Although the waters have seemingly been still on the blog in the last week, this is just the calm before the storm as there has been a great deal of activity in the Music Boosters camp during the last week. The Friends of the Music Boosters annual appeal has been mailed, the Gala Benefit Concert and Silent Auction are moving furiously towards performance date, and the Calendar Raffle is taking shape for distribution and sale! This week we’ll present all three fundraisers under the microscope beginning with our annual appeal for friends.
FRIENDS OF THE MUSIC BOOSTERS
This annual appeal is one of the largest fundraising efforts the Music Boosters host. Simply put, we ask local businesses, alumni families and current families to become our friend by making a tax deductible donation. Sounds simple, right? Well … it is a process. Here is some insight into the workings of the Friends campaign.
The Music Boosters Association has historical contact data for each family that we have access to since 2002! Entered into our “master cylinder” Excel spreadsheet, we are able to separate alums from current students, making a concerted effort to eliminate duplication of letters due to multiple family member performers! This activity always has twists and turns as new students join the band or chorus after the start of school in the fall but we eventually catch up and finalize our current student list. Once that happens the mailmerge for labels takes place.
In the meantime the appeal letters, three to be exact, are prepared. Each version is specific to the group to whom it is mailed. And there are two giving levels, one for businesses and one for private donations. Approximately 700 letters were prepared for mailing this year.
Included in the mailing each year is our Performance Calendar card, a nifty brightly colored reference card with the full school year of performances on one side and the football schedule/half-time shows on the other. This piece goes to everyone…we want to make sure that our prospective donors see the full picture of the contributions our students make to school and community. Once again, there are minor twists and turns with dates and times at the beginning of the year but once it’s finalized, off it goes to the printer. Finally, this year there was also a piece that went into the envelopes for an upcoming special event, printed three per sheet and then cut to size.
Labels, envelopes, three versions of the appeal letter, performance cards, special invitations. There are lots of pieces and time that go into this fundraiser. The final step, the actual mailing preparation, was supervised this year by Corresponding Secretary Vicki Kikuchi and we were fortunate to have a small army of students pitch in to help. A couple of hours later, a few laughs and off went the envelopes for postage!
Our efforts on this appeal are always handsomely rewarded by our friends whose donations bring our total to an annual average in the thousands of dollars range! All donors to the Friends of the Music Boosters campaign are given special recognition in the BHS Holiday Concert program and since we are a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization we provide a receipt for their generous donation. All revenues from this appeal are applied to our general fund for scholarship commitments and programs that we support in the music department.
Stay tuned for other fundraising updates this week! If you would like a performance calendar or would like to make a contribution and be our friend, you can contact us at burlgregs@yahoo.com.
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