Is Your Team “Fundraised Out”

Fundraising for youth sports team gets harder and harder as the kids get older. Trying to come up with something innovative, different, new, exciting, just doesn’t happen. The kids are not interested, the parents are even less interested, and everyone you know is “fundraised out”.

15 to 18 year kids and/or their parents do not:
want to do a car wash.
have no interest in ready-to-make-all-in-one-box cakes.
have no desire to go door to door selling; batteries, restaurant gift, oil changes.
and will not take on the Girl Scouts for cookies or Boy Scouts for Christmas wreaths.

You get the idea. So how does a team raise money without having to raise the playing fees? This is how we did it on my son’s hockey team this past season.

The team managers and coaches decided to hold a parent meeting and get everything out in the open. We could try and do passive fundraising, meaning little effort and not time consuming, or we can have everyone cut a check for the additional monies needed to do the schedule all families agreed to play. I presented, everyone voted, and it was decided that we would try fundraising for the first half of the season, if it was working, great, if not, check would be written.

What was decided?

Each player/family would be responsible for an idea and follow it through for 4 months. Here is what players and families did:

1. Collected used cell phones from family and relatives, friends, neighbors, office, and drop boxes in several retail locations. They placed ads in several homeowner association newsletters and had the players leave a drop box on their porch.

2. Collected used ink jet and toner cartridges from family and relatives, friends, neighbors, office, and drop boxes in several retail locations. They too placed ads in several homeowner association newsletters and had the players leave a drop box on their porch.

3. Had a vendor donate their company’s suite for a 12 to a hockey game and had a raffle. They sold tickets at games and practices for three months and then had a drawing.

4. Had their company donate three sets of four tickets to two hockey and one basketball game and raffle one set a month for three months.

5. Collected scrap metal from an industrial park, had a pipefitting company donate manpower and trucks, and turned it all in to a metal recycling facility for cash.

6. Several solicited corporate donations of cash from the vendor companies they did business with.

7. One parent decided to donate any money raised from advertisements on their website to the team.

The money raised pays for tournament fees ($850 to $1495 per tournament), extra ice time for practices and scrimmages ($225 to $375 per hour depending on time of day), referees and scorekeepers ($125 to $200 per game), team supplies (tape, mouth guards, cups, equipment repair kits, laces, etc), buses for team travel, and team building activities.

We raised over $3,000 in the first four months and decided to continue it for the rest of the season. We have now collected of $6500 and the season is almost over. We are very close to meeting our goal.

I assisted on the corporate vendor donations and will continue with that next season.

I am also using any money generated by the advertisements on this blog to help sponsor the team.

The key is to remember that “lots of littles” add up over time.


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