Creating a Free Booster Club Website
Booster Clubs with great websites are typically the ones that are more successful. With a website, it makes it easier for people to find your booster club, and it makes it especially convenient to donate or join the booster club if they have the right system in place. The following lays out the commonly asked questions regarding booster club websites, and we do our best to answer them:
Why should we have a booster club website?
1. It Allows You to Solicit Payments/Donations:
The primary benefit, of course, to having an online presence, is the ability to solicit payments and donations. According to a study done by BlackBaud, online giving is incredibly common these days, and in fact is far and away the preferred method of donating for both generations X and Y. By not having the ability to accept payments online, your booster club is practically leaving money on the table.
2. You can Reach More People:
Generation Y is the millennial generation, and every alum who has graduated from your school in the last 10-12 years falls into this millennial category. Not only are there hundreds (if not thousands) of millennial alumni from your school out there, but these are the people who are online the most, and 84% of them have stated they prefer to give online. Ultimately, you end up neglecting this large (and willing to give) group by not engaging with them where they spend most of their time and money, which is on websites.
How do I go about making a booster club website?
1. Use Website-Making Tools:
A few of the free website tools that we recommend make it incredibly easy to build a beautiful and functioning website that will be easy to pass on to future board members. Here are some of the free website tools that we recommend for your booster club:
2. Do Not Accept Someone's Free Offer:
Many booster clubs will allow a member of the club or a tech-savvy friend to create a website on his or her own. This typically does not end well. A few things will happen: it will take him/her a ton of time to create it, the site will not be user-friendly, and most importantly it will end up being neglected once that person moves on (more about neglected websites below).
3. Make it Pretty:
The goal is to make your website aesthetically pleasing and very easy to navigate. Too often booster club websites drive people away with a mess of buttons, pictures, and out-dated information, like the picture below:
What all should be included on my booster club website?
1. Up-To-Date Information:
This is the most important aspect of your website!! Far too many booster clubs make the mistake creating their website, updating it for a span of time, but then neglecting to ever go back and refresh the content again. Have a board member, a high school student, or some sort of intern be in charge of updating the site. It doesn't have to be daily or weekly (though the more frequent, the better), but at least once a month there should be new information available on the site.
2. Mission Statement
Give a brief paragraph about who you are as a group, your goals, etc.
3. Board Member Contact Information:
List your board members, their roles, and how to get ahold of them.
4. Membership Information/Ability to Join:
Be sure to make it as accessible as possible for people to either join right there online (with tools like Spectator), or at least provide them with information on how to join the club.
5. Donation Option
In addition to joining the club, allow visitors of the site the ability to contribute to the booster club on the spot (again, Spectator can help you with that).
6. Sports Schedules
This is a great way to continually increase traffic to your site, as well as to increase game attendance. If your community has an easy way to find where and when the games are, they are much more likely to actually attend the games.
7. Link to Social Media
A good social media presence is also key for successful booster clubs. Link up all your accounts to your booster club website so that people can navigate to your accounts and follow and like, etc. This will help increase your connection with your members and donors and will encourage them to continually visit your site and hopefully financially contribute.
8. Acknowledge Current Donors, Members, Sponsors:
An optional element to add to your site is a page where you recognize all of your booster club members, donors, and corporate/business sponsors. This is one great way to show them how much you appreciate their support and publicly recognize them on a platform for others to see.
9. Meeting Minutes
As your booster club should be a registered 501(c)3 nonprofits, the meeting minutes should be public for anyone to see. You should have downloadable documents of these somewhere on your booster club website so that general interested parties may view them.
How do I promote my website to drive traffic to it?
Link up with your school's existing website:
Most commonly, the school's website is easier to find as it is higher on the Google search page. Embed the link to your site within the school website where it will make sense, such as on the athletics page, or the activities page, depending on the function of your booster club.
Utilize social media:
Just like you tell visitors of your site to go to your social media pages, you should also use social media to tell people to go to your site. You should of course use social media to update people on events and happenings with your group and the school, but you ultimately want them to come to your booster club website so that they can be prompted to join the booster club or donate to you through your system.
Use the school newsletter or email blast:
As most all families in the school district receive these types of notification methods, it will be a great way to drive traffic and make people aware of your booster club’s new one-stop shop for all information.
Announce at home games:
Have your announcer in the press box simply announce a couple of times throughout the game that the booster club has a new site. Have him/her say, “Hey folks, did you know that the Tiger booster club is now online? Visit tigerboosterclub.com to see all information for Tiger activities as well as to donate or join the booster club online.” The goal here is to have people flooding to your site on their phones while at the game, and hopefully they will follow the link to your donation platform and give to your club online.
How do I pass on the site responsibilities?
As stated earlier, this is one of the biggest struggles booster clubs face when it comes to having a website. Many times, when a tech-savvy officer steps down, there is no one there to take their place and maintain the site. Using one of the tools we listed earlier will make the process of passing it on simple. Simply let the new person take over the administrative account, and they can go in to edit and add any and all information on the booster club website. No one needs to be a coder to build beautiful websites, you just have to care enough about the betterment of your booster club and your school, and the free tools out there will help you build an amazing booster club website.