Rowing is an expensive sport. Even when dealing with rowing programs fully-funded by their respective colleges, more money always helps. For programs which get little funding from the college, then fundraising efforts are crucial for the program to even survive.
Poorly funded rowing clubs must charge high dues in order to afford to compete. If these get too high, then fundraising efforts by the team members have to make up the difference. These can include raffles, rent-a-rower work campaigns, car washes, sales of various merchandise, and ergothons. None of this is fun, but without it the team cannot survive. The current account must pay for expenses ranging from equipment maintainance, gas and oil for the launches, regatta entry fees, travel costs, coaching, insurance, and assorted rentals. None of this accounts for new equipment purchases or other extraordinary expenses.
That's where the Friends come in. The rowers themselves could launch a major capital campaign, of course, but the time and effort has to come from somewhere. Among studies, training, work, and fundraising for the basic current account, there is not always a lot of time left. Often the students themselves are not in the best position to do this sort of fundraising anyway.
Enter some generous people willing to help with their time. In older and long-established programs, these people would often be alumni of the program, but they can be anyone willing to put in the effort. The Friends can solicit larger donations and look for sponsors. A tax-deductible status makes this an easier proposition. Often these Friends will have experience in the wider world which the students do not have, and they have the know-how and clout to seek money where the students themselves might not get through the front door. Again, in older programs the Friends as an organization would have its own clout, but in younger clubs having respected members of the community approach sponsors helps make up for lack of clout in other areas.
Alumni are, of course, the prime givers to any Friends organization. But, again, if there are not many alumni, or if they are all very young and not yet able to afford to give much, outside aid becomes that much more crucial. But all alumni should be encouraged to give, no matter how little - when they are in a position to give more, the habit will kick in and more will usually be forthcoming. Alumni from established programs can be asked to give in order to ensure that current and future generations can afford to have the same experiences they did; alumni of developing programs can be asked to give so that future generations can have experiences they could never dream of.
When I was an undergraduate at a fully-funded varsity-status program, the College paid for boathouse and equipment maintainance, coaches' salaries, basic travel expenses, and the like. (Some rowing programs offer scholarships and even living expenses for some of their students - we did not, and I think athletic scholarships are a waste of money anyway). But the Friends bought the boats - and we had boats all over the place. The Friends paid for our meals over Spring Break when our College meal plan was not in effect (or at least helped us out - we rowers always ate more than the supposed budget). And the Friends paid for certain pre-season and post-season regattas outside the regular schedule (like San Diego or Henley). We still had to pay for our rowing clothing, get ourselves to Fall regattas, and take care of other small expenses, but the cost to us was pretty small considering what it could have been.
At a place like William and Mary, we got a whopping total of $600 this year from the College, which works out to under $6 an athlete. That is the smallest sum for any program we face and hardly makes a dent in our $36,000 per year bare-necessities current budget. Most of the programs on our Spring schedule are at least partly varsity-status. Most of the rest get substancially more than $600, especially if towing vehicles and other seemingly minor details are thrown in as is the case for some other places. Even some programs which have barely more than ten rowers and make very little impression in the racing world get larger sums. We have one of the largest collegiate programs outside New England, yet we have to try to build a competitive program on our own, independent of the College.
Our Friends can help us in immeasurable ways. First of all, they can purchase us the basic equipment we need just to survive for the time being. Second, they can build us a capital fund which will serve as an endowment and ensure that we will be able to turn over our equipment in the future. Third, they can establish links to the local community which will enable us to exist as an organization virtually independent of the College. We want to start a community rowing club, for which we are aware that there is interest. Community clubs and college clubs can offer each other benefits and each one will help the other grow in the early years. In a part of the country devoid of rowing tradition, we need to create some. In doing so, we can broaden the potential support our program can receive from the community. One thing we need is a boathouse, not to mention a site to build one on since our current site, though pleasant, is inadequate in many respects (no room for growth, occassional and unpredictable extreme low tides, and a subterranean gas main which prevents us from putting down a foundation) - community support will be essential both to find a site and to fund the project.
The only caveat about a Friends organization, however, is that it must always remember why it exists: to support the team. A Friends organization is not a reason unto itself. As a result, it must be closely in contact with the team in order to make sure that it is working to achieve the goals the team needs it to. The sport changes, and sometimes the needs do as well, in ways that old members may not understand. This is especially true if the team is young and has surged to levels well above those achieved by its old members. The Friends, therefore, can never be allowed to dictate to the team. If the alumni in question do have expertise in the sport, then they can be a valuable resource for consultation. But even so, the ultimate decision as to the use of the money has to be come from the team. Money raised by the Friends is raised for the team - therefore there needs to be communication: the team must tell the Friends what it wants money for, and the Friends have to go out and find a way to raise that money.
Wolfson College Boat Club does not have a Friends organization, which makes it the largest rowing program I have been associated with that does not have one. This always struck me as odd. It led, in my time there, to the addition of a fundraising/publicity officer to the Boat Club Committee, which succeeded in finding a little sponsorship but basically just got the Web page up and running. I even wrote a "Friends" letter in my last Winter there, but I don't remember it ever being sent out. Although the College is reasonably generous with money for equipment (a new boat comes along with new oars every three years or thereabouts), Wolfson is hardly a rich program. It is not old by British collegiate standards, and the college turns out a disproportionate amount of academics who don't earn much after they graduate. But as more and more boat clubs start Friends organizations and find sponsors, Wolfson runs the risk of being left behind. There are not enough boats for all the crews to comfortably use, and some boats are getting quite old. Conditions in University College's boathouse are cramped (one bay shared with another college which constantly dinged our riggers when they took their boats in and out), disgusting (the place hasn't been maintained properly since anyone can remember), and unsafe (in one year we had 2,000 pounds - approximately $3,000 - of parts stolen out of our racked boats). There are only two sets of hatchets which need to get shared, limiting flexibility in practice times. And, importantly, the Club needs to find creative ways to pay for coaches (arranging with the Senior Tutor, the Bursor, and the College President for me to get postdoctoral funding worked in my case, but it doesn't work for everyone). Indeed, this last item was a main concern for me and it does not surprise me that the men have not had a proper full-time head coach for several years. More money needs to come from somewhere.
As I read my newsletters from programs I have been a part of in the past, I take great pride in what they are doing today. I hope they have half the experience I had, and my experience in the sport has obviously been so fulfilling that I have become a rowing coach. I owe much of that opportunity to the generosity of others, without whom these programs would not have been able to afford to do what we did indeed do. As I read about the new and exciting things they are doing today, I know that many of these things are greater even than what we did, and it is good to know that everyone is constantly striving to move forward. A good deal can still be accomplished on a shoestring. But financial stability makes everything so much easier, and creates other possibilities. It is always good to have Friends.