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Post by apink on Jul 12, 2017 10:18:12 GMT -6
Hey guys, hope the summer grind is going well! Camp here in IA is only 19 days away! As the season nears, we are having to spend some of that hard earned money on different items (decals, belts, football's, reconditioned helmets, and so on). We ran a lift-a-thon fundraiser back in March and raised over $5,000. We are a small school in IA, and money tends to be an issue at times. What are some of your best fundraiser's you guys have ran in the past? This board is an awesome place to learn great ideas from other coaches. Thanks in advance.
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klaby
Junior Member
Posts: 389
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Post by klaby on Jul 12, 2017 11:40:04 GMT -6
Have each player send out a letter to 10 people. The letter should say something about your program, where the money goes. Have the player hand sign each one and hand address each one. Put a stamped envelope in each one. I am telling you if the letter is done right you will make more money then you have before. At one point we had 15-20K a year coming in. (120-140 kids)
Send to local business, community leaders, but make sure they come from the kids.
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Post by bigmoot on Jul 12, 2017 13:11:27 GMT -6
Have each player send out a letter to 10 people. The letter should say something about your program, where the money goes. Have the player hand sign each one and hand address each one. Put a stamped envelope in each one. I am telling you if the letter is done right you will make more money then you have before. At one point we had 15-20K a year coming in. (120-140 kids) Send to local business, community leaders, but make sure they come from the kids. the old "beg-a-thon". curent principal won't let me do it
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lws55
Sophomore Member
Posts: 225
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Post by lws55 on Jul 12, 2017 14:00:42 GMT -6
We do 3 fundraisers a year. The first is our discount card "Gold Cards" we tell the players that they have to buy them to be issued equipment. Each player is required to buy 20 cards at $10 each = $200 they can then go out and sell them and get their money back or do nothing and they basically donated $200 to the program.
The second is a lift-a-thon, this is strictly donations go out and ask people for money to sponsor you. We tie the lift-a-thon to their jersey number. To pick a number they have to raise a minimum of $100 if they don't raise $100 they get what is left. If they want a single digit they have to raise $200. However, if Johnny Superstar raises $200 and wants #2 and Bobby Benchwarmer raise $205 and wants #2 Bobby gets it. This has helped out our fundraising and participation tremendously.
Lastly, during the season, we will do E-Team Sponsor which is an email fundraiser. We tell the boys to email all the people that live out of state so they are not hitting up all the same people all the time we are a relatively small community so we do not want to burn out our audience.
Other odds and ends is we host a scrimmage every year and charge gate and run concessions. We also run concessions during our home games. We have partnered with a club on campus to be the workers and they get $250 for the JV game and $250 for the Varsity game. It is a drop in the bucket compared to what we make on a Friday Home game.
We have consistently raised between $40 and 45,000 a year
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Post by coachirish on Jul 12, 2017 14:22:51 GMT -6
Have each player send out a letter to 10 people. The letter should say something about your program, where the money goes. Have the player hand sign each one and hand address each one. Put a stamped envelope in each one. I am telling you if the letter is done right you will make more money then you have before. At one point we had 15-20K a year coming in. (120-140 kids) Send to local business, community leaders, but make sure they come from Do you have a template of this letter?
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Post by fkaboneyard on Jul 12, 2017 14:54:21 GMT -6
I was part of a program where we put on a tri-tip dinner at the school. Players were required to donate ingredients (tri-tips, beans, paper goods, potatoes, drinks) and then sell at least ten tickets at $20 each. It started small but eventually got pretty big, to the point that we had a band offer to play live music, there were some game booths, etc. It was a fun event and it became very easy for kids to sell the tickets because people actually wanted to go. It was a ton of work but the boosters did a good job. At the beginning it raised about $10 grand, when I was last involved it raised about $25-30 grand.
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Post by hsrose on Jul 12, 2017 15:02:27 GMT -6
We are doing the following this year: Sanitation Station - Pooper scoopers for a local parade last March. Takes 4 players and 2 coaches. EteamSponsor email campaign - Players have option to solicit $175 in donations rather than submitting the emails. 18 players did this, netted $4.5k Parking - We did the parking for a local July 4th fireworks celebration. $1.8k Home-grown discount cards - 13 local vendors, $10 per card, I did all the work, 1,200 cards for $780 cost. Expect to net $6k SF 49er game - They are selling tickets to a pre-season game at a $20 discount. We/the team gets the word out, people buy seats, 49ers kick back $20 per ticket. This popped up unexpectedly, expect to net $1k on 100 or so tickets. Grape Stomp - Players will work the local festival, filling, then emptying, cleaning, and refilling barrels for the stompers to stomp the grapes. $900
What I find is best is working with local outfits like the parking and Grape Stomp, work with the community on something.
