Tag Archives: booster flags

Custom Flags – Stadium Flags vs Spirit Flags

Team Banners and Flags, spirit flag, spirit flags, team flag, team flags, school flag, school flags, high school flag, high school flags, custom flag, custom flags

The one question I get asked most often about our custom flags is, “what is the difference between your custom 3’x5′ stadium flags and your custom 3’x5′ spirit flags.”

There are more than just a few differences and I will try to explain them all here.

First, let me start by saying, the most important criteria when selecting a type of flag and the question I ask every customer is, “what are you going to do with your flags, what are you trying to accomplish.”  Not many people know what kind of flag they want but almost everyone knows what they want to accomplish.  I will first address a bullet list of the differences between the two types of flags and then I will address how to accomplish some common goals with flags.

Custom 3’x5′ Spirit Flags

– made of 100 D (denier) polyester

– lightweight, fly in very little wind

– minimum order is 50

– all flags have to be the same design/colors

– no blended colors, screen printed, prices include 2 colors plus white (extra colors slight up charge)

– normally come with grommets but can be made with pole sleeves

– tightly woven fabric so images are very crisp and colors are vibrant

– come in rectangle only

Custom 3’x5′ Stadium Flags

– made of 140gsm (grams per square meter) polyester

– fly very well but not as easily as spirit flags

– minimum order is 1

– each flag in the same order can be different

– blended colors are ok, even photos, colors are unlimited

– normally come with a pole sleeve but can be made with grommets

– coarser fabric, images are crisp but not as crisp as spirit flags, colors are good but not as vibrant as spirit flags

– come in rectangle or pennant shape

Now that we have that out of the way, how should you use them.  Let’s explore that, using some common goals.

Scenerio 1:  “I want 10 flags for my stadium,  all of the same design, what is my best option”, my first question is, “are you flying them 24/7 or just on game days?”, if the answer is 24/7 then the only good answer is Spirit Flags because you would not want to spend the money ($65 each) for stadium flags and wear them out in just one season.  If they will only be flown on game days, the answer gets a little more complicated.

Lets look at Stadium flags for this application – 10 3’x5′ stadium flags are $650 plus $30 shipping.  If you are putting them up and taking them down you will probably want our pole holders which are $8 each, so your total bill is $760 for 10 flags that will last you for many seasons since you will only be flying them 5 days a year for football and about 25 days a year for baseball at your home games.

Now let’s look at Spirit Flags for this application – 100 3’x5′ spirit flags are $1050 plus $30 shipping.  Since the spirit flags are so inexpensive, it only makes sense to put them up at the beginning of the season and take them down and throw them away when the season is over.  Take 50 flags out of the box and put them in a safe place so you will have 10 crisp new flags each year for the next 5 years.  Take the other 50 flags to your first game and put a booster club member in charge of selling them for $20 each.  In most cases, you will sell all 50 the first game and make $1000 so your net cost of having stadium flags for 5 years is $80, not bad.  You don’t need the pole holders since you are going to semi-permanently attach the poles to the stadium and leave them up.

Scenario 2:  “I want 50 flags for my stadium but I want half red and have blue”.  Again I ask, “24/7 or just game days”.  If it is just game days, we have about the same situation.

Stadium Flags – 25 red and 25 blue flags along with pole holders and shipping are $2050.

Spirit Flags – 100 Red and 100 blue flags are two separate orders so they cost $1080 each for a total of $2160.  Again, no need to get pole holders, use 50 per year and leave them up and you have 4 years of crisp flags.  If you are an entrepreneur,  go ahead and get the pole holders so your total bill is $2390.  Take 25 out of each box, sell the remaining 150 flags for $20 each and you now have $3000 which is a $610 profit in addition to your 50 free stadium flags and poles.

Now that I have your appetite wetted for selling Spirit Flags, let’s see just how far we can take this.

The more you buy, the cheaper they are.  The cheaper they are, the lower the price you can sell them for and the higher the profit margin,  The lower the price you sell them, the more you sell…you get the idea.  250 are just $9 each, 500 are just $7.50 each and 1000 are just $5.50 plus shipping.

The fundraising side of the Spirit Flags is nice but, I prefer the Spirit Raising side.  Our Spirit Flags have breathed new life into struggling sports programs across the country.

Consider the case of one such rural community in Texas.  Wins had come hard for this high school football program and as we all know, the school and every other program lives and breathes on the interest garnered by the football program.  On a typical Friday night during football season, the stands were half full and the team was loosing.  Enter the Spirit Flags.  The booster club bought and sold 1500 spirit flags one year.  They sold them to students and businesses all over town.  Suddenly there were flags flying all over town and everyone was curious to see what what was happening with the football program.  What do curious people do?  They go see what the fuss is all about.  Now, the stands were full and the school even had to put ropes around the end zones for standing room only areas to handle the overflow.  The team started winning and made the playoffs for 4 straight years. Was it all the spirit flags?  Well, I’m not going to say it wasn’t.

Now here is the un-calculated benefit…ticket sales to Friday night games are $6 each and with an increase of just 1000 tickets per game equals 5000 tickets a season and that is an additional $30,000 for the sports programs…just sayin!

How to run an effective Booster Club

run an effective booster club

We’re here to show you our best tips on how to run an effective Booster Club.

High School Booster Clubs have two basic functions.  It is debatable which of the two functions is most important.  The two functions are; raising money, to purchase items for the team that the school either will not or cannot purchase and supporting the team or teams by increasing community support.  In Texas, the University Interscholastic League (http://www.uil.utexas.edu/policy/booster_clubs.html) is a government body that sets standards for booster clubs and produces a list of rules that booster clubs must follow.  Not following UIL rules in Texas can put individual players and programs at risk of loosing eligibility so it is important that they be followed.  One basic way to stay out of trouble with the UIL is to ensure that the booster club does not pay for anything for the team directly.  The UIL rules state that we can donate money or merchandise but cannot pay for items directly so it is important that you make sure that anything that you supply to the team is in the form of a donation to the district.

