Youth Sports Fundraisers

[Madi100]

I manage a youth soccer team, and we are having some money issues. We need to do a couple fundraisers, so we are in a better standing. Any money our team needs, we are expected to come up with. So, what types of fundraisers have your teams done that are successful?

 

[mjkacmom]

Our shoprite sells us gc's, and we get a percentage of the sale.

 

[ICF]

Our local HS football team sold discount cards for $20 that were good for a year.

A variety of local merchants gave discounts such as $5 off an oil change, B1G1 free pizza / sandwhich, free appitizers, $5 off a purchase of $20.....and the like and the card could be used over and over again.

I'm guessing that $20 card save us well over $100 during the course of a year.

 

[ohiomom28]

My son's football team sells raffle tickets. All of the prizes are donated. They are $5 each. Top prize is a Disney vacation!

 

[Mkrop]

Ours did Joe Corbi pizza but now I think they do cookie dough.

 

[kidzmom3]

the best fundraisers are big, gold tournament, mini gold tournament, ice cream social, dance, working at a professional stadium in the concession stand.

there is also:
canning, sponsors, cookie dough, yankee candles, christmas trees, candy, 50/50 raffles at the games, cash calendar (or prize calendar)

 

[dawson5]

We've asked local company's for donations for the travel baseball team, if they are major contributors, they will have a logo on our jersey's or equipment bags. We've also sold cookie dough and some kind of frozen pizza. In the past we've sold Papa Murphy pizza cards, they were donated to us and we sold them for $5. They were similar to peelers (if you're not familiar they are like business cards and the coupons peel off). We've sold cards like one of the pp's mentioned that were good for the whole year, I think there were about 12 businesses on there, like dairy queen and they would offer something like buy 1 med blizzard and get the 2nd half off. Also if you know anyone that sells home interiors, they sell candles for fundraisers.

Also, our local baseball league, the all-star team has made it to the babe ruth 13's world series in Utah (they are there right now). These boys went door to door selling Dominoes pizza cards for $10, they also solicited local businesses. (We just found out this morning they won last night and are in the semi-finals and will play an undefeated FL team tonight.) I forgot they also did a fundraiser at the ballpark. They had a cook out, lots of raffles, games, home-run derby and a dunk-tank. I think they raised over $1000 for it this way.

Car washes are big with some of the schools. Usually a company will help you out with this.

Good luck!

 

[3boymthr]

It depends upon how much money you want to raise. And whether you want to do door to door sales. Our organization is not a sports organization and we don't do door to door sales as the kids are too young but some fundraisers that made good money:

Picking up christmas trees the week after new years - $1800 (We charge $10/tree then take it to the town compost pile and I think $2 for wreaths.)

Local restaurants and some chains will have a eat here and your organization gets x% of sales, depending upon how the sale works. At Uno it was 10% of all sales for customers that had our fundraiser coupon on any given day (our day was a Thurday). At Friendly's we got 2% of all sales on a Tuesday night between 4 and 8 PM. Each of these type of fundraisers gains our organization between $250 and $500 and really all you have to do is convince people to eat out - it was very very easy.

Our carwash netted $2,500.

We sponsored a guy to come in and do a bubble show (really neat he puts a kid in a bubble and other crazy stuff). We charged $3/child and $5/adult and advertised across a three town area. After expenses we netted $1,500 in door receipts plus $200 in snack sale goods (cookies, brownies, water, etc.) We did have an outlay of expenses on this one (paying the showman, the posters to advertise and the auditorium, etc.) prior to the event so we were really crossing our fingers. It really worked out well. Our biggest problem was we didn't have enough change.

We are having a spaghetti supper in three months. Anticipated earnings is $2,000 afer expenses. Everyone is donating their time and a local caterer is selling us the food at a discount. If we sell advertising on placemats for the event we expect to raise even more money.

Oh, and a local organization is doing a golf ball drop next weekend. They are selling 1,000 golf balls at $10 each. The golf balls are numbered and the buyer is given a number. The Fire Dept agreed to donate the ladder truck for the event (though you could just drop them off the side of a building). The ball that stops closest to a designated spot (a tee I think?) in the ground wins $1,000. The organization is going to net almost $9,000. They did have to pay for the golf balls but I think they are using used balls that they got at a discount.

