Thoughts on swim team fundraiser?

I know there is a ton of practical experience and advice available in this forum, so...

Another dad and I are going to do swim team portraits this year as a fundraiser. I think we can pull together reasonable shots, and we hope to make at least a couple hundred dollars for the team.

My question is how to arrange it? My initial thought is to charge for a sitting fee, then give away all of the images for free. Makes things pretty simple on the transaction side. My guess is that $25 would be about the right pain point for amateur work/desire to help out the team's finances/desire to get some good portraits.

We'll have about 2 hours to shoot. There are over 200 swimmers, so we'll need to either commoditize the poses to increase our volume, or push the price up enough to lower demand so that we can spend 10-15 minutes with each subject. This would allow specific stroke/dive/water shots. In my experience, the vast majority of parents don't buy pictures, so that will thin the herd too. I guess we can also schedule for other days if the demand is high enough.

We plan to send the notice out with sample shots of our own kids, which will help set expectations, as well as give us some practice with this effort.

All thoughts are appreciated!

Have you thought about having the kids swim doing the butterfly stroke and shooting them from the end of the pool, head on, and getting them as their head comes out of the water. I shot a swim team at the end of last year and the parents loved those type of shots. It was a very profitable team and only 40 kids. You could then set up prices for packages such as an 8x10 and 2- 5x7, Then their are the novilties such as magnets and keychains. Dont forget die-cut wallets.

The mom's will go crazy over the prints of their "little Michael Phelps"

Thanks for the ideas. I had planned to arrange stroke shots like that if the time per customer allowed it. It would be cool to do the standard ladder rail shot as a backup, then go for the action and creative stuff. We'll have at least two shooters, so we could probably pull this off.

Out of the 40 kids, how many bought images?

On another forum one of the members is photographing some aussie swimming schools, on his first one which is a smaller/cheaper school, he made $5000 in a week or so. The way he did it was to take the pictures, preprint packages on the spot and sell the packages to the students/parents.

I am guessing posting links to other photography forums on here is taboo so I wont.

There is good money in this.

Yep, and thanks for the heads-up and PM. Right now, I'm just looking for money for the team, but I do see some sports income as a possibility if I need it down the road. We don't have nearly as many swimmers as the Aussies, but there's still a lot of depth there.

Quick update: I put up a simple Google docs form for people to place orders as sitting fees. Right now, we are looking at 60 kids to shoot for a total of $600 raised for the team (will go towards a scholarship for one of the graduating seniors).

We went with $5 each for a posed portrait, and $15 each for the action shot session. We're selling the team portrait print for $10 (8x10). Order totals are nearly even between the posed and action shots.

The shoot is 5/31, although I'm going to do a group of kids' action shots another day to fit them all in.

Here's a sample image I sent out for the action shots:

Good luck, I follow this small town photographer on flickr and this is an interesting fly photo utilizing a fish tank. Perhaps too much for your session, but maybe something to try with your own kids.

http://www.flickr.com/​photos/pjjoet/53040096​05/

Don't to forget the following:

Obtain a sales tax license and any other applicable licenses required by your city/county/state.
Pay sales tax on your gear, if it was purchased tax free. Pay property tax on your gear.
Purchase liability insurance.

To minimize your workload I suggest setting up a Smugmug pro account in the team's name. Price the prints high enough to generate a decent profit and have Smugmug send the checks directly to the team.

That way all you have to do is shoot, process and upload. Let the parents figure out which kid is theirs and order what they want, and Smugmug will take care of the printing, shipping, payment processing, etc.

stover98074 wrote in post #14465080
Good luck, I follow this small town photographer on flickr and this is an interesting fly photo utilizing a fish tank. Perhaps too much for your session, but maybe something to try with your own kids.

http://www.flickr.com/​photos/pjjoet/53040096​05/

Very cool idea. Hmm...

mobei wrote in post #14465120
Don't to forget the following:

Obtain a sales tax license and any other applicable licenses required by your city/county/state.
Pay sales tax on your gear, if it was purchased tax free. Pay property tax on your gear.
Purchase liability insurance.

This is all done under the team's insurance. I'm registered as a team volunteer, same as a stroke and turn judge or the folks who put up age group tents -- same liability insurance. Regarding taxes, it's their money, and I'll never see a penny of it (nor do I want to). All checks will be written to the team, not me.