Making your own discount cards

It is a TON of work... many times getting the "talk to corporate" message then corporate saying "if manager wants to cut into his profits he can" message from them.

You can do what a guy here did a couple years back... make them, not get approval and we'll them anyway... I wouldn't recommend it

We're coming up on year 6 of doing it ourselves and it's been great for us. We're in a smaller community so more folks know each other, but I did it in Fremont, CA and San Ramon, CA, as well.

Design - Bah, no need to be a designer. Put your logo in the upper right corner, the schedule on the left side. Put the price and your website on the right below the logo. Use school colors on the front. We are purple and gold so 1 year is purple, the next is yellow/gold. We're going gold foil this year at no extra cost. The back is simply a list of the vendors. I get about 13 each year, that's what fits.

Work - You would be surprised how many smaller shops there are that are willing to work with you. Chains, yeah, they have to check with corporate but they will work with you. I've got Burger King (free Whopper with any combo meal), Subway (free small soda and cookie with any 1' sandwich), and Round Table (10% off any purchase, excluding booze). Also got a 5% off of groceries at a local store that has 3 locations, good at any location.

It's work to do this. But the Boosters pay $0.65'ish for the cards, I get 1,200 for about $780 or so. We bring in $5k each year. Takes probably 20 hours total time to get the vendors identified and confirmed. If we were with a 3rd party (and after talking with the vendors, they don't like getting calls from a company asking them to pay to be on a discount card) they would take, what, 30-50% of the total? So for the 20'ish hours that we coaches put in, mostly me, the team gets to keep $1,500-2,500 more than if we'd done a 3rd party, which is $75-125 per hour. To me that's a fair exchange.

My experience with the services is that they do all the leg work, that's true, and they do a very good job at it. But they also hit the vendors up for a fee to be on the card. So not only are they collecting from the players but from the vendors as well. Not begrudging them that margin at all, it's a market and they do a good job with it. But one of the things that I do like about this is getting out and talking with the vendors, making contacts with them.

Finding Vendors - I broke up the expected buyers into 3 levels, kids/young adults, people with kids, people without kids. And then identified the physical areas around here, did the matrix, and then mapped in the vendors that we coaches could think of to go into the boxes. That really helped identify who we might approach and still have value for the buyer.

Ain't nothing for free. I'd rather my coaches and I do some leg work than have a chunk of what the kids raise go to someone else. I'm having a hard time justifying doing the (non-Hudl) email fundraiser just because of that % that goes to the vendor.

I should know better than to try and edit something I've posted.

www.dropbox.com/s/wjfgpsld46n7ben/IMG_2624.jpg?dl=0

We had a mother who was involved in boosters go out and get businesses. She put together a heck of a card of local businesses. Cost of 1500 cards was about $500 and we sold 1000 cards. Made $19,500. New school I am at did the same thing and they had never made more than $7000 on the fundraiser before. This year we made $14,000. We used a company called duracard to make the cards.

Depends on your time-constraints and relationships. If you have the time and want to do the leg-work, you'll make a lot more money. If you have a booster or a team mom who is talented and connected, set them on a mission to get it done and you'll keep a lot more. It's just a matter of who you have and who you know. I did it in a small town both ways and it's typically easy to get private restaurants and franchisees. Going after corporates is hard and is where the middle man guys have it down - they usually have several of those that they'll put on the breakaway tabs on on the front of the card.

Both ways are worth doing - this is the best fundraiser I've ever done.

I tired it, It was a little more trouble than I found worth it. 

If you do make sure your card is professional looking and printed by something that does that.

I tried to print them and they sucked.

If you can get it done it could be really good. 

@hsrose hit most of the process at the programs I've been a part of. We made our own. We "required" each kid sell 10 by the deadline at $10 each or they'd have to do some extra conditioning, then had boosters sell them at games, too. We'd typically pocket a few thousand when it was all said and done.  It was enough to buy all new road or home jerseys every year and pay for team swag.

You ideally do this over time in the spring and summer. That 20 hours of work doesn't have to be done all at once or at a busy time for you if you put in a couple of hours here and a couple there. You probably have some kids on the team with parents who own small businesses, so they're usually pretty easy so sign up (Dad's a mechanic? How about a $99 brake job special?). It's well worth the time and effort, IMO.

You can also use the opportunity when you're getting them on the discount card to try to upsell them on buying an advertising banner to display at the stadium for a few hundred bucks. It adds up.

Another thing to remember is that once you get a business to sign up for free advertising, the next year you can keep them. So instead of having to fill 13 slots or however many fit on the card, you just contact the ones you had last year to get their approval to stay there as-is, then recruit a couple to replace anyone who backs out or have gone out of business. You can usually knock that out in a day over the summer.

It beats the crap out of spending 8 hours in the sun to make $500 off a car wash or roadblock.

I haven't done it myself, but......last spring I got called into the principal's office. Somebody had called the school about "football players" selling cards. We weren't selling cards. Turns out, once we got to the bottom of it, there were 2 kids--not players--who on their own had made up cards. They contacted businesses, got them signed on, got plastic cards printed, and went door to door selling them. They were wearing lacrosse jerseys--not football--to help with sales.