Franchise QB

Episode 65: Mike Bahun- Founder, Fundraising University

• Mike Halpern • Season 1 • Episode 65

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Summary

In this episode of the Franchise QB Podcast, host Mike Halpern speaks with Mike Bahun, founder of Fundraising University. They discuss Bahun's extensive coaching background, the unique fundraising model of his company, and the significant impact it has on schools and youth programs. 

The conversation highlights the challenges of school funding, the growth of Fundraising University, and the qualities of ideal franchise owners. Bahun emphasizes the importance of community involvement and the transformational aspect of their fundraising efforts, aiming to provide resources for schools while creating entrepreneurial opportunities for individuals.

Takeaways

-Coaching has been a lifelong passion for Mike Bahun
-Fundraising University has raised over $240 million for youth programs
-The model shifts the paradigm of traditional fundraising
-Schools often receive only 30% of the funding they need
-Fundraising University aims to provide a fundraising coach for every school
-The business model is entirely work-from-home with low startup costs
-Mental performance coaching is crucial for franchise owner success
-Fundraising events leverage technology for efficiency and effectiveness
-The ideal franchise owner is empathetic, competitive, and organized

https://fundraisingu.net/franchising/

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Mike Halpern, CAFC
mike@franchiseqb.com

This is the Franchise QB Podcast, where we empower entrepreneurs to win big in franchising. We huddle up weekly to educate our audience about the most successful small business model ever created. Franchise it! Welcome to the Franchise QB podcast. I'm your host, Mike Halpern, a 20 year industry veteran and entrepreneur. My mission is for listeners to achieve their American dreams of creating wealth and independence through franchise ownership. Every week we speak with franchisees, franchisors or vendors that support the industry. Thank you for joining us and let's get started. Joining us in the huddle today is Mike Bahun, founder at Fundraising University. Welcome to the show, Mike. Welcome. Hey, thank you very much for having me, Mike. Absolutely. Great to have you here. So you are a coach at heart. You've been coaching in various capacities for over 25 years. Super impressive. Before we discuss your brand, let's talk about your history of coaching and your current role as director of player development at Ohio State. I know that's exciting because of the football game. Yeah, good timing. Yeah, I've been I'm a coach at heart, whether that's in business or with athletics. It's just always something I've been drawn to. It's built out of my passion for what coaches have done for me. So I've always wanted to reciprocate that. So I know your son is an athlete and you can appreciate the experiences, but I've had them all the way from little eight year old baseball when I ran a baseball academy all the way up to I've been blessed enough to coach 12 big leaguers that are current. or past. And so I've got a chance to see the whole developmental process in a 30 year coaching career that I hope to have 30 more years left to do. There's nothing I enjoy more than watching young people develop around the game of baseball. I love it. Yeah. And we didn't talk about this previously, but I did coach little league baseball for 14 spring and fall seasons when my sons were coming up there in high school. switched over to the big field. kind of passed the baton, but it was a really great way for me to get to meet the families in the community, get to know the kids and all these years later, you know, they still see me and they're like, Hey, coach, Mike, how you doing? Which is pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. Just the relationships built around sports and just the natural genuineness that athletics creates around failure, especially baseball that allows us to coach people up and, gives parents a chance to appreciate us. I agree with you that that relationship within the community of those is the long lasting ones that go into the the weddings and getting called for advice and stuff is the coolest part. That's awesome. So Mike, let's talk about your brand. Tell us what is Fundraising University? Yeah, Fundraising University is a service model. So what we do essentially is we go into high schools and clubs, academies, know, small colleges and we raise money for sports teams and activity groups, youth programs, and we do that in a very specific way. The service that we execute on is an in-person service. It has five very key dynamics that affect fundraising, because there's two things that people like about fundraising when they bring in a provider like us. Number one, we're taking away the work and the risk, and then we're also able to execute and usually raise them three to four times the money in a third of the time. That's what we do is we come in and we shift the paradigm of fundraising. by using these very specific dynamics that athletes and teachers and coaches respond to to get the best results. Very cool. Yeah. And I can't wait to get more into the model here in a minute, but I wanted to touch on your background. I know you didn't have an easy start to life and sports in your words saved your life. So tell us about that. Yeah, I was from Omaha, inner city situation, single parent family. My mom did the best she could. Spent a lot of time with my grandma. I think my mom, you know, she had three of us boys. She retired in 2007 of 30 years at one place and the most she ever earned was $9. And so, you know, that structure, that male figures, everything that sports gave me at about 11 or 12 was exactly what I needed. And that's really where this brand was built out of unconsciously is that's what we want to do. We appreciate and respect that the net effect of what