Legal

501c3 (non profit) – There are two types of 501c3 filings with the IRS, 501c3 Corporation and 501c3 Association.  The Association is less expensive and easier to file as well as easier to run on a day-to-day basis.  The filing for a 501c3 costs about $750 and the paperwork, though time consuming, is not difficult to do on your own.  The 501c3 gets you out of paying income taxes but not sales tax.  To get exempt from sales tax you must also file for a sales tax exemption with the state comptroller.

Insurance

It is important to protect your club and the officers of the club from liability.  Insurance specific to booster clubs is available from many sources and there are companies that specialize specifically in booster clubs.  Policies that should be considered are Officer protection and General liability.  There are other policies that can be considered as well.

Community Support

The most important job of the booster club in my opinion is community support.  Next is a list of ways to increase community support but this area is limited only by your imagination.

Marquee messages – Make a list of businesses in your area and visit each of them to ask that they put sayings on their marquee that supports the school team.  This has been very effective in our town and the messages range from a simple “Go Pirates” to a more elaborate electronic board that has moving graphics with the school logo and game times.  This might seem like a small item but team spirit is contagious and the best way to spread it to everyone in your community is to constantly bombard them with small reminders.

Spirit flags – This has been the most effective support campaign we have run.  We purchase 1500 – 2000 flags each year with sayings and logos in support of our teams and we sell them to the local community with poles made of 1/2 inch metal conduit.  We also put 60 up on our stadium and have a dozen for each team to take to away games.  We put 100 flag pole holders on the telephone poles in town and we put up 100 flags each Thursday and take them down each Saturday after the game.  This flag program has really galvanized our community support.  The spirit flags can be purchased on line and you can find them for $5.50 each by searching for www.boosterbannerstore.com. ; These flags have become so commonplace in our town that it is impossible to travel any route to any place in the city limits without seeing one.  Kids have them hanging in their rooms, one school receptionist even made one into a window shade.  They can be strung together to hang across the basketball gym etc.  Our booster club sells them for $10 each and earns about $6,000 per year just on the flags.   Some clubs sell them for $10, some for $20 and recently some have been selling them for $25 each.  Having been involved with the flags for 7 years now, my belief is that $10 is the perfect price.  People feel that they are a good value and the booster club more than triples its money.  For those clubs that cannot afford the initial outlay to purchase 1000 flags, I suggest getting a local business to buy the flags and put their logo and contact information on the lower left corner of each flag.

Shirts for Staff – Our club recently got the local hospital to purchase 1000 collared shirts in our school color with the school logo embroidered on the left breast and the hospital logo on the left sleeve.  These shirts were handed out to all employees of the district by the football players at convocation prior to the start of school.  The employees are required to wear them on Fridays and the entire district is purple.

Travel uniforms – To be successful your team needs to look the part.  This year we purchased 150 collared shirts and had them embroidered for the team to wear as a travel uniform.  They wear khaki pants and the collared shirts to school on game days and then wear them on the bus to the game and they look very sharp.

Action shots – Each week we pick two action shots taken by local photographers and get 18”x24” pictures made to hang in temporary frames at the entrance to the locker room.  The next week, those two pictures are removed and hung permanently behind Plexiglas in the hallway and two new ones take their place.

Fundraising

T-shirts, Hoodies etc. – We purchased a vending trailer for $4,500 and have it stocked with all types of merchandise for sale.  This comes under the heading of support and raising money as we typically double our money on each item sold.  Our goal is to put a shirt with our logo on every back and a sticker on every car window in town.  You need to restrict the number of people involved in the merchandise sales due to the large amount of money involved (typically $20,000 to $25,000 per year) .  I recommend that you find one couple that will be able open the trailer before every Varsity game and close it at game time.

Discount cards – There are many companies that specialize in producing discount cards for teams to sell.  The cards typically have a dozen or so merchants listed with discounts for presenting the card.  The cards sell for $10-$20 each and the team typically gets 60% of the money.  This can turn into a real hassle if the card company is a drop-and-go type that just drops the cards off and has you mail them the check.  When interviewing companies for the job, be sure to insist that they will be there to hand out the cards and to collect the money, there is a lot of money to be made and they need to earn it.

Sponsorships – We contacted a local sign company and had them make us 6 sponsor boards that are mounted on the side of the stadium.  Each board is a different sponsor level ($5000, $2500, $1000, $500, $250, $100).  We formed sponsor packages that contain different perks for different levels of sponsorships.  The top three levels get a full-page ad in our program, the $500 level gets a half page ad and the $250 level gets a quarter page ad.  In addition they get their business name on the appropriate board as well as other items such as parking passes, season tickets etc.  This typically nets us about $25,000  – $30,000 each year.

Programs

This is a full-time job and requires someone with good computer skills and business savvy.  The printer needs to be chosen early (January) and they need to be easy to work with and willing to help.  The ad/sponsor sales need to begin in January when the businesses have a fresh advertising/donation budget.  You need to organize the parents and the team to get out and sell sponsorships and ads early.  There needs to be a deadline for sales and another for ad copy submission.  The sales should be halted in mid July and the absolute last day for ad copy has to be not later that August 1st or you will never get your program printed by the first home game.  There are as many ways to produce a program as there are printers to print them but one thing that you must keep in mind is that this is a service, not a money maker.  Our programs cost between $10 and $12 each to print and we sell them for $6.