We just did our Alumni game today and changed things up this year and it made it into our season kick off event/fundraiser and the results were fantastic, so I thought I would pass along how we organized it.
We started out giving each player a pack of 5 BBQ tickets to sell at $10 with instructions to go find someone else other than your family to sell them to try to bring in new fans. Some did, some did not, but with 50ish kids in the program we sold 175 tickets in advance.
We organized the day to have the JV vs. Freshmen at 11:00AM and then the Alumni game at 2:00PM to spread out the day and BBQ. We set up the BBQ so we would feed fans for the first game and the players afterward and they could hang around and watch the Varsity team play. We would then feed the Alum game fans and the Alums/Varsity players at the end of their game. The boosters also made sure they had a station with logo’d T-shirts, jackets, hats, etc available to sell, which worked out great for new players, the Alums, plus extended families who came to watch.
It was an all-afternoon baseball carnival. The Varsity kids showed up a little early to watch the new kids and then the many of the younger kids and families stayed and watched the Alum game. We also made sure we had all of the Alums register and got some information from them on their grad year and where they went on to play in college so the announcer mentioned some tidbits about them when they came up to bat to honor the former players.
It ended up being a great experience from the Freshmen to the Alums and really united our program as well as raising some needed $$.
Original Post