 

[Madi100]

Thanks for all the tips. It's so hard to know what will be successful and what won't make parents "mad" for having to participate in.

 

[kellydizfan]

Applebee's pancake breakfast - $5.00 and we kept $4.00 of it. They do them Saturday & Sunday mornings - they provide the cook and we did everything else. Kids waited on tables, adults plated food, poured drinks, served coffee and cleaned dishes while the kids did the tables, etc. maybe there are other restaurants out your way that would do something like this. We sold 50/50 raffle tickets also. yankee candles - 40% of the sales are yours. Silent auction - all items donated. Candy sales, etc. you can do it. I don't know if you can do can shakes or not, they used to be real popular around here but the stores are starting to say no to it. Good luck!

 

[Madi100]

Applebee's pancake breakfast - $5.00 and we kept $4.00 of it. They do them Saturday & Sunday mornings - they provide the cook and we did everything else. Kids waited on tables, adults plated food, poured drinks, served coffee and cleaned dishes while the kids did the tables, etc. maybe there are other restaurants out your way that would do something like this. We sold 50/50 raffle tickets also. yankee candles - 40% of the sales are yours. Silent auction - all items donated. Candy sales, etc. you can do it. I don't know if you can do can shakes or not, they used to be real popular around here but the stores are starting to say no to it. Good luck!

Seriously!??!!? Applebee's does this? I've never heard of this before.

 

[clh2]

Do any gas stations in your area allow not-for-profit groups do car washes?

We have a couple of gas stations in our neck of the woods that will let you do a car wash. They provide the water, and your group needs to provide all the signs, hoses, nozzles, towels, clothes line for drying towels, soap, window drying towels etc.

One gas station by us "charges 10% of your gross" for this. I.e. the last time we did this, we earned $240, and had to pay the gas station $24, so we netted $216.

It was a cold yuchy day, if it would have been a nice bright sunny day, some groups earn as much as $5-600.

Good Luck!

 

[Pikester]

I'm with a PTO that is in a school that does not allow the kids to fundraise so everything that we do has to be by us.

We put on a 6 mile trailrun through our town forest that has alot of nice trails in it. We do this with the help of a local mountain biking group that lets us keep all the profit. We ask businesses to donate money towards having their name put on the back of a t-shirt. $250-large logo, $100-meduim logo, $50-business name of t-shirt. Then we take the money raised to pay for the race. You would need someone to time the race, advertising, the cost of the t-shirts, etc. We charge $15 to pre-register for our race (we use a website for that) and $20 raceday. You could always just do race day. We give t-shirts to the first 50 who pre-reg or you could do t-shirts for everyone, just depends on how many you think you'll need. We also have a design on the front of the shirt that has our races name on it.

If our sponsorship money covers everything for the race we are able to keep the profit made from the registrations. If not, then we use some of the registration money to pay for the race stuff.

Our last race we made $2100.

You will need quite a few volunteers to pull this off and you will need a running course.

 

[koopa]

I agree about having a team night at a local restaurant with a percentage of sales given back to the team. TGIFridays gave back 10%, but we had to use flyers with our food purchase. It was just for one night.

Currently selling $10 McDonalds coupon cards. $4.50 per card gets sent back to the team. 100 card minimum order. Good for us, because we pay nothing up front.

 

[kellydizfan]

yup Applebees does this around here - it is very popular from 8-10 a.m. We made $1,300 doing it - including the few $'s we made from the 50/50. I have heard of groups bringing in $3,000 and over from it. you may charge what you want for tickets but you must pay $1.00 to applebees for each ticket sold. I think KFC has something also. The schools use KFC as a fundraiser. We had a blast. Our next one is set up for 10/3. Pizza Hut also has a fundraiser. We get 20% of the sales from the coupons we hand out for a certain night we picked. Overall with the Pizza Hut - we did one night a month - 4 months total - as we didn't want to overload parents - I think the first couple of times - take in was $80 some dollars, then the next was $100 and then the last night was over $230 but we really pushed that one. We have a small group of kids - I think total was less than 40 kids.
entertainment books also is always a seller! Barnes & Noble is another one - we pick one weekend and pass out coupons - we made over $600 on that one.