We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Forever First Foundation. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Garret below.
Thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?
Our core mission is to unite ALL SUPPORTERS of UIW football so that we can provide unrivaled support for the football program. This is done through our three pillars: Fundraising, Fan Engagement, and Family.
Fundraising:
100% of our effort directly benefits the players, coaches, and support staff. We are committed to being transparent about how funds are used to enhance the entire program by working directly with the staff and Athletic Director. Fundraising efforts help the program with areas such as Nutrition, Equipment, Meals, Player Development, and NIL Initiative.
Fan Engagement:
We support our football team year-round by holding events at spring games, hosting our annual golf tournament in the summer, and attending tailgates all fall, including 1-2 away trips per year. At all of our events, we are doing our best to raise money for the program and to garner support by spreading “THE WORD.” We also do our best to engage online in social media to promote the football teams’ successes in hopes of gaining more fans.
Family:
Our mindset is that everyone involved with UIW football (fans, players, alumni, parents, coaches, and other supporters) are FAMILY. We look to help out our family with Career Services (resume help, internships, networking opportunities, letters of recommendation, etc.) and Brotherhood/Fellowship (event hosting, open lines of communication for personal help, and faith gatherings).
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
Several UIW football alumni helped found the Forever First Foundation in 2018 as an official 501c3 non-profit. We raise the majority of our funds for the UIW football program through our annual golf tournament. Since then we have grown tremendously. We went from roughly 20 participants at our first tournament in 2011 to selling out 216 players in 2022 with expectations to do the same in 2023. Over the years we have raised over $75,000 for the UIW football program.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
Social media has been vital to the success of the FFF. Instagram and Twitter have contributed most to that success. Our team has done a great job in expanding our reach through these platforms by gaining thousands of followers over the years. What we’ve noticed works best is constant content and engagement. Connecting to people on a personal level has really helped our brand.
Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.
As a non-profit consisting of 100% volunteers, it has been difficult to sell merchandise. We came across Print-On-Demand companies and found that these were our best options. Rather than us take on the risk of guessing how much inventory to order and manually shipping items out ourselves, we have use print-on-demand stores like Printiful and Squad Locker. These services allow us to upload our logos onto a variety of products (shirts, hats, mugs, jackets, etc.) and instantly have a store. All we have to do is set the margin we would like to receive on these products on the back end and everything else from ordering to making the product to shipping is taken care of. 
Contact Info:
- Website: www.foreverfirstfoundation.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/forever1stcards/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/forever1stcards
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/forever1stcards
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Forever1stCards
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuuSPSDVGDG1Vr11p5Pb4gA