Make the most of your fundraising
Success Is A Blog Away
If you are like most of our customers who are in charge of running their youth sports organizations, you may have noticed that it is becoming more and more difficult to get people to do anything.
It may be even harder to get participation in your league or organization fundraiser.
This trend is disturbing and ultmately affects your bottom line.
Back in 2001 when we started Fundrazor, we noticed an average of over 50% participation in the league fundraisers.
Now days, the average participation is about 20%-30%.
With the economy the way it is, you simply can’t afford to get average results with your fundraising.
Take a look at the next paragraph.
Some basic Statistics
Leagues or organizations that do not have a defined planned for participation are really missing out on a lot of great things. Mainly just loss income.
By defining your expectations for your fundraiser or making it a mandatory, you can easily get over 90% participation.
Just imagine going from $5000 profit to over $15,000 in profit just by making a few changes.
The only downside is that you spend more time counting more money raised.
The next paragraph shows why setting some expectations is not such a bad idea.
👍🏽 Helpful Tip:
In your parents defense, they have seen 2-3 fundraisers from the elementary school or middle before it’s your league’s turn for it’s fundraiser.
Take this time to educate them with your league’s financials.
Make a simple graph illustrating the expenditures and the money generated from registrations fees.
Then share the league’s goals and share how the fundraiser can help them reach that goal.
Increase your Fundraising expectations, it just makes sense
Increasing your fundraising expectations to your parents and players has several benefits, such as:
- Ensuring the success of the fundraiser: Requiring mandatory participation can ensure that everyone on the team is contributing to the fundraiser, increasing the chances of reaching the fundraising goals. This can help the team secure necessary funds for uniforms, equipment, travel expenses, and other costs associated with participating in the league.
- Fostering a sense of teamwork: Requiring mandatory participation can create a sense of unity and teamwork among the players. When everyone is working together towards a common goal, it can help build camaraderie and a sense of belonging within the team and league.
- Teaching responsibility and accountability: By requiring mandatory participation, players can learn the importance of being responsible and accountable for their commitments. They will have to take ownership of their fundraising responsibilities and follow through on their commitments.
- Building character and work ethic: Fundraising can be hard work, and by requiring mandatory participation, players can learn the value of hard work, perseverance, and determination. These are important life skills that can serve them well beyond the baseball or football field.
- Ensuring fairness: Requiring mandatory participation can ensure that everyone is contributing equally to the fundraiser. This can help avoid any resentment or conflict among team members who feel that they are shouldering a disproportionate amount of the workload.
👍🏽 Helpful Tip:
A quicker way for the parents and players in your organization to reach your expectations is by utilizing social media.
You could encourage them to share your organization fundraiser on their Facebook account and you could do this as early as signups or registrations.
The power of social media is limitless and most parent’s can reach their expectations in just one day.
How to increase expectations
The best way to set expectations is to have goals.
Have a goal for the league and then, have a goal for the teams and finally a goal for each person/player in the league.
Lastly and most importantly, you have to lead by example. The individual goal for the player is now your goal.
We know that hurts but it’s so effective and definitely put into place by successful leagues.
👍🏽 Helpful Tip:
Take some time before signups to create an easy to read graph with your league’s financials.
Illustrate the money that registrations fee bring in and compare with the costs of operations for the season. It may even amaze you how much money you may need to raise.
People generally want to help but it’s hard for them to justify another fundraiser when your local school has probably done a few already.
The Easiest Way to Increase Participation
Adding a clause to your online registration form or in person paper registration form, you automatically created the expectations for your fundraiser.
The clause can state: “By registering your child to play in our sports organization, you are agreeing to participate in the organization’s fundraiser. Your child will be required to sell a predetermined dollar amount.”
👍🏽 Helpful Tip:
Any time you have the opportunity to show the “fruits” of your fundraiser, it is highly encouraged.
For instance, if your fundraiser for the season is to purchase new helmets or equipment, be very transparent and share how much in dollars you raised and how many new helmets you were able to purchase because of your successful fundraiser.
Even brag about it. You deserve to.
