Nicole Torres
February 29, 2016
U-High Dodgeball Tournament
Primary Objective: Put on a BR Dodgeball tournament with U-High to raise money for CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates), which is a national association that supports and promotes court-appointed advocates for abused or neglected children in order to provide children with a safe and healthy environment in permanent homes.
Secondary Objectives: Promotion: The message I want to convey through this event is to help U-High raise money for CASA in an extremely fun manner. I want a lot of people to join in on this tournament, so the best way to get the word out there is to put it out in the public and on social media. First, I will make a flyer for the event listing the price of signing up, the time, date, location, social media handles, and giving a small description of what CASA is. I would put the flyer up in different gyms across Baton Rouge and on business like Smoothie King or GNC that are health and fitness oriented to get people who love to do athletic things for fun involved. I will also send the flyers out to all of the high schools to put up in hallways and on the main office doors to get high school students and their parents involved. To get college students involved, I will post up flyers in places like the Student Union and UREC and even send information to the Greek organizations. Then, I will make an event on Facebook, invite everyone on my friends list and have the people who are also working this event with me share the event and invite people as well. The page for this event will have everything that is on the flyer. I will make Instagram and Twitter accounts that are promoting this event. I will go on a follow spree following all of the people who are working the event so that they can post about the accounts and spread the word as well as follow the people who have signed up. When people sign up for the tournament, they can help promote by retweeting, reposting, and sharing as well. I would like to be able to make this event so successful and enjoyable that it can be held every year and people get excited to come and participate for a good cause. Audience: The target audience for this event are high-school aged kids, college students, and adults. Since I am helping a high school put it on, it would be great for them to participate. College students like to participate in this kind of thing, so I figured it would be perfect to branch it out to them. Many adults may want to participate with their kids, plus the adults are the people with the money to fund their team being in the tournament. Even adults who do not have kids but love to join in on any athletic competition can come. That is why in promotion, I put the flyers in places where athletes and people very interested in health and fitness would see. The goal for this whole audience is to get people to come together in not only a family environment, but in a wholesome community environment for the sake of CASA. This is the perfect opportunity to get an entirely new fan base for not just the sport of dodgeball, but for the CASA organization as well. This not only brings members of the community together, but it also spread awareness on what CASA is and who it helps. Partnerships: In order to put this on, we need partnerships and sponsors. Since we are putting this on with U-High, I would like to contact their parents’ organization, booster club, and athletic department. Getting these organizations involved can help us with getting money and other donations for concessions to sell and to get people to work the concessions and other parts of the event. Another bonus to partnering up with these three organizations it that they can help us get more sponsors. There are people in these clubs who either own a business or know people who run business. If we put posters of the businesses around the event and put their logos on the back of the T-shirt that everyone gets for participating, the businesses get more exposure and will probably end up getting more business after the event. We want to make sure that everyone involved is happy with this event and that they want to come back each year to participate. Environment: As far as I know, charity dodgeball tournaments are pretty much non-existent in Baton Rouge. The closest competitor that we may have would maybe be a charity basketball tournament or something that is similar to that in a sense. In order to make sure that we have little to no competition, I will do my research and schedule the event at a time where I know that there is not anything like this going on at the same time and during a time when people are available to participate. This way, we can have the maximum number of participants and donors. A good day would be Saturday, May 14, 2016. There are no LSU sporting events happening in Baton Rouge to interfere with this tournament. Also, it is after university finals, so the college students will be absolutely free. High school athletics are also over at that time, so the students will be free to sign up. I would like to hold this event somewhere that there is a lot of space, and the perfect place would be the Team Sportsplex on Perkins Rd. It has four basketball courts that we can set up as dodgeball courts. What we need to set apart about this event from normal leisure sports is that it is a charity event benefitting CASA. It is not a charity that you hear about often, but it impacts a large number of people. We can bring more attention to it by educating people on what exactly CASA does, and this will get people to want to donate and join in on the tournament. The only thing economically the participants need to worry about is the registration fee for the tournament, which will be an affordable price. Revenue: This is going to be an all-day affair, so say there are 32 teams participating with 8 players on a team. There are four courts, so there will be 7 games played on each court. The winners from courts 1 and 2 will play each other, and the winners from courts 3 and 4 will play each other. The winners out of those two games play for the championship. The cost for a full team to enter would be $240, but if you want to just join and be part of a random team, the cost will be $30. When we get all of the spots filled for players, we will make $7,680. Built into the team registration would be a white t-shirt made on CustomInk, which, according to the website, will cost $4 per shirt at a total of $1,024. We also need to rent the Sportsplex, which can be negotiated down to $1,000 given that this is a charity event. That brings us to our revenue being $5,656. Now, for concessions (which will be donated by the booster club, parents’ organization, athletic department, and outside businesses), to get a drink it is $1.50, to get nachos or a hot dog it is $3.00, to get candy it will cost $1.00, and to get a bag of chips it will cost $1.00. Say every participant gets at least one drink and one meal item (hot dog or nachos). That is $4.50 per person, which will get us to $1,152. This is not including the other spectators that come to view the event and what else the participants might buy. We are looking at selling at least $2,500 worth of concessions, but probably more. We will be charging admission for the event. The price will be $2.00 per person. Say at least half of the participants bring one person to watch. That equals to $256 in admission. There will most likely be more people coming to watch the entertainment, but that is a minimum estimate. With everything added up, we will make $7,064 at the very least, but if we have a great turn out, we can make somewhere in the $9,000 to $10,000 range. Every bit of the proceeds will go straight to CASA.