we do is we get to influence kids at a very intimate level. And we do that by connecting with coaches and executing on that system. So it's very special to me. It's where I get the drive and the desire to put in the hundred hours a week the last, you know, 25 years is we want to have a fundraising coach available to every school in America. And we're we're getting close to that. So it's very, very special. Yeah, that's exciting that you can have a business model that, you know, earns money for the owners and also allows you to really positive impact on kids, the community, and really a long-term impact on role models and coaching and all the things that you mentioned previously, which is really great. So let's talk about how much money has fundraising you raised for kids since you started the program? Yeah, no, thank you. We just reached over $240 million. I've been involved in this since 1999 as a coach first. I was the customer and then was part of fundraising for five years where I had a mentor. And then we launched fundraising you in 2009 and we just got over that mark here. And our main goal is to reach that billion dollar mark is what's on the peripheral. Yeah, you're on your way. mean, almost a quarter of a billion. I that's an amazing amount of revenue to bring in. So let's talk about the impact. Like how does that actually help the schools? Yeah, you know, I know again, you've been a coach and you have a son that's an athlete. And so I'm going to use wrestling as an example to quantify it intentionally for you. Let's assume you have 40 wrestlers and that wrestling team is probably going to need $250 per athlete to function. And so that coach is going to start the season and say, hey, I need $10,000. That's just the necessities. It's not going on the trip. It's not a new singlet. And the school is going to say, hey, we've got $3,000 and it's left up to the coach to close that gap. And so we're stepping right into that gap and supplemented coaching, know, safety equipment, regular equipment, meals, travel, anything and everything that we need to do to put wealth into their program. And the beautiful part about that is then, you know, that that has many levels of affirmation and value inside of it. Like I was once told by a coach in Omaha, that as simple as buying a t-shirt for a kid and giving it to him with the money raised, that sense of pride that he had in being part of something and putting that shirt on his back was enough to keep him involved in sports and give him somewhere to go 15 or 20 hours a week instead of going home, you know, where there was no structure and discipline. And so we're putting, you know, we're creating opportunities for something as simple as a t-shirt. all the way to we work with some national programs that are playing in national tournaments and getting Jordan jerseys and everything kind of in the middle of that. And the best part of it for me is when we're able to supplement coaches and bring more hands into the programs that help the kids. Yeah. I mean, you mentioned that as a parent, like you want to make sure your kids are doing something productive with their time. Athletics is a phenomenal way to do that. Obviously there's afterschool academic programs as well, but that's something that is really important. if they have time on their hands, they're probably not going to do great things. If they're able to be with a team around people, around like positive adult influences, they have better outcomes. And you mentioned before, like the example of the wrestling team where, you know, they need 10 grand and they have three and there's that big gap. you know, tell us about how underfunded schools actually are and why that is. Yeah, it varies from state to state because of just what they're allowed in on the state from a legislation level or a school district level. But I guess my opinion would be as they get about 30 % of what they need now, that's not any kind of a, you know, shot at the school systems or the districts or our tax dollars. It's just a couple of things that happened that you can relate to with your baseball thing. When when you and I played baseball, right, we played 10 games and. you know, a dad coached the team and that's about it. But these kids now, because of that model that goes up, they're playing 40 games. They've got four tournaments, know, they've got hats, t-shirts. And so now we're spending at a rate that's about $420 per athlete. If you accumulate all the high school sports and they're getting funded by about $80 from the discovery that we do. And so when you take the fact that we're getting less money into schools through tax dollars in our economy, And now you're tripling and quadrupling even since COVID, the amount of money that they have, that's on a foundational level. And there's places in Georgia that's pay to play. And then that breaks my heart because, you for me, if they said it was $500 to play football, I would have never played. My mom couldn't have done that. And so there are some pay to play models in some states and we're going to fight back hard against that to make kids, keep kids participating in sports. Yeah, no, it's good to have equity there so that everyone can have a chance to participate and do their thing and kind of let their merit speak for itself. So let's talk about the model. You mentioned was 2009 when you kind of launched your first fundraising new location. Yes. OK, got it. So kind of fast forward to today in 2025, how many locations are open and operating and how many do you see coming online here in the next? Yeah, we've got 31 owners, 64 locations. We've got about 2800 high schools. We've got about a 92 % residual rate on those customers that will talk a little bit more about. think we're in a capacity now because we've just built our own custom ERP where we're going to be adding about 40 territories a year for the next five years. And that'll kind of put us at critical mass. So we've got about 200 