TITLE OF LESSON OR IDEA: Chess League Funding
NAME: Robert C. Ferguson, Jr.
SCHOOL: Bradford Area School District
CITY/STATE: Bradford, PA
E-MAIL: [email protected]
KEY WORDS: league, funding, sponsors, team
GRADE RANGE: All (K-12)
SHORT 1-2 SENTENCE INTRODUCTION: This is a simple solution for covering the costs of starting and maintaining a chess league.
MATERIALS NEEDED: Parents to make phone calls
STEP-
BY- STEP METHODOLOGY (200-500 WORDS, simple enough that a teacher
could print it out and follow it on his/her own):
If you wish to create a chess
league, I suggest that you find a few parents to contact local businesses for
$50-100 each to help with funding. In
return you can name your teams after the businesses and provide the match
results to the area newspaper(s) on a regular basis.
This provides very inexpensive advertising for each of the sponsors.
It has worked very well for baseball and soccer for years, and we have
been using this idea very successfully in the chess programs we’ve started
over the past decade. If you have
40 students participating, you could form 2-person teams.
With 20 teams at $50 per sponsor, you can quickly raise $1,000 to help
fund your project. By contacting your local pizza parlor and trophy shop, you
may be able to get free pizza for a party and reduced prices for your trophies
by naming a team after each of them. We
usually invite sponsors to attend the year-end pizza party and give the winning
team a rotating trophy that is displayed at the local business for the year.
To save money, you could award kids medallions rather than trophies.
Of course, you might also wish to charge a fee to each student.
If you run the program at a school, contact the PTO for financial
support. I have made several
presentations about the educational benefits of chess to PTOs with great
success. Some have even paid for
lessons by chess masters.
The
following is a sample of the log we maintain from year to year, so that the
information can easily be emailed to the person in charge of contacting the area
businesses.
|
Team |
ADDRESS
|
PHONE
|
Contact
|
Web
page |
|
Dr. Gonzalez |
181
Interstate Pkwy |
362-4345
|
Dr.
Luis Gonzalez |
|
|
KOA Speer Electronics |
Bolivar
Drive |
362-5536 |
Roxanne Gould |
|
|
Tops |
14
Davis Street |
368-8585
|
|
|
|
Smith's Awards |
443
E. Main St. |
362-4322
|
Mike
Smith |
|
|
Tasta Pizza |
508
E. Main St. |
368-7271
|
|
|
|
Parkview |
200 W. Washington St. |
368-2510 |
|
|
|
Domino's Pizza |
30
Bolivar Drive |
368-8900
|
|
|
|
Dexter's Service Center |
156
W. Washington Street |
362-3888
|
Al
Dexter |
|
|
Hamlin Bank |
East
Main Street |
368-5555
|
|
|
|
Bloomers
|
16
Congress Street |
368-1489
|
Janet
Kassir |
|
|
Gravitz
Associates |
11
Chestnut Street |
368-8629
|
Joel
Gravitz |
|
| Zippo | 33 Barbour Street | 368-2700 | Mike Schuler |
You
will notice that we ask for the businesses' URLs.
We include the company name, phone number, and URL on our website and on
the cover of the binders that we give to all the participating students.
Our league usually runs about 15 weeks, which means the area businesses
that sponsor teams will see their names in the paper about 17 times over the
course of our chess season. The
initial pre-season release mentions the sponsors of the league, and the final
media release includes photos of the sponsors receiving the rotating trophies.
We provide a trophy to the first place team in both the varsity and
junior varsity section and invite them to our year-end pizza party.
For $50 (or whatever fee you decide on), sponsors receive:
P
17 weeks of advertising in
the local newspapers & mention on radio station
P
A year-long post of their
sponsorship on the website (Websites are available free)
P
A full season ad placed
prominently on the cover of the students’ binders
How much would a business have to pay for that advertising?