Competition travel funds

Competition dance is expensive in a way that surprises people outside it, and the cost lands on individual families as a bill. That makes it the studio's largest fundraising question and the one most likely to go wrong.

Itemise it, because nobody outside knows

• Entry fees, per routine, per dancer — which is how the total escalates
• Costumes for each routine
• Choreography fees
• Convention and workshop fees
• Teacher and choreographer travel, which families frequently fund without realising
• Hotel and travel for the family as well as the dancer
• Nationals, which is a separate and larger cost that arrives after qualification

The per-routine structure is the thing to explain to an outside donor. A dancer in six routines pays six entry fees and needs six costumes, and a grandparent who learns that understands the ask immediately.

Whether the studio may raise for it at all

The question to settle before a single business is approached. Where the studio is a for-profit business, money raised for a competition trip is business revenue supporting that business's customers.

That can be done honestly:

• Say plainly who receives the money and that it is not a charitable donation
• Do not issue anything that looks like a charitable receipt
• Consider whether the ask should come from a parent group with its own account rather than from the business
• Where a booster organization exists, be clear what it may fund and what it may not — which is a question for its own adviser

A local business told the truth generally still donates. A local business that later finds out is a problem in a town where reputations are small.

The crediting question

"If we sell the most, does our bill go down?" is asked immediately. Where a charitable entity is involved, crediting funds to reduce a specific family's obligation raises real compliance issues — individual fundraising accounts are a known area of scrutiny, and this is a question for an adviser rather than a parents' meeting.

Where the studio is a business, the money was never a donation and the question is a commercial one — but it should still be answered in writing before anybody sells anything, because the disputes are identical either way.

Do not let cost decide the team

A competition team assembled by who can pay rather than who can dance is bad for the studio and obvious to everybody in it.

• Establish assistance quietly, decided by one person, before the season is announced
• Cover the incidentals — the meals, the extra tights, the convention T-shirt
• Never publish who received assistance
• Never publish per-family fundraising totals, which the dancers will see
• Watch for the family who stops committing rather than the family who says they cannot afford it

Aim the campaign outward

Competition families are the most heavily invested households in the studio. The campaign should be built for their extended family, their employers and the wider community, not for them.

Ask each family for three contacts rather than a donation, and say explicitly that nobody is expected to donate an item themselves.

General information, not legal or tax advice. Whether your studio is a for-profit business, a nonprofit, or a parent booster organization alongside a business changes what a donor may claim and what you may say — this is a situation to put in front of your own adviser.