territories left in the United States that. We're actively trying to find the best people with the best heart and best work ethic to help us on our mission. Yeah. So you'd still have some good white space available for new franchise. Absolutely. Yeah. Cool. So do you need any real estate to operate your model? Nope. Nope. So this is an entirely work from home model. We say work from car because if you're not out in schools, you're in trouble if you're at home. But yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a load of get started. you know, less than $100,000 and you don't really have any ongoing expenses that aren't natural outside of just gas and home office expenses and that. That's what really makes us unique and gets people started very quickly. Yeah, I can see that. So how do you keep your owners motivated, right? To kind of get out there, get in the cars, pound the pavement. What do you do to kind of keep them highly productive? Yeah, you know, I think we have to just be aware of what The challenges are in entrepreneurship. It's a mental game first. And so we're very, very intentional about teaching the mental game, engaging people through the mental process, teaching them skills, right? And then executing on those skills. And so we have mental performance coaches. We have someone named Brogan Walker that won the Ultimate Fighter Championship. She teaches mental skills weekly to our owners. We have a concept that they get in our 90-day fast track program. called the ownership spirit by Dr. Dennis Deaton. We have a former NFL player that talks about grit. And so we're very intentional about teaching the mental game and we do it through some spaced repetition. And when we lean into that and we get people in the right frame of mind and we coach that, then we're developing entrepreneurs and we take that responsibility very seriously. Yeah, that's great that those kind of mental coaches also have a background in athletics. I think that kind of ties into a lot of what the fundraising at the school level is going to help those programs. So what makes fundraising you unique? mean, are there other players in the space? What makes you guys different? Yeah, there definitely there's competition, which we love that. I know sometimes when I talk to future partners, sometimes they get inquisitive there. It just allows us chance to look good. And so the biggest separator is the service. And where you are, We're a service driven in schools, actively participating and interacting with the students. And the majority of our competitors are commodity. know, they're sole proprietors that are unorganized in the space, right? So there's no ability to evolve and they're going to come in from the commodity perspective where they're going to want the teams to do the work and use a product where we understand that we need to come in and be in hands on and take that work off to teachers and coaches. Yeah, that's awesome. I could see the value proposition there. I mean, it seems like a really sticky model when you mentioned 92 % retention. I mean, that's high in any business. So what does that kind of equate to in terms of fundraisers? How many did you do last year, for example? Yeah, that's super intuitive because it's one of our superpowers. So we had over 2,800 high schools go in 2024. And at the point where the fundraiser's done and I say, hey, Coach Mike, here's the money that I've given to you through our technology. please sign this invoice to submit to the school. And then here's an agreement to put you on the books for next year. And at that point, when the fundraiser ends, we had a 92 % residual rate on those 2,800 customers. So it really allows the business to grow in multiple ways, right? You have that annuitized foundation, those teams get better year by year because they get better at executing. And then the referral capacity inside the school. getting that second customer after the first one is very, very organic. So how long after training can a franchise owner launch? My thinking is it's probably pretty quick, right? Like they don't have to find real estate and build a project. mean, they're going through your training program. So can tell us a little bit about what the opening looks like out of the gates for a new fundraising U owner? Yeah, so we have them come into Arizona and they do a week of rookie training. Well, we have a 90 day fast track program where that second week we're out in schools with them in some cases over here or whatever works out the best and they're already signing up business in the second week in most cases. so, you know, typically they're going to start seeing income in that 60 to 70 day range. And we have people that are on track in our first year goals are starting to be cashflow positive about the sixth month pretty consistently. Okay, awesome. So you touched on your ideal candidate before. I want to speak to it a little more. I mean, obviously, like you can't teach someone to go out there and do the work. You can't play both the X and Q. So what kind of persona, what's your avatar for someone that like joins this and they just flourish in the model? Who's that ideal candidate for you? Yeah, I think they no doubt have to be a people person, right? I mean, that's such a cliche thing to say, but people person in a sense that they have to have that right balance of being competitive. And I've got to go find coaches and be competitive about our passion to help and support them, even when they may not see that yet. I mean, they know that they need money, but we need to go be in front of them to help them, give them the gift of seeing the potential. But that competitive person also has to have a level of empathy because we're working with students and we're working with coaches that are very empathetic. And so that kind of you know, ability to have both is a little bit more unique. So we kind of spend a lot of time on that. And then a lot of the things that are probably pretty