Custom Foam Fingers – The Complete Guide

Custom Foam Fingers - The Complete Guide

This is the most comprehensive guide on the internet about buying and reselling custom foam fingers for fundraising.

It was created to help you save time and money with your next purchase and help you sell more foam fingers for your school or club.

In this guide, we’ll talk about the following topics:

Let’s dive right in…

With advanced planning, your next fundraiser can be significantly more successful.

Choosing the Right Foam Fingers

It’s crucial you have a basic understanding of the demographics of your fans before buying custom foam fingers for your team.

For example, consider the following:

  • Average income level
  • Overall attendance
  • Student attendance
  • Community support
  • Historical purchases

Average Income Level of Your Fans

You don’t need to specifically know their salaries, but before making large purchases of foam fingers for your team, it’s important to consider whether or not the majority of your fan base can afford to spend the extra cash.

If your school is in an area with mostly low-income families, you’ll want to be more careful about which foam hands you purchase and the quantity you purchase.

However, if your school is dominated by higher-income families, you can rest a bit easier knowing that lack of income won’t be a factor in selling your foam fingers.

The higher the median income per household in your school district, the higher the potential sales you can make at your games.

Since there can be a considerable cost difference between various foam finger shapes and sizes, you should always stick within a price range you feel the majority of your fans can afford.

Overall Attendance

How many fans typically attend your games?

Has attendance wained over the years?

Has attendance been increasing?

Often, attendance is directly related to the success or the predicted success of a team for that given season. Theoretically, the higher your attendance, the more foam fingers you can sell.

Student Attendance

If your school has a strong school spirit, you’ll have more students at the games.

The more students you have at your games, the more foam fingers you’ll sell.

Students at both the high school and college level tend to be the loudest fans at games.

Community Support

Does your school have a lot of community support?

Are local businesses eager to sponsor your sports teams?

Are your games frequently attended by community residents and previous alumni who don’t have kids at your school?

An active support network from your community indicates a higher probability that you’ll sell more foam fingers.

Historical Purchases

What items have sold well in past?

What items have not sold well?

Keeping a record of past spirit items is important to help you predict whether or not items will sell quickly and easily.

Foam Hand Shape

While traditional foam fingers are in the shape of a number one hand, you can now choose from dozens of different shapes. Some of the popular foam hand shapes include the High Five Hands, W Foam Hands, Thumbs Up Foam Hands, and Hook ’em Horns Foam Hands and so many other choices. Find an option which fits your team. Think about popular sayings your school or team has and use a shape that best fits that slogan so they will resonate stronger with your fans. You can shop all of our foam fingers and foam hands here.

Read on below to see the best foam finger designs….

The Best Foam Finger Designs

In the same way design is so important when buying shirts, the same applies with foam fingers. The quality of the design printed on your foam hands directly affects the number of sales you will make. You’ll want to make sure the main design is centered around the team and not sponsors.

Make Your Team Mascot the Primary Focus

It’s tempting to follow the money and buy foam fingers with the design focus on the business sponsor.

However, a sponsor logo shouldn’t be the focus.

The school or team mascot should be the focus and the business sponsor as the secondary focus.

Include A Popular Slogan for the Team

Chances are, your school has a slogan which is popular and used frequently.

Including this on your foam fingers help your fans identify more strongly with the items, which will lead to more purchases.

Print on the Back of the Foam Hand

Yes, it costs extra to print on the back, but that’s a huge piece of real estate that is often underutilized. This area is the perfect place for sponsor logos because your fans are going to instinctively, face the team print to the front leaving the sponsor logo facing them. This helps your sponsors get more value from their sponsorships.

Get creative. Use this area to connect more with your fans.

Simple is Often Better

Keep in mind that printing on foam products is not a perfect process. Because foam has a very porous surface, fine details are not recommended in your design. Big, bold text and graphics are recommended for a better outcome.

If you include too many fine details in a design or small text, the small elements will get lost in the pores of foam, leaving behind a print which is difficult to read.

Determine How Many Foam Fingers to Buy

It’s sometimes a gamble if you’re new to buying foam fingers.

The age-old question of “How many do I buy?” is not an easy assessment.

