The Money Chase

Sure technology is great, but how can small schools afford it?
by: Jane Musgrave
© More from this issue

          
When Michael Christensen needed money to buy high-tech equipment to revolutionize his football program at Lakewood High School in California, he got it that old-fashioned way: He went to his booster club with his palms outstretched.

"Luckily, we have a real active booster club," he says of the group's ability to raise the money he needed to buy a $13,000 video-editing system.

Without a good booster club or a well-heeled sugar daddy, however, most high school and small college coaches are hard-pressed to come up with the cash they need to buy new uniforms, much less sophisticated computer equipment.

Like many school districts, the one in Lakewood will give coaches computers, just as they provide computers to chemistry, history and English teachers. "But you have to go through so much paperwork and it's a real time-consuming process," Christensen says. "It can be done but it takes a lot more patience than I have."

And then, even if a coach gets a computer from his school district, in many ways, he is right back where he started. Without money to buy software that help him edit and analyze game films and computerize his playbooks, scouting reports and tendency charts, the computer is about as useful as a potted plant on his desk.

Luckily, Christensen says, many software - and hardware - companies have financing plans so a school doesn't have to come up with all the money in one year. Diligent research will lead coaches to companies that have good financing plans and also ones that sell systems that are within a small school's financial reach.

"College systems start at about $100,000," Christensen says. His initial reaction to the price tag was predictable: "Oh my gosh, I can't afford that."

But, he says, by shopping around and researching various products he was able to find one that his Los Angeles area school could afford and would do what he needed it to do. He picked LRS Sports.

Still, even with financing plans and alternative products, computer systems remain too expensive for many schools.

Randy Sinclair, director of sales and marketing for Quick Scout Technologies, says he wants to help coaches find the money they need to buy the equipment. Admitting that his efforts to help coaches will also help the company that sells video-editing systems, he says he is convinced there is private grant money available that could help coaches buy computer equipment. The problem is finding it.

During the upcoming months, he plans to comb records of non-profit corporations throughout the nation in search of ones that might have money available for schools to purchase video-editing or other types of computer equipment. If his search proves successful, he wants to put a grant template on his company's Web site to spare coaches the time-consuming task of writing their own grant applications.

And, he says, if he can't find some physical fitness or sports organization that has money available for football programs in poor inner cities or rural areas, he may try to persuade computer manufacturers, the NFL or others to start a foundation. "It may take a year or so to figure out, but we think there's lots of opportunities out there to find grant money for football programs."

At the same time he is trying to find pots of money for schools, his company is also trying to help schools raise money through technology so then can, in turn, buy high-tech equipment.

As part of a pilot program at a school in Cleveland, Ohio, Quick Scout founder Randy Bukowsky is helping the booster club put game highlights on the school's Web site. More importantly, he is helping the club make deals with companies so that the school gets a percentage of any purchases someone makes on the Internet if they get to the cyberstore from the school Web site.

For instance, if the mother of one of the football players, watched the video highlight of the team's most recent game and then went to Amazon.com and bought a book, the school would get a percent of the money she spent on the book. Companies participating in the program have agreed to share a percent of any purchase that is made by someone who came to their site from the school's Web site.

So far, the school in Cleveland is getting about 7 percent of the sales from companies that have agreed to the deal, Bukowsky says. That is far more than the 1 or 2 percent he imagined schools would get when the program was initially launched.

During the next year, Sinclair says the company wants to expand the fund-raising program to include as many as 50 schools across the nation.

Ultimately, as technology marches on, he expects schools will be able to make money from selling advertisements to businesses who want their ads to appear on the school Web site when football games are broadcast on it. It would be a cyber-version of ads local businesses now hang in stadiums, he says.

As former educators, both Sinclair and Bukowsky says they are hopeful that the fund-raising programs they are initiating will not only help a school's football program, but the school as a whole.

"My guess is that the money won't just go to the football program," Sinclair says. "My guess is that it will go to the athletics department and then filter out to the rest of the school."

NEW BOOK!

Digital Download - 304 Pages of Football Forms for the Winning Coach