common of success, they've got to be organized. Obviously, they have to be coachable in a franchise system, you know, and they have to be a self starter. And so I think the empathy piece, anybody, sometimes we get a little bit compartmentalized that, this is a sports business or It's for people who want to make a difference and there's people that want to make a difference everywhere. They're inside of the medical, they're inside of the home service space, they're inside of sports, they're all over corporations. And so we really have a much larger net that we're seeing expand into all different places. And if somebody has a heart to make a difference and if they want a family lifestyle with a high residual business that's on a predictable calendar, which is a school calendar, then we're a great place for them. Very cool, yeah, that makes sense. So for anyone listening that is trying to get a better sense for the types of activities that are done at the school level to kind of raise the funds, can you give us an example of what one of those fundraising events might look like? Yeah, so what we're really unique, and I mentioned the technology is our delivery mechanism, right? We've made everything in our ERP digital. the days, know, Mike, it looks like you're... You and I are around the same generation where we, you know, sold candy bars or popcorn and you got an order form and you're collecting money. First and foremost, those days are gone. Everything we do inside our ERP is completely digital. We don't collect money or checks. It's all transacted inside each owner having their own, they're their own merchant. They order forms, they orders everything we do. We don't go to school and pick up products anymore. All of our products ship home individually. And so we have consumable products. because that's what the market wants for some schools and demographics. We have discount merchant-based products where the local community is going to give a deal if they support the school around the product that edifies the school. And then we actually have a one-hour donation program. We're not emailing or writing letters, where we're just texting people. And we can actually run an entire fundraiser for a sports team in an hour, where we've raised up to $50,000 in that hour. Wow. Impressive. Yeah, it's great that you're leveraging new technology and kind of evolving with the times because that's how you're going to stay ahead and have the most effective campaign for the school and for the coaches and for the franchise owners. So earlier on under a hundred grand. So let's call it, know, 95 to a hundred K to get in the deal. Um, franchise fee, working capital. Is that pretty much it? Yeah. mean, if franchise fee is about 84 % of the cost and I believe that's instant equity with the way that we've grown, especially adding technology. then outside of that, it's basic setup stuff and, they're ready to rock and roll. And then we're with them for 90 days. We have a 90 day fast track where we literally have an end of the day coaching meeting with them the first 90 days. that's, that's the other part of the investment is we have a, you know, a training fee that gives them about 500 hours and a dedicated coach to the first year. Awesome. Yeah. That first year is so critical. Because once they figure out the model, they can just kind of pour some fuel on it and kind of accelerate their growth. So let's talk about performance, item 19. You mentioned before that your goal is to get owners cash flow positive within six months. Anything else you can share with us in terms of kind of benchmarks, in terms of sales or earnings? Yeah, so this year in gross sales, we're going to be right over $700,000 as our average territory. We're going to be operating anywhere from You know a margin of 22 to 29 percent High to low there and we've had five people Hit our coveted one million dollar club in the first 12 months. Well, congratulations. That's awesome. Thank you Yeah, that's a lot of volume to do in a fundraising model. So you can tell that some people are out there really hustling Yes So this has been great. I appreciate you sharing all this information with this Mike anything else you want to add to the mix before we wrap up today? No, what I would just people that are listening to this, you know, think about, you know, your aunt, your nephew, your cousin, anybody in your life that's been involved in the band, the cheer sports. And that's what we're doing here is we're making that experience better for people by giving resources to schools that they really, really need. And we can do so in a transformational way. Right. And so we see so many of these passion things, these this donating and the coaching and the volunteering time, right, that's out there. But what's very rare is that having that happen and having a transactional element where they're pretty evenly distributed. And so that's what I was kind of after. I'm an entrepreneur at heart, but I love sports. So we've built something where that transformational and transactional element exists and they create many levels of affirmation. And we're just looking for great people to help us make that difference. Sounds great, Mike. It sounds like an awesome concept and you're helping out young people in schools and people that are entrepreneurial can participate. So if anyone listening would like to connect with Mike and his team to learn more about becoming a Fundraising University franchise owner, contact me at FranchiseQB.com or on X@QBfranchiseQB. I'll get you guys connected. Thank you, Mike, so much for taking the time to get in the huddle and discuss Fundraising U with us today. All right. Thanks, Mike. This was very well done and I appreciate your time. Absolutely. Thank you. Visit FranchiseQB.com to take the next step of your journey towards wealth, independence, and franchise ownership. And remember, when working for the man gets old, you must do something bold. Thank you for listening.