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Post by kcbazooka on Jul 12, 2017 15:16:16 GMT -6
We have done a Jersey auction homecoming week on the night of the powderpuff game. All the players bring their away jerseys and we auction them off between quarters. The high bid for each jersey gets to wear the jersey the rest of the week to school or work, parade, game etc. They then have to bring back the jerseys by the next Monday . Easy $$$ - its great when the kid's girlfriend gets into a bidding war with mom! No purchases, no inventory, no preparation - just cash money...
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klaby
Junior Member
Posts: 389
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Post by klaby on Jul 12, 2017 19:27:26 GMT -6
Have each player send out a letter to 10 people. The letter should say something about your program, where the money goes. Have the player hand sign each one and hand address each one. Put a stamped envelope in each one. I am telling you if the letter is done right you will make more money then you have before. At one point we had 15-20K a year coming in. (120-140 kids) Send to local business, community leaders, but make sure they come from the kids. the old "beg-a-thon". curent principal won't let me do it It's not a beg a thon....it's sponsoring the program. You should also send thank you cards. I would rather do this than have my kids out shilling crappy candy bars, or crappy pizza's or cookie dough. Your return is crap, and your kids are going door to door and frankly that's a beg a thon.... you can even have a local print shop do a program thanking all your sponsors. don't put amounts given, just list the names and say thank you. This way 90% goes into your program, instead of 20% for shilling crappy products...
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Post by bigmoot on Jul 12, 2017 19:38:53 GMT -6
the old "beg-a-thon". curent principal won't let me do it It's not a beg a thon....it's sponsoring the program. You should also send thank you cards. I would rather do this than have my kids out shilling crappy candy bars, or crappy pizza's or cookie dough. Your return is crap, and your kids are going door to door and frankly that's a beg a thon.... you can even have a local print shop do a program thanking all your sponsors. don't put amounts given, just list the names and say thank you. This way 90% goes into your program, instead of 20% for shilling crappy products... I agree. beg a thon is what an old HC of mine called it behind closed doors.
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Post by pvogel on Jul 12, 2017 19:42:27 GMT -6
Have each player send out a letter to 10 people. The letter should say something about your program, where the money goes. Have the player hand sign each one and hand address each one. Put a stamped envelope in each one. I am telling you if the letter is done right you will make more money then you have before. At one point we had 15-20K a year coming in. (120-140 kids) Send to local business, community leaders, but make sure they come from the kids. the old "beg-a-thon". curent principal won't let me do it Curious as to what the reasoning is? haha. Seriously though why is that illegal for coaches? Its not too bad. At least its a letter. Not begging with a boot at the on ramp or something.
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Post by pvogel on Jul 12, 2017 19:43:43 GMT -6
I was part of a program where we put on a tri-tip dinner at the school. Players were required to donate ingredients (tri-tips, beans, paper goods, potatoes, drinks) and then sell at least ten tickets at $20 each. It started small but eventually got pretty big, to the point that we had a band offer to play live music, there were some game booths, etc. It was a fun event and it became very easy for kids to sell the tickets because people actually wanted to go. It was a ton of work but the boosters did a good job. At the beginning it raised about $10 grand, when I was last involved it raised about $25-30 grand. All the East coast ppl are thinking "wtf is tri-tip" but im with you coach. Best cut of meat for some good west coast bbq. haha
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Post by **** on Jul 12, 2017 19:45:35 GMT -6
It's not a beg a thon....it's sponsoring the program. You should also send thank you cards. I would rather do this than have my kids out shilling crappy candy bars, or crappy pizza's or cookie dough. Your return is crap, and your kids are going door to door and frankly that's a beg a thon.... you can even have a local print shop do a program thanking all your sponsors. don't put amounts given, just list the names and say thank you. This way 90% goes into your program, instead of 20% for shilling crappy products... I agree. beg a thon is what an old HC of mine called it behind closed doors. Lol great name for it
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Post by pvogel on Jul 12, 2017 19:50:07 GMT -6
Golf tourneys are great. Good money and its always a good time too.
Also the program I played in did a bike ride fundraiser. We did 50 miles. Worked for a HC that brought it to another school. Was huge. Im a big fan of any bikeathon/liftathon/strongman comp type deal. Good for the teambuilding and individual fight aspect too ya know?
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famar
Sophomore Member
Looking to learn as much as I can from this site and all of the coaches here.
Posts: 208
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Post by famar on Jul 12, 2017 21:36:06 GMT -6
The programs I've been a part of have done golf tournament with Chinese Auction, car washes, coin drops at the local Walmart, Dead-a-thon, barbecues, pasta dinners, team schedule poster.
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Post by fantom on Jul 12, 2017 21:42:22 GMT -6
Dead-a-thon?
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Post by tippecanoe41 on Jul 12, 2017 21:58:52 GMT -6
You'd be surprised how many local business, etc. will donate if you just go ask them. Tell them what you're intending to do with the money. Give them a thank you package. Put their name in the program at games with a thank you note. Etc. I have always been surprised how much they've given. Just my community, so can't promise anything, but it's worth a shot.
