Bake sales, car washes and more: fundraising isn’t a stranger to SPA and is often carried out by student-led groups to donate to external organizations. However, it’s been historically enforced that sports teams aren’t able to fundraise for themselves, yet the reason behind this has never been uncovered.
K-12 Director of Athletics Paul Moyer oversees all finances for the department and teams and briefed the programming behind this long standing policy. The policy exists to save students and their parents time.
He believes teams shouldn’t be able to fundraise for themselves so they can focus on being student athletes.
“There’s enough rigor in the day for their academic and athletic pursuits, it’s just hard to be heavily involved in a co curricular activity and do well,” Moyer said.
Teams often want to fundraise for gear, travel or community service reasons. Gear wise, SPA provides uniforms, but more personalized clothing can be bought through team stores, which are run by parents.
“The line for personal equipment and team equipment varies with institutions, but for the most part, it’s uniforms and equipment that stay with the institution,” he said.
Travel is another area of interest for teams. For example getting the opportunity to play out of state in a tournament. While fundraising for travel is prohibited at this time, “The institution is now starting travel for different groups again, and we have to work out policies for athletics team fundraising for travel going forward,” Moyer said.
As of now, community service is the only acceptable form of fundraising and is popular among teams. Dig Pink, hosted by girls volleyball, is a well-known annual community service fundraising event with all proceeds going to The Side-Out Foundation to support breast cancer. Boys hockey will also be hosting a Fighting Cancer game against Johnson on Feb. 17.
While fundraising has its limits, there are ways to help close the cost divide for students who are financially in need. The athletics department works directly with families in need of financial aid for athletics to come up with a plan.
One way the sports department does this is through external organizations. “We’ve had donations for gear that people have given us money for and specific programs that went to gear,” Moyer said. In the fall, we worked with the admissions, financial aid and development office to support any student athletes.”
Some teams are able to fundraise through booster clubs, which are run by the team captains’ parents. Boosters are an exclusive option for co-op teams that are not managed by SPA.
Although it’s unclear what fundraising policies will look like in the future, currently the athletics department makes sure sports are accessible
For more information about fundraising reach out to Moyer or US Athletics Director Randy Comfort.
