22 Jul Football Spirit Items Top Sellers for Fundraising

If you have just taken over the football booster club at your child's school, you are likely well aware of the overwhelming feelings of running a school booster club store. Chances are, the past president didn't bother passing off notes to you explaining where they bought their past football spirit items or even what they bought. Now you are left to basically start all over due to the lack of organization passed on to you.

In the words of the Avett Brothers song, Ill With Want, "it's evil and it's daunting." There is a high chance that's how you are feeling right now. However, the staff at Perfect Imprints are highly experienced with dealing with school spirit items, and we want to make this process easy for you. Check out these top 6 selling spirit items for the football season.

Top Selling Football Spirit Items

1. Mini Footballs

Mini footballs are the top selling school spirit items for the football season. Here's how you make money for your team: Sell business sponsorships to your local businesses. You can choose any amount that you want and set an achievable goal. For example, if you are selling sponsorships for $250, you might offer the business logo to be placed on 100 footballs that will be thrown into the crowd at the stadium by the cheerleaders. If the lot of 100 mini footballs cost $200, then you make $50 for each sponsorship that you sell. Of course, don't put the selling burden on yourself. Task each player to sell at least one sponsorship and offer prizes for the top 3 sellers. If you have 40 players on the team and each player sells just one sponsorship, that equals $2000. The more you sell; the more money you raise. In addition, your cheerleaders get to throw out more footballs and keep the crowd excited. Fans LOVE to catch these footballs!

 2. Thundersticks

One thing is certain to be found at football stadiums and that is noise. Lots of it! Fans love to yell, scream, and vent out their frustrations over bad calls, close calls, and great plays. That is why thundersticks are so popular. These inflatable noisemakers are banged together to make a booming noise to cheer on your favorite team or to possibly get in the heads of your opponents through the deafening noise made by hundreds of pairs of these stadium noisemakers being banged simultaneously.

These fun spirit items come in several different colors and have a HUGE area for a custom imprint. You can get sponsors to pay for the thundersticks and include their logo on the sticks. The imprint area is large enough that you can also include your school mascot and team name. Then, you can sell them at your booster club store and make 100% profit. These will be big sellers. You can expect to sell these anywhere from $3 to $5. Selling 100 pair of sponsored thundersticks at $5 each is $500 profit. Selling 250 pair is $1250 profit. Not too shabby!

3. Stadium Seat Cushions

Stadium cushions aren't one of those fun school spirit items that fans buy at footballs games, but rather a necessary item for comfort. The hard bleacher seats reek havoc on behinds after several continuous hours of sitting. Rainy nights or cold nights are especially uncomfortable and just about necessitate having a stadium seat cushion.

These spirit items are among the biggest money makers for football booster clubs. That's because they can sell for $5-$10 each, plus you can sell up to 20 sponsorships that can be printed in business card size on the back of the cushion, while proudly supporting your school mascot on the front of the cushion. To determine the cost of each sponsorship, simply price out the number of cushions you want to buy (and ultimately sell), along with all the associated costs of setup, second side printing, and shipping. Then take that total and divide by the number of sponsorship space you will sell. That gives you the per sponsorship price and it fully pays for the cushions.

Your next move simply involves selling the cushions at the games, and these are easy to sell, particularly on cold or raining game nights!

4. Pom Poms

Many of the coordinating sports at schools have set various jurisdictions when it comes to selling spirit items at games. For example, maybe a certain club or organization may be in charge of running the concession stand to raise money for their club, while the football booster club sells certain spirit items such as the stadium seat cushions and thundersticks.

When it comes to pom poms, the cheerleaders typically have this one wrapped up! Promotional poms are easy to sell at games. Fans will most often cheer louder and more when they get to shake a pom pom. These traditional football spirit items are excellent to raise money as well as team spirit, which are two jobs of a cheerleading squad!

There are several choices with promotional poms, such as the long rooter handle, solid handle, ring tab handle, or the mascot handle. Overall, they are the same streamers, just varying handles based upon your preference. Depending on the quantity of pom poms ordered, you can get the cost under $1 each and easily sell them for $2-$3. Therefore, you can either double or triple your investment. Want to increase your profits even more? Get a business sponsor to buy the poms through their sponsorship and make 100% profit when selling the pom poms.

5. Megaphones

These plastic megaphones are not the expensive, over-sized megaphones that the cheerleaders use, but the cheap plastic ones that are made for the fans.

These spirit items can help your club or team raise money as well as encourage more team spirit from your fans. These megaphones are lightweight and they have a large imprint area for your mascot, and if you choose, a business sponsor logo printed on the opposite side.

Many of our megaphones can be personalized with your business logo or team mascot for around $1 and you can easily sell these for $2 to $3. These are another easy sell at the stadium. Not only can you sell these in your booster club as a solo item, but you can also sell them at the concession stand (with the optional cap) filled with popcorn. You just charge a premium on the popcorn for those who want theirs served in a megaphone. This is a great opportunity to work in tandem with the group who runs the concession stand. By going in together to buy the megaphones, you can often get them at a cheaper price.

6. Stadium Cups

Plastic stadium cups are big sellers at football games, but not by themselves. They sell when they are filled with the favorite soft drink of the fans. Whether that drink be Coke, Pepsi, Sprite, 7-Up, Dr. Pepper, or anything else, they are a necessary item. Sure, your concession stand can serve drinks in throw away cups, but those are expensive and lower your profits. Instead, get a business to sponsor a set of 250 or 500 stadium cups with their logo and contact information on one side and your school and team info on the opposite side. Then you have free cups to serve beverages and give your fans a take home item!

Choose from many different popular school colors and upgrade from your disposable cups that have been used for years in your concession stand. Additionally, reusable cups like these are much better for our environment than creating tons of waste at each football game.

Conclusion

One of the most important aspects of fundraising and running a booster club is to make sure you have the rest of your club on board with your ideas. It takes more than one person to keep things running smoothly. Then you have to solicit the help of your team players and encourage each person to step up and make a sale of a sponsorship.

Don't be afraid to try to new items to sell in your booster club store. Newer items often sell well; however, some of the classic items such as those mentioned above may never die.

One final pointer to mention is regarding the selling of your school spirit items at your football games. The mistake that many booster clubs make is to just stay in your little booster club sales tent or stand and wait for fans to come to you to buy items. Oftentimes, a large portion of your fan base doesn't even know where your store is located, so they never bother to get up and search for it. Being more mobile and walking around the stadium with some of your items for sale can generate many more sales and make for a much more successful fundraising campaign.

Perfect Imprints has been specializing in school spirit items since 1999. Please feel to call one of our experts if you have any questions, even if you have no idea where to get started. We are here to help!

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