, and it had a whole chapter about businesses knowing what business they're really in. With drum corps, we assume it's the drum and bugle corps business, but in reality it's the music education and experience business. When you look at the job that way, you see so many more avenues for revenue, for programs, for community involvement. Boston's on a solid path right now.