Prepping for your next season? Every year, it seems equipment and transportation costs keep climbing, requiring more and more support from not only players’ parents but the community as a whole. We've gathered some ways to simplify your fundraising for all of those high-ticket items.
Here are our simple tips that can help your booster organization reach your funding goal:
5 Sports Booster Fundraising Ideas
1. Roundups
This is probably the simplest way to raise funds over a multiple-month timeline. With even ten roundup donors, you'd see about $600 raised in 3 months. So what are roundups?
You're probably familiar with the idea of putting a donation jar at a local business for fundraising. Now imagine if you could instead attach a digital "change jar" to the debit and credit cards of all of your supporting parents, families, and community members.
Roundups are a fairly new way of donating; allowing people to round daily purchases to the next whole dollar and then deposits proceeds to users’ causes of choice. Parents do need to initially be directed to your page to signup and begin rounding up, but from then on out, their roundups will be a stable and constantly growing fund that can cover almost any expense imaginable, all year long. Roundup donations generate around $20-$30 per donor per month, every month! Setup takes just a few minutes here too.
2. Game Raffles
Need funding upfront, quickly and easily? 50/50 raffles are a great way to raise donations quickly to create a small lump sum. Try to incorporate a raffle or give-a-way into every team home game, as well as a season-long raffle with a larger payout for both the winner and your organization. Creating raffle baskets or silent auction baskets filled with team apparel, game tickets, and other goodies can also generate lots of donations over a period of a few hours!
You know what else is great about raffles? They can easily be incorporated into other fundraising methods, like roundups. Curious about implementing roundup fundraising, but not sure how to message it? Tie in a raffle and make every $5 in roundups count as one raffle entry! Want to keep it a little simpler? Just make every roundup participant a raffle participant.
3. Apparel Sales
Team branded clothing is a great way to provide supporters with a product they will actually wear! Try setting up an apparel table at your next home game with a variety of clothing options and sizes. You can purchase bulk bundles through your school store, or create personalize print-on-demand shirts from companies like Vistaprint or Teespring.
4. Food and Beverage Sales
This suggestion is as simple as a Costco membership (or maybe a membership at Restaurant Depot or another wholesaler if you have the budget or connections).
Adding a snack table staffed by booster volunteers can serve as a steady revenue stream to help grow your booster funds. Creating combo deals and adding discounts with game tickets can help promote the game and increase your attendance, and therefore your potential funding revenue.
And guess what? This is another method that you can tie in to roundups. Offer roundup donors mild vouchers for concessions with every $10 or $20 in roundups donated. It's an easy way to generate extra incentives for supporters to contribute roundups, turning that concessions stand into a revenue generator even outside of game time.
So what are you waiting for? Grab the whole team and get fundraising!
