Who's in charge of your booster club?

We have a Mothers Club that handles everything. We have one coach that is the point man and they go to him with everything. It has worked for us well. The Head Coach has final say on everything as far as what is given to the players but they don't go too crazy. A few meals some t shirts things like that.

I have seen booster clubs operate in various ways at various schools I've coached at. Currently, we have a pretty good setup. The Booster Club here started for just football, but now serves all sports. When someone joins the Booster Club, their donation can be allocated primarily to a particular sport, with a small portion going to a general fund. What is in the general fund is used to pay for items that benefit most sports. Any fundraising--with football being the main one through program ad sales--goes into that sports fund and can not be used for other sports. Most of what we spend on football comes from this fund, not gate receipts and we get next to nothing from the district. The Head Football coach, athletic director and booster club president have acces to the funds. Two of the three must agree on an expenditure. Basically, I say, "I want so-and-so" and they buy it as long as we have the money.

At my previous school, the Booster Club was an all sports club. You could ask the Boosters for help with big ticket items, but our football budget came from the athletic department--gate receipts. In order to get help with football, we had a Football Families club (started as Football Moms) who did a lot of the non-financial things you want from a Booster club--although they would raise 5-10 thousand a year from concessions, t-shirt sales, etc. I like my current setup better, but it does depend on parents who are willing to go out and raise the money.