Volunteer Scramble to Scalable System: How Johns Creek High School Modernized Athletic Sponsorships
School: Johns Creek High School (Fulton County, GA) · Programs funded: Athletics · Launched: August 2025 · Athletic Director: Kirk Call
The Challenge
Before adopting SponsorPlace, Johns Creek ran its sponsorship efforts through Booster Club volunteers. The model worked, but it didn't scale. As volunteers cycled in and out, new members struggled to get up to speed quickly, and there was no easy way for them to step in and start managing sponsorships on day one. As Kirk Call, the athletic director descibed it, the school "needed a more scalable way to allow new members to come in and be able to pick up sponsorships off the bat."
Just as important, the team lacked visibility. Knowing what was selling, what wasn't, and whether sponsor commitments were being answered required a system that the volunteer model simply didn't have.
The Solution
Johns Creek High School’s SponsorPlace
SponsorPlace gave Johns Creek a single, trackable home for its entire sponsorship operation. Every sponsorship now runs through one umbrella Booster Club, so the program can see exactly what's selling, what isn't, and where each opportunity stands while individual sports retain the autonomy to offer options unique to their teams.
The Result: a clear division of responsibility between the Booster Club and the teams, with all activity tracked in one place.
The change resonated with sponsors as much as with staff. Instead of multiple teams approaching the same local businesses separately, a sponsor can now support all of them through a single sponsorship. That consolidation, paired with a more organized presentation, made the program look more legitimate, and businesses responded to that professionalism.
“Our promises to companies were consistently met because our system was in place, allowing items to be easily tracked and traced.”
Connecting with Sponsors
Outreach centered on direct, in-person engagement with local businesses. In one standout moment, sponsors walked the campus alongside the Johns Creek team, pointing out exactly where they wanted their signage placed, and then went a step further by proposing a sponsorship package of their own. That kind of collaboration was only possible because the program had a structured system behind it that sponsors could trust.
A Surprising Insight
The campus walkthrough also surfaced a lesson that reshaped the program's strategy. As the team put it: "We found that we were pushing digital signage the most, while this whole time our sponsors valued static signs more than any other sponsorship." Listening to sponsors directly was made easier by SponsorPlace's organized approach, which revealed where the real demand was and helped the program focus its offerings accordingly.
The Results
In its first school year on SponsorPlace, Johns Creek raised $10,424 across roughly eight months (August through March) and has grown its total to $14,486 since launch. Those dollars went directly toward sports program fees and equipment, covering costs that keep students on the field and reducing the burden on families.
14K
RAISED SINCE LAUNCH
$10k
RAISED IN 8 MONTHS
Beyond the dollars, the program gained something harder to quantify: a dependable system that delivers on its commitments to sponsors, onboards new volunteers quickly, and presents Johns Creek athletics as a credible, well-run partner to the local business community.