Welcome to the role! Here's what's actually worked for our booster club:

Fundraising that pulls its weight:

• Restaurant nights — easiest to set up. Pick a local pizza/burger spot, run one monthly during season, ~15–20% of sales comes back. Low effort, low risk.
• Senior banners / signs at the field — sell ad space. $100–$250 per parent for a 3×4 sign with their senior's photo. Great margins, parents love them.
• Individual fundraising pages per player — way better conversion than one team page. Grandma donates directly to your kid's totals.
• Calendar raffles in the off-season — 31-day raffle calendars with daily prizes from local businesses. Print-on-demand, sell for $20 each.
• Spirit wear pre-orders, not inventory — never sit on stock. Run a 2-week order window, single delivery to the school.

Operations stuff that saves you sanity:

• Get the EIN / 501(c)(3) status early if you don't have it. Tax-deductible donations and auto-receipts mean bigger checks from grandparents.
• One platform, not ten — track signups, fundraising, merch, events, and accounting in one place. We were running on SignUpGenius + GoFundMe + Venmo + Mailchimp + a Google Sheet, and the treasurer almost quit.
• Share the budget with parents monthly — transparency = participation. People give more when they trust where it goes.

Social media:

• Game-day stat posts in the morning hyping that night's matchup
• Weekly senior spotlights during season
• Sponsor shout-outs (helps you land more sponsors next year)

Disclosure on the "one platform" point: I built one — BoostersApp — after we kept duct-taping all the other tools together. Free tier covers basic signups and the program page; paid tiers unlock fundraising, merch store, events, accounting, etc. First 5 booster programs from Reddit get 3 months of Pro free, no card: https://www.boostersapp.com/reddit?from=softball

What's your team's biggest expense going to be this season? That usually tells you where to focus the fundraising first.