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I would like to talk to you about adding extra income to your school during the summer months. The summer months can be quite difficult for many schools to generate money. For one, the weather is usually nicer and people want to get outside, especially in the North. I have been contacted by many schools to give them ideas about summer income. I did talk about this subject last month in “Ask the Experts” column. So you can go back and read or listen to the information that I put up about summer camps. Summer camps is the best and most efficient way to bring in income for your school during the summer. So I would definitely try to implement a summer camp.
Although these events are designed for your students to have fun they are also useful to bring in much need summer income. You can charge to enter the events, admission of spectators and concession fees.
An additional idea that you can use for the summer is what I like to call Karate Games. Karate Games is a day of fun and excitement for your school. Karate Games is where I would have all kinds of fun events for my students to enter and compete to have a really good time. An example of one of the events that I did, makes me laugh thinking about it. I would get a long 4 by 4 something like 6 ft or 8 ft long. I made a base at the bottom of it with two by fours so it could be laying on the ground and wouldn’t flip over when people stood on it. I would have a student stand on each end of the four by four. They would walk across the 4 x 4 like a tight rope. In each of their hands they would have a blocker where they would meet in the middle and they would battle each other with these blockers, trying to knock the other person off. The winner got to move on while the loser would be eliminated. This was one of the funniest events for the students. They would go into battle, knock each other off the 4 by 4 while laughing and get back in line to do it again. Now this was also a very fun event for the adults. For the advanced adults, the blockers aren’t such a big thing to knock each other off. So I would have those adults stand on one foot while they battled. You talk about laughing, the adults laughed so hard they almost fell off from that. And then we would have prizes or Medals for the ones who could battle the best.
Another event was to have a telescoping rod that was an upside-down L shape. You can make it at all different heights. At the end of the rod we would have a ball tied to it. The students would have to go up and kick the ball and each time that they would go through the whole row of students we would move it up to the next level. We would always make the first couple of levels easy so every single kid or every single adult would have a chance to go through a few rounds. After the third round it would start to get a little bit more difficult. Eventually you would get down to the last child or the last adult in their categories. This was a very fun event and made everyone laugh and have fun.
We would come up with all kinds of different events for our students. All of them were designed to create fun ways to do martial arts. So get with your staff or if you do not have staff get with your higher belts or parents and design some fun things for your students to do. Some of my schools would get with the parents and the higher belt adults and go out to have refreshments while they planned a fun event. So even down to the planning was designed for fun. Remember the more fun the students have the more they’re going to stick around. If the parents have fun they’re going to show up to more classes. Research has shown the more parents that come to class the higher your retention will be.
Another event you can run during the summer to bring an extra income is an inter-club tournament. We would call these tournament parties. This is what it sounds like. We would have a tournament but in a party frame of mind. Besides the martial arts events that the students would compete in there were refreshments and different kind of fun things for the parents and kids to do. Like one of the events that we would run that was really funny is a program like King of the mat. You would start off with your two lowest ranking belts. They would fight each other. The winner would stay up and the loser would have to sit down. After that, the next ranking belt would step up and face off with the winner. Of course the winner would stay. Eventually the higher belts would win out but every once in a while a lower-ranking belt would move up the ladder significantly and it would be really exciting. The students had a lot of fun doing this and ask for it even in our regular classes. You have everybody sit around in a circle and everybody watches this event. A lot of fun.
So these are just a couple of things that you can do to generate extra income during the summer. Get with your staff, higher-ranking students, parents and your friends or whoever you need to and create some fun activities. You can charge money for all these fun activities. If people are having fun they do not mind to pay. Fun, fun, fun is the name of the game.
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As always good luck to your school.