If you’d like to write up a separate article on this I would love to post it. I bet other coaches would love to hear this idea. And they’d be more likely to find it in it’s own article than here in the comments. Interested in writing another guest post?

With that button maker, we sold photo buttons to band parents for $5 each. I’m a photographer, so we scheduled to take the photos the day of the first home game, and did those just prior to the band’s report time. We did this with our high school and junior high marching bands. We not only paid the band back, but profited about $1500 off the photo buttons alone.

We also designed and had printed in color some cute little saying buttons (a picture of a marimba-that’s how I roll). The types of things you see on shirts at events–and sold them for $2 at the marching contest we host, and our all-region honor band events—profited another $600.

We bought a 3 inch button maker, from American Button supply. We’ve been able to alleviate the cost of a lot of our clinicians, and purchasing new sabers for the junior high through the profits. I can’t wait for this fall because all our supplies are already paid for, and every penny we take in will be profit

We’d been using phone video for a couple seasons to show kids immediately what we’re trying to address-this takes it to a whole new level!

Added bonus–got to feel like a technology hero when I shared it with our athletic coaches, and cheer and dance coaches