TubeNet

Recently, our band has been running into a lot of problems, but good problems to have. The band has been suffering from success. 4 Years ago, when our band directory came along and adopted our program, the band was only about 40 or so kids big. Now, it has around 110 members. Approximately 10% of the student population is in band. The past 4 years, enrollment at the school has dropped and enrollment in the program has continued to rise. We are running out of properly working instruments and many of the school owned instruments are on their last legs. We have very little money in the band account and we need new euphoniums, tubas, sousaphones, and potentially extra uniforms. At the end of the day you can only fundraise so much with conventional ideas. Sousaphones are a priority for us, as we have only 7 working sousaphones, and we are hoping to have at least 12 players next year.

The tuba section came together and we came up with an idea. I always remember seeing socks on sousaphone bells and thinking, couldn't you advertise on those? I proposed the idea to my band director, that we advertise on the sousaphone bells by putting custom socks on them. He loved the idea, but then the price issue came up. Custom socks would cost quite a bit of money. Then he had an idea. What if we were to just get a sock, put on some velcro and print out a thing vinyl sheet and slap it on the the sock.

Now granted, we would not be wearing these socks the entire game. We planned on wearing them for one quarter a game and in parades. My only concern is that how would this affect the sound. We are willing to be very lenient considering we wont be marching with the socks during half time and probably only be using them a quarter or two, then hanging them on the concession stand when they aren't in use.

What do you think a good price point would be for an advertiser to pay for displaying a color add on a tuba sock? We are really wanting to try this idea, as it could prove to be very profitable. Also, I've had some other ideas for alternative materials besides vinyl, but vinyl would just be the easiest for us. We know a place where we could get the vinyl sheets customized very cheaply.

While this on paper sounds like a good idea, the covers for sousaphones dampen the sound made. This goes for any type of materials. Most people regret the choice of covers even though it looks cool.

Fundraising the amounts you need is difficult. Everything costs more and more while the money people have to support you seems to dry up.

Trying to get your story out on the local news helps quite a bit. "hard working band members will do anything to get new instruments and uniforms".

Once the media is on your story it will boost your fundraising efforts. Do bake sales, car washes, rent a kid for a day, etc. Let the media catch wind of your efforts and why you are doing it. People see the news and will pay up.

I have found that many would rather give you $5.00 donation than buy some silly trinket or overpriced cheese and sausage.

Set up begging booths at the grocery store, post office, wherever they will let you.

Good luck.

Hi

I used this idea a couple of years ago with the Tuborg logo (Danish beer). We managed to find some fabric that did not affect the sound, was easy to make and use and good looking.

If you are interested, PM me and I will try to find it and take a picture.

For the past few years, I've had t-shirt bell covers on a few of my concert horns. The sound is not different enough that my director has ever asked me to take them off for sound reasons (obviously, I take them off for concerts because of how they look). The first one that I did came out like this:


You can just draw on it with a waterproof marker, with advertisements instead of the peace sign

I don't really believe that a T-shirt wouldn't muffle the sound at all.

You could always lobby the federal government for a "SousaCare" program...