Tru Mark returned from the Nebraska State Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association (NSIAA) Fall Convention in Kearney, NE where personnel were introduced to a number of new products and services.

Fund raising is always a challenge for youth sports programs, whether for high school programs or youth sports associations. With the internet, image and video capture and editing capabilities, selling of advertising, and blogging tools a new offering is being promoted by Big Teams, Warrenton, VA 20186.

This new website based service helps sports supporters, whether students, coaches, administrator, and parents incorporate relevant content into the website to include images and videos. The company then helps youth organizational sponsors solicit advertising by helping post the advertisers information to include images and text for banner type ads.

The website becomes a communications portal for a variety of purposes, such as text messaging alerts when participants opt-in, allowing the posting of material from smartphones, collecting monies for photo sales and an on-line store.

According to the staff member this product has been under development for 8 years while continuing to incorporate new capabilities. Pricing is determined by the number of students/participants involved and whether advertising is going to be allowed. For a small school, less than 700 students, the initial setup cost is $100 plus a $25.00 per month hosting fee. The company receives a small percentage of any advertising that is posted on the site which the company implements on the website while working with the advertiser.

For schools that produce a yearbook and newsletters/newspapers this tool can be part of the overall process of capturing stories and images while the student publishers worry about the editing and layout for the physical/digital product. This can go along way to help student develop team building, collaboration, networking, critical thinking, creative and problem solving skills.

Do you have a tool that is worthy of mention on the Tru Mark blog? Please send details and we'll attempt to get the information posted. Examples of tools that have beneficial include the different desktop field layout tools, soccer, lacrosse, rugby, ultimate frisbee. Looking for additional field marking tips then check out our FAQ webpage.

Labels: Product_Review, Sports, Trends