More Money Now: Birthday Parties

Part IV in our series about using your skills and resources to generate non-cheer profit

By Brian Payne

CBN Aug/Sept 2010

Hosting birthday parties for your mini, peewee and youth cheerleaders is a win-win-win situation for you, your athletes and their parents. Gym birthday parties are a hit because the kids love being in the spotlight at the gym, they take the burden off your cheer parents and you’ll get a slew of new potential students marching through your doors every month.

Where to get started

Gym owners have fantastic human resources at their fingertips: the team athletes, the class athletes and the parents who bring their children to your facility. You also have information, equipment and experience working with groups of children to pull off a great birthday party. Consider the following advantages you have:

• Database: You have the birthdate of every cheerleader and student on your registration forms, as well as their parents’ contact information. This is a perfect shopping list for getting the seed planted months ahead of time.
• Venue: You can work around your all-star competition schedule and pack the gym with birthday parties on non-event weekends. Or, if you’re lucky enough to have additional qualified staff members who don’t coach a cheer squad, you can host the parties (and make money) while all the cheerleaders are on the road at competitions and the gym would normally sit empty.
• Party Staff: Some parents get too busy with their careers, multitasking, entertaining and shuttling several kids in opposite directions, and they end up with birthdays sneaking up on them every year, scrambling at the last minute for something to throw together. Let your cheer parents know that you can take care of it. If parents book their children’s party with you, your staff will handle the responsibility of organizing the activities and favors, providing the fun and making it memorable. Plus, parents get to leave the mess with you and go home to a house that’s still in one piece.
• Unique Activities: Once you’ve had a birthday party at the bowling alley, another one is pretty much the same. And the same goes for those franchised birthday party centers with costumed characters and games that eat your tokens. At your cheer gym party, guests will talk for months about how several senior squad helpers put the birthday girl up in a stunt while everyone sang the birthday song to her. What your young guests are really thinking is 1) I want to be a cheerleader, 2) I wish it were my birthday and 3) I want my birthday party here so I can go up in a stunt, too! Make sure the cheer gym birthday party is nothing like team practice. On this special day in the gym, the lucky cheerleader will get to do relay races, obstacle courses, tumble track games, giant parachute games and lots of other silly and fun, high-energy activities. Don’t forget the wacky cheer dance contest!
• Familiarity: Currently enrolled students and their parents already know how to get to the gym. They also know what you expect as far as safety, procedures, guidelines, structure and discipline. You’ve also established the parents’ trust and confidence in how you work with children. And on your end, you’ll appreciate that you already know the child and have some control mechanisms in place, as opposed to hosting a party for a group of strangers.
• Performer Spotlight: When the birthday children are cheerleaders in your program or currently enrolled students, you’ll want to showcase their talents and put him or her in the spotlight. Having the birthday children as line leaders for follow-the-leader obstacle courses and tumbling relay races will allow them to shine in front of their peers, as would making them the center of games. For example, if you have a parachute activity, have foam fish or stuffed toys jumping in the waves of the parachute, and the birthday person has to climb onto the parachute and try to round up the critters while the guests are shaking it. It’s hysterical to watch, and it’s another special activity that makes the birthday child a repeat customer next year.
• New Business: Every one of your cheerleaders goes to school with 10 to 20 classmates who’ve never been to your gym before. Not all of them will be all-star material, but all of them will have a birthday in the next year, and you want a majority of them to have their birthday party with you. When you host a birthday party, it’s also good marketing to provide goody bags. If they’re printed or stenciled with your gym name on them, they’re a 100 percent tax write-off as a promotional or advertising item. You can also write off printed gym class schedules with your website on them, printed balloons and, most importantly, a coupon to come back for a free trampoline, tumbling or cheerleading class. If birthday party guests come back for a free class, you may get them for the rest of the year as weekly students.

What it’s worth to you financially

Birthday parties make for both short- and long-term income. Let’s take this example: Youth cheerleader Sarah has her birthday party at the gym and invites several members of her squad, her brother and her school classmates—enough for a package price of 12 participants for $100. Every party guest receives a coupon for one free class. Six of the 12 redeem the coupon, and of those six, three become regularly enrolled students at the rate of $48 per month apiece. Two of the original 12 book their birthday parties at the gym, too, and their birthdays occur within six months.

Bottom line? You earn:

$100 for Sarah’s party

$864 for three new students at $48 each for 6 months

$200 for two more parties booked as a result of the first party

Total: $1,164

Every cheer birthday party is an opportunity to recruit new students, advertise your program, provide payroll hours for staff, create tax deductions, generate traffic flow, boost cash flow and fill empty hours in the gym.