That’s why it’s important to really know the demographics of your fans (as discussed above). It’s a simple equation of economics. The higher the average income of your local area; the more foam fingers you can sell. And vice versa. But the socioeconomic status is only one part of the equation.

Considerations Other Than Income

The number of foam fingers you can sell can be directly dependent on several factors listed below.

Size of your school

Obviously, the larger your school, the more the potential to sell more foam fingers. However, I have seen many small schools outsell larger schools because of a well-planned strategy and a team commitment from all of those involved.

Size of your team, club, or organization

It’s common sense. The more people involved; the more you can sell. By asking each member to sell a certain number of foam fingers, you’ll make light work out of the process. If you asked each player to sell five foam fingers and your team size is 20 people, that’s 100 foam fingers you sell right off the bat. That’s doesn’t even count the number you’ll sell at the games while your fans are more eager to buy team spirit items.

The excitement level of your fans

The better your team plays, the more foam fingers you will sell. If your team is predicted to have a great season, your fans will be more excited and spend more on items to support and cheer them on. Crowds are also larger during the good times. Unfortunately, the opposite is also true. During seasons when the team is not winning as many games, the crowds will dwindle and so will your sales. If you don’t believe me, check out how many school spirit items you can sell if you make it the playoffs or championship games.

The commitment of your members

Are your players or members of your club committed to selling foam fingers? This is a team effort and it takes everyone to make this fundraiser successful. Get verbal or written commitment of each of your members beforehand for a higher chance of success.

How to Get Business Sponsors

If you’ve never tried securing business sponsors for a school, it’s a lot easier than you might think, especially when you use a team approach.

Step 1 – Get the total cost of the foam fingers you plan to buy. Be sure to include shipping, setup charges, and any applicable sales tax. This total is important because you’ll want to get this full amount (and maybe more) covered by sponsors.

Step 2 – Determine a reasonable number of sponsors you want to get. Remember, you are limited by the number of logos you can print on the foam hand. Perhaps the best approach for multiple sponsors is to print the school mascot on the front and the sponsors’ logos on the back of the hands. I suggest no more than 5 logos should be printed on one side of the hands. This allows the logos to be large enough to be legible. (Remember that foam is porous, so large and bold graphics are recommended, otherwise fine details can get lost in the holes of the foam).

Step 3 – Make a list of businesses you want to approach. This list should begin with your connections first. For instance, if any players on the team or members of your organization have parents who own a local business, they should be first on your list. These businesses are often eager to sponsor since their child is involved. If you feel the list needs more prospects, list out businesses who in your local area who frequently sponsor your school teams. Check with businesses who sponsored other school teams and contact them. Those businesses are often owned by or runby alumnii from your school who are happy to support school teams.

Step 4– Divide and conquer. Divvy up the list to your members to make light work of obtaining sponsorships. If each person only has to ask a few businesses, the tasks will get done a lot faster and be much easier.

Step 5 – When you get commitments from sponsors, have them email their logo in a vector format. This step causes more delays in getting your order completed than any other because most people will submit low resolution .jpg images pulled from sponsor websites. These web images are not suitable for printing, so it causes delays in back-and-forth communication in obtaining the print-ready vector versions of the logos. Vector files include the following file extensions: .eps, .ai, .pdf, or .svg. Unless you have Adobe Illustrator or some other similar software, you won’t be able to open the .eps or .ai files, but don’t fret, that doesn’t mean they aren’t valid files.

Step 6Get your custom foam fingers printed. Be sure to allow enough time for production time plus shipping transit time. Ordering 3 weeks in advance is usually a safe timeframe.

Determine the Right Selling Price For Your Foam Fingers

Ideally, you’ve already covered the entire purchase price of the foam fingers through local business sponsors. That means each foam finger sale is 100% pure profit for your fundraising campaign.

You have quite a bit of freedom when pricing your foam fingers. You don’t want to price too low causing your campaign to raise less money than it could have, but at the same time, you don’t want to price your foam fingers too high either which will prevent you from selling as many foam fingers. There’s a sweet spot in between.

