Entrepreneurship Club Needs Money

[CardinalsFan]

Well I am looking for a way to raise money for a club I am active in at ASU, the Association of Student Entrepreneurs, and I came up with an idea and was wondering if yall could help me pick through it

App is located in the small town of Boone NC, and most businesses are small to midsized and are in charge of heading up there own marketing, advertising, and PR. So I thought that maybe the club could head up the on and off campus marketing for these small businesses for a fee.

Some ideas I have thought of besides the typical poster and flier distribution is: product sample distribution, advertising in the school paper, on and off campus event coordination, promotional event planning at local bars/restaurants, setting up tables in the student union ect.

Let me know if yall can think of any better ways for the club to make money, or if you can improve on this idea, you guys are way smarter than me!

thanks for your time
-Aaron

 

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[CardinalsFan]

just an update here.

What I ended up doing for the club was creating a 'dorm room key insurance company' haha interesting I know. If a student loses their key for their dorm room they have to pay a fine to replace not just the key but the entire lock. so I decided to get the club members to sell key insurance for $5 a semester to students who live on campus. We are taking it easy right now ironing out the kinks but it has potential to make a ton of money for us.

Here is the steps I took after a little research:
1)pitched idea to club
2)pitched idea to director of housing & residence life to get approved
3)pitched idea to club council
4)pitched idea to schools legal adviser
5)started selling insurance

To do:
-create a website...have domain name just need to find someone to help us out here
-streamline advertising and get link to schools website
-invest end of year profits and pay our guest speakers
-set up a learning program to help club members learn about running a business
-spread system to other schools? eh maybe. all profits go to the club already and I'm not sure how enterprising 'key insurance' is.


I thought you guys might find this funny...just a goofy way we made easy money. :banana:

 

[fanocks2003]

just an update here.

What I ended up doing for the club was creating a 'dorm room key insurance company' haha interesting I know. If a student loses their key for their dorm room they have to pay a fine to replace not just the key but the entire lock. so I decided to get the club members to sell key insurance for $5 a semester to students who live on campus. We are taking it easy right now ironing out the kinks but it has potential to make a ton of money for us.

Here is the steps I took after a little research:
1)pitched idea to club
2)pitched idea to director of housing & residence life to get approved
3)pitched idea to club council
4)pitched idea to schools legal adviser
5)started selling insurance

To do:
-create a website...have domain name just need to find someone to help us out here
-streamline advertising and get link to schools website
-invest end of year profits and pay our guest speakers
-set up a learning program to help club members learn about running a business
-spread system to other schools? eh maybe. all profits go to the club already and I'm not sure how enterprising 'key insurance' is.


I thought you guys might find this funny...just a goofy way we made easy money. :banana:

Interesting and easy. Good one.

 

[Redshft]

Great idea and rep+ for taking the initiative and finding some easy, fun, valuable success! If you are interested in enterprising, I can help you out getting something started here at ECU.

As far as a website, get in contact with Tom(aptohosting) on the site. I am working with him and his team as we speak and they have been great so far! Plus they are kind of local for the two of us.

Congrats and good luck!

 

[TaxGuy]

that's a great idea, whether or not it takes off, you took an idea of something all college students fear(the insane fees for key/lock replacement) and found a way to alleviate it!!!!

best of all, is you covered your bases and it's something to learn from for when you start your own for-profit business as this one has a charitable aspect to it in re-investing the profits back in the club and best of all is you'll have a legacy at the school for being the one who kept the entrepreneur club going!

 

[LightHouse]

How much is a lock replacement?
why $5 a semester and not $5 a month??
Have you figured out where your break even is and estimated the most possible amount of lock changes you might need to cover? $5 a semester is a long term for someone to lose their key and you all have to cover a expensive lock replacement.

Other than that good job figuring out a need and working to fill it! Seems like you are learning well over there.

 

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[CardinalsFan]

wow thanks for all the replies here guys! I forgot about this thread after I came back from my fastlane hiatus.

so here is the update:

I decided to make it all online based and got a guy to build the site for really cheap, then the University Attorney (who approved the early dorm key coverage biz plan) got diagnosed with cancer and he resigned. So the interim university attorney met with us and said 'I'm sorry you can no longer be supported by the university and will have to be treated like any other business'

and that is when we had to pull the plug, and I got stuck with a 80% developed website to pay for (luckily for me, my friend was building the site and he understood that the school went back on its word and cut me a break) . you can check out what it looks like here: YourSpareKey.com - Home Page

I'm not sure what I can do with this site now, but whatever it is going to be as fastlane as possible.

So lets see if I have learned anything from the fastlane, here is my 2 hypothetical fastlane businesses that I could make out of yoursparekey.com

Option 1
-selling and managing insurance=NOT FASTLANE
-instead make and sell a system that can be integrated into different university websites so they can handle the advertising and claims and all the BS...making them some extra cash, which they will love after all the budget cuts
-charge a monthly membership based on number of students that will be tracked/managed on the website ($30/mo if >5000, $50 if >8000 ect)
-so now ALL work is done by the university and I just sit back and get paid.

Option 2
-scrap the idea of insurance
-change it to a 24/7 spare key delivery service
-for $30/year we will come make a copy of your keys and keep them in a secure place then deliver then whenever you need em...keeping the customer info online
-this is NOT fastlane i know. BUUUT here is how to make it FAST
1. start it as a franchise YourSpareKey Inc
2. market it to ppl who need a job: (all they need is $15,000 to start YSK in their city, a van, YSK branding for the van, mobile key duplicater, and a key cabinet safe, a cell phone) they do all the work.
3. open a 24/7 call center (ie 1-800-GOT-KEYS) that dispatches the drivers in indivdual cities
4. sit back and take a 5-10% cut from each franchise


so those are some hypotheticals...but I am really trying to focus on my other idea so this is just to see if I learned anything.

what do you guys think?