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Posts Tagged ‘fundraisers’

It seems like soccer fundraising is either a season-long effort or a quick hitter that doesn’t cover all your needs.

Well, the good news is that there are some ways to make money quickly, or even all season long, that merit your consideration.

What are your fundraising goals?

Many youth sports teams and leagues want:

1 – Fundraisers that can be done with little effort
2 – Fundraisers that may be done sporadically
3 – Fundraisers that will produce significant results

Soccer fundraising programs
In this article, we’ll examine several soccer fundraisers that are quick hitting and sure to score.

The three soccer fundraising programs are:

1 – Bottled water

2 – Shot cage and radar gun

3 – Fast-food discount cards

Soccer Fundraising: Bottled Water
The first soccer fundraising program is selling bottled water. Consider for a moment that each team member will bring water to every practice and to every game. That’s at least a couple dozen bottles right there and probably a whole lot more.

Add in sales to spectators and you’ve got at least 500 bottles that could easily be sold. Sure, you can buy in bulk at a warehouse club, but you can add extra value to your soccer fundraising with private branding of your bottled water, either as a team or as a league.

The initial setup for each label is $75 and afterward, the unique label with your logo emblazoned in color costs nothing extra. Prices for the bottled spring water are wholesale, which allows your group a comfortable 50% profit margin.

When you think about it, doesn’t it make sense to capture the wholesale-to-retail markup for your group while building team spirit at the same time?

Soccer Fundraising: Shot Cage
The second soccer fundraising program is best suited for a league-wide effort. On Picture Day, during a tournament, or at any other event with high attendance, set up a soccer “shot cage” with a radar gun to measure velocity.

Every player will want multiple chances to show just how fast their shot speeds toward the goal. You can set up contests with prizes for various age ranges, team awards, Top Gun, etc.

Soccer fundraising featuring a radar-equipped shooting cage is actually an inexpensive event to host.
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Selecting the right fundraiser is the most important decision you’ll make. Among the key factors are the timing of your fundraisers each year, the quality of the merchandise, selling considerations, delivery considerations, and ultimately, the net profit to your organization.

Think of yourself as running a small business building a reputation for innovation and quality products. What are your financial goals versus expected unit volume numbers, sales revenue versus profit percentage, quality of goods versus cost, acceptable market price points, etc?

If you think like a business leader, then you’re on the right track.

First choose a type of fundraiser
There are different types of “best” fundraisers and you have to select what’s best for your organization at this particular time.

Your fundraising choices are:

1 – Event-based fundraisers
2 – Direct donation fundraiser
3 – Fundraisers with immediate product delivery
4 – Fundraisers with delayed product delivery

The first decisions you have to make are on the fundraiser category, selecting a fundraising company or distributor as your supplier, and then the actual fundraiser itself.

Decision factors
How do you make that decision? A professional fundraising consultant can often be a big help. You can also check the web, use your personal contacts, review your group’s past records, etc. Most importantly, take some time to gather the information you need to make the right decision.

You can design a simple survey that you can give to past organizers and other key influencers such as local merchants and organizational leaders. Offer clear choices to ease evaluation of replies. Print it out and get quality feedback from within and without your organization on what’s worked well before and what needs improving.

Then, put together a spreadsheet for evaluating and ranking fundraisers. Break the ranking criteria into categories with sub headings in text boxes across the spreadsheet. Numerical rankings should be assigned to what criteria are most important to your group at this particular time for this fundraiser.
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An essential part of fundraising is writing grant proposals and grant applications. An effectively written grant application can result in large sums of money for your fundraising group. Grant applications can be a long and tiresome journey, but in the end it will be worth it for your group! In the following article, we are going to help you understand grants and what they entail.

Grant Applications Broken Down

Most grant applications will include some or more of the following components:

Letters of Reference – letters from those who can testify to your experience and good character.
Formal Proposal – a detailed explanation of what the grant money will be used for.
A Business Plan – detailing the finer points of your financial needs.
A List of Resources – detail the resources you have, and the resources you need.
Complete list of Group Members – including both workers and volunteers.
Goals and Plans – detail the short and long term goals of your group.

The grant application will list all the material and documents needed for submission. It is vitally important that you follow all the directions exactly as they are stated when filling out the grant application. One mistake could make the difference between getting the grant and getting turned down. Many grant providers reject applications that didn’t take the time to follow the directions when submitting their application. Prior to submitting your grant application have someone in the group proof read it and make sure that all the information is correct and in order. After staring at the same document for days on end, it becomes difficult to notice any mistakes.
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If you have children still attending school, then you probably know all too well the feeling you get when you receive a flyer stating the need for yet another fundraising event! That horrible feeling in the pit of your stomach that says you’re going to have to contribute in some way, either buying something you really don’t need and really can’t afford, or by donating hours of your time, hours that you don’t have either.

But do not despair. Life for fundraising people has got easier because of the Internet, and with computers in general, as you can use the computer to make your life easier in many ways. You can document the jobs needed to be done by volunteers, you can email volunteers to keep them all informed of meetings, jobs and the like, and computers can help you keep track of donors, donations, and so much more.

The trick with fundraisers is to find something that people want to buy from you, either a product or a service, and that you want to sell and promote. And of course, if the event is because you are fundraising for your school, ideally it should be something that will inspire as many students as possible to participate.

That rules out the good old favourite bake sale, as it is hard to devote the time to helping preschoolers bake for a bake sale, but with so many food allergies around, and fear of food contamination, I think those days are over. I remember how awful I felt when I baked for the school fundraiser, only to find that my daughters had bought the goods so they could see what mommy’s baking tasted like! I must admit, baking didn’t happen very often because of a shortage of time, but I didn’t realize my family felt so deprived!
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Have you realized just how much fundraising is going on these days? There is fundraising for little league, school fundraisers, and the college fundraiser, as well as church fundraisers. Day cares need more funds, hospitals need new equipment, and cheerleaders need to fundraise for their costumes. And to think up new fundraising ideas that will be successful is becoming more challenging every day.

On a good note, it shows that people do care how others live and cope with their lives. However, it also means that, because we are always being asked to donate to one good cause after another, we are not always able to help. Despite our best intentions, our own funds simply will not stretch that far.

However, if we request the donation of items instead of cash, that is often a relief to a potential donor. People will often gladly donate a can of food for a food drive, or a kitchen item they have never used for a sale, whereas they would not donate cash. And there are many kinds of fundraising ideas you can use to hold sales based on items collected.

For example, you could hold a toy drive that would give your organization toys to sell to support your work. Or what about a gardening sale? If you have some volunteers with green thumbs, they could easily grow some plant cuttings or start some seeds or bulbs growing ready for a plant sale in the spring or early summer, when the general public is looking to restock their garden after the winter.
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