That sweet spot comes back to the demographics of your community, and more importantly, your fans. See Choosing The Right Foam Fingers to review a few of the determining factors.

The average foam fingers at high school football games are priced between $8 and $10.

If you’ve done your preparations and obtained sponsorships to buy the foam fingers, that means $800-$1000 net profit if you sell only 100 foam fingers. Most programs can easily sell 250 foam fingers over the course of an entire football season, yielding $2000-$2500 profit!

How to Sell More Foam Fingers at Your Games

There’s more to selling foam fingers at your games than simply laying out your merchandise on a table. With a few proactive approaches, you can easily sell many more foam fingers than you imagined. Below you’ll find a few tips to help you.

  • Make announcements at school about not only your foam fingers which will be available for sale but also about your other school spirit items.
  • Mention them in your school newsletter or newspaper.
  • Hang flyers around your school. Be sure to include the price so students bring enough money to buy a foam finger and buy their concessions.
  • If you send out email newsletters, include your spirit items in the newsletter to those who receive the newsletter.
  • Post announcements about the items for sale on your school website.
  • Ask your sponsors to promote sales of the foam fingers. They will be more than willing to promote them since their logo is printed on them.
  • Have your cheerleaders create a special dance/cheer which requires the foam fingers. This can be done after a touchdown and fans will want to get a foam finger to participate.
  • Make announcements over the PA at the game about items for sale.
  • Hang signs in visible places at the stadium advertising your spirit items for sale.
  • Set up your spirit shop in a visible location at the stadium. If that’s not possible, make sure you have plenty of signage directing people to your location.
  • Include an ad in your football program about items for sale.
  • Offer special deals at certain times of the game (such as before it starts and after the game).
  • Make it clear where the proceeds are going. People are much more willing to buy overpriced foam hands when they understand where the money is going.
  • Have representatives from your fundraising team go around the stadium promoting your foam fingers with signs.
  • Make it easy for your fans to buy foam fingers by going mobile. Walk up and down the stadium actively selling so your fans don’t have to leave their seat.
  • Go for a Guinness World Record such as the most people waving foam fingers simultaneously. The record is only 554 people. Can’t your fans beat that record?

Tips For Replicating Your Success From Year-to-Year

After a successful fundraising season of selling foam fingers, you may be tempted to simply do the exact same thing the next year, but that could be a mistake. Here are a few tips to make sure your future campaigns continually get better.

  • After your season, sit down with your members and list the areas of the campaign which were highly effective so you can replicate those the following year.
  • Be sure to list the areas which need improvement. There are always areas you can do better the following season. Writing these down for next time is vital to improving the process.
  • Change up the style of the foam fingers for the following year. If you went with a traditional #1 foam finger this year, maybe you can go with Victory Foam Hands for next season. Your fans will most likely keep the foam fingers they bought, so changing up the style will encourage more of those same fans to also buy the new style.
  • If your organization has volunteers who are parents or students in charge, be sure to pass down all information about the campaign to them so they don’t have to redo everything. Be sure to include where you bought your foam fingers, the previous business sponsors, how much you sold the foam fingers for at the games, how many you sold, and the total you raised.
  • Have your team members personally deliver a foam finger to your sponsors so they can display at their place of business. This helps create a stronger bond between your team and your sponsors. By including them more in the process, they’ll be much more likely to sponsor the following year.
  • Be sure to contact your sponsors from the previous year before you contact anyone else and contact them as early as possible so they don’t dedicate their budget to other clubs or teams.
  • Add other school spirit items to your mix to diversify your sales and increase your fundraising opportunity. Stadium seat cushions are excellent fundraising items and they can hold a lot of sponsor logos!

Suggested Foam Fingers For Your Fundraiser

These 12″ foam fingers are best for those on a tight budget. Less foam means a less cost!
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These 14″ foam fingers are a popular choice for school who are just starting out with selling foam fingers.
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These 16″ #1 Foam Fingers are by far the most popular size for schools to sell at their games.
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When you want to cheer big, these 18″ #1 Foam Fingers will do the trick!
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If bigger really is better, then these 22″ foam fingers are for you!
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We have more than just #1 Foam Fingers such as these popular Shaka Foam Hands!
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