AFM Home | The Staff Report | Dec 2003

Building a strong, durable football program is much like building a quality home. Before you can begin construction you must have a solid foundation and the most important ingredient in your program’s foundation is the support of your community. It is with this support that will see your program through the highs and lows of a season.

1. Get Involved in the Community: Before you can reasonably ask the community for their support, they must know more about you than your name and win-loss record. By getting your program involved in year-round community activities the community will have a vested interest in you, your staff and players. There are endless community programs that you can choose from to get involved, programs like Habitat for Humanities, reading programs at elementary schools and working with the less fortunate.

2. Establish a Partner Program: Simply put, a Partnership Program is a working relationship between your football program and local businesses where you and the business receive benefits. As a football program, your benefit is generally fundraising opportunities by providing corporate partners access to your team’s fan base at events. In return, the businesses are able to promote their services to your fans, as well as show the community their support of your program. Here are a few examples of how you can partner with businesses: 1) Halftime Entertainment: a local business sponsors contests at halftime for fans to get involved, such as kicking field goals, etc. 2) Pre-Game Activities: local car dealerships sponsor the pre-game tailgate party and display several of their new cars and trucks. 3) Radio Show: partner with a restaurant to do your weekly radio show from location – the restaurant gets promoted and increases businesses on show night and you get a show sponsor.

3. History of the Program: Whether you’ve been coaching at your school for 10 years or one day, you’ve probably heard the community talk about the good ‘ol days where teams won championships. Its easy to look at this as the “bar” that others before you raised or you can look at it as an excellent way to build community support by bringing the past back to the present. Many schools have built community support by having reunion weekends of successful teams, developing a Letterman’s Club and establishing a Hall of Fame inside the football facilities. Not only do these concepts go along way in building community support, they also provide your program tremendous fundraising opportunities by allowing companies to sponsor these events. Some schools have even had teams from the past autograph replica helmets or mini-helmets to auction off at fundraisers. Tapping into your program’s history builds community support and fundraising efforts.

4. Be Creative: The most important thing to remember in the process of building community support is to be creative. Whether you completely overhaul your current community events or just make a few subtle changes, try and add that one little thing that will give the community something different. If you do a golf tournament, have your head coach stay at a par 3 hole and have a “closest to the pin” competition with each group – winners receive an autographed helmet from the team. Create an Honorary Coach program where local businesses sponsor a local person to be honorary coach for a quarter – this person stands on the sideline and receives an autographed ball or helmet from the team.

If done correctly, building community support is a win-win-win situation for the community, local businesses and your program.

Compilied with the help of Alan Thomas who is currently Collectibles Product & Brand Manager at Schutt Sports and has over eight years of experience in athletic departments at Auburn University and the University of Georgia.