This year’s 5A High School State Wrestling Tournament in Kansas kicks off on February 22 just north of Wichita, and DeSoto High School are priming to send as many wrestlers as possible. Qualifying for the finals comes after a grueling season of matches, and with only 23 other wrestlers who have made the cut in school history, ‘making states’ is as challenging as it is rewarding. Often, traveling the 200 miles to the tournament is a challenge in itself, with a high price tag for an athlete and their family after hotels and transportation.
Today’s announcement of a partnership between VNN, the largest and fastest growing high school sports communication platform, and RallyAroundUs, aims to ensure schools have the tools at their disposal to overcome these obstacles. This includes DeSoto Wrestling, whose campaign to earn donations for travel expenses to the state tournament is nearly 50% to their $5,000 goal with 13 days remaining. The agreement continues the momentum set by VNN’s ecommerce and fundraising collaborations with Toronto’s FlipGive, and Seattle’s Amazon Business, by bringing RAU’s unique social features, custom campaign pages, and secure payment processing to over 15% of all high school athletic department programs on VNN’s SportsHub platform.
“Scott Dufault, the head football coach at South Salem High School in Oregon once told me, ‘Fundraising will be the reason I quit coaching football someday’” said VNN’s eCommerce Lead Alex Kooi. “I hear that sentiment all the time. Finances are easily the number one challenge facing VNN’s high school teams, and as the company connecting all the pieces of high school sports, we’re excited to connect with RallyAroundUs, giving coaches a much-needed assist with something they often don’t like to do.”
Brett Thompson, Founder of RallyAroundUs, continued, “Our companies share the same commitment to provide simple, effective, and time saving solutions that empower athletic departments. The benefit of this partnership will be recognized as athletic departments and individuals are free to spend less time fundraising and more time pursuing excellence in their field of endeavor.“
The first phase of integration between the two companies went live today, with a second slated to be launched later in Q1.
Interested in calculating how much your team can make from a RallyAroundUs donation drive with VNN? Find out at http://vnnsports.net/donationcalculator. For more information about the partnership or to start a fundraiser for your team, contact Alex Kooi, at alex@vnnsports.net.