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Post by wingtol on Jul 13, 2017 10:42:22 GMT -6
Well you asked....
First school I coached at, round 1999-2000 time frame, was a pretty tradition rich catholic school. Being in western PA our booster president at the time ran the greatest fundraiser I have ever seen. A huge gun raffle. 100.00 a ticket with only 1000 sold and 100 guns raffled. Sold out or close to it every year he ran it, not a big gun guy myself but he got good deals on them and cleared over 50% profit from the thing if I remember correctly. So we had a pretty good gig going for awhile cash wise for the program. Well as you can imagine after a few years the bishop deiced a catholic school shouldn't be running a gun raffle for multiple reasons, I suspect one was they couldn't get their hands on the money from it and other obvious reasons. So this guy broke off and ran it on his own for awhile and would donate money back to area football teams that contacted him.
Probably not going to help if you are looking for ideas, maybe depending on your area, but doubt gun raffles would go over well now. But you did ask for the best fundraiser we had ever seen...
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Post by cqmiller on Jul 13, 2017 12:43:01 GMT -6
We did a 50 mile bike ride out in CA when I was an assistant... similar to a lift-a-thon. Kids get donations or people agree to pay them $0.50 per mile, or whatever. When I was a HC here in UT we did it 3 times. Averaged about $40,000 profit for 1 day of work and a lot of paperwork in Feb/March to get permits in order.
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Post by pvogel on Jul 13, 2017 20:08:10 GMT -6
The programs I've been a part of have done golf tournament with Chinese Auction, car washes, coin drops at the local Walmart, Dead-a-thon, barbecues, pasta dinners, team schedule poster. Chinese Auction? and coin drop?
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Post by pvogel on Jul 13, 2017 20:10:51 GMT -6
You'd be surprised how many local business, etc. will donate if you just go ask them. Tell them what you're intending to do with the money. Give them a thank you package. Put their name in the program at games with a thank you note. Etc. I have always been surprised how much they've given. Just my community, so can't promise anything, but it's worth a shot. Definitely. Hardest part is finding the time for that tho. Thats why people put money into fundraising companies. Everyone of us could do that during the day if we weren't teaching about the Ottoman Empire or whatever.
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famar
Sophomore Member
Looking to learn as much as I can from this site and all of the coaches here.
Posts: 208
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Post by famar on Jul 13, 2017 20:47:36 GMT -6
The programs I've been a part of have done golf tournament with Chinese Auction, car washes, coin drops at the local Walmart, Dead-a-thon, barbecues, pasta dinners, team schedule poster. Chinese Auction? and coin drop? Chinese Auction was part of our Golf Tournament. We'd get community members/businesses to donate gift packages and a person buys x number of tickets and each prize (usually 70 to 75 different prizes) has its own pot. If you like an item, you put a ticket or as many tickets in the pot as you see fit. A winning ticket is drawn from each pot and the ticket holder gets the prize. Some examples of prizes we've had were movie tickets, tanning salon packages, weekends at a Bed and Breakfast, golf lessons, personal training sessions, Philadelphia Eagles' tickets, and autographed sports memorabilia. Coin drop is exactly what it sounds like. Our players would stand outside the local Walmart on certain Saturdays or Sundays in the spring with a bucket and people could make donations. We would usually do four weekends every spring.
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Post by fantom on Jul 13, 2017 20:54:31 GMT -6
We do 3 fundraisers a year. The first is our discount card "Gold Cards" we tell the players that they have to buy them to be issued equipment. Each player is required to buy 20 cards at $10 each = $200 they can then go out and sell them and get their money back or do nothing and they basically donated $200 to the program. Do the kids have to pay the $200 uo front?
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Post by option1st on Jul 13, 2017 21:55:03 GMT -6
Not the best, but a quick and easy money raiser. Have a yard sale. Ask players, parents, fans and the community to donate items. Everybody is looking to clear out the garage or closet and what better way then to donate it to the football team. Have kids assist with pick up. Accumulate stuff at location over the course of a week or two, then have a big yard sale. Straight cash homie.
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lws55
Sophomore Member
Posts: 225
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Post by lws55 on Jul 14, 2017 10:18:08 GMT -6
We do 3 fundraisers a year. The first is our discount card "Gold Cards" we tell the players that they have to buy them to be issued equipment. Each player is required to buy 20 cards at $10 each = $200 they can then go out and sell them and get their money back or do nothing and they basically donated $200 to the program. Do the kids have to pay the $200 up front? Yes, they pay up front. They get the cards and then they can choose to sell them and keep the money or they can sit on them and do nothing. When we first started out we would give the kids 20 cards and they would bring back the money, but we had so many kids that would not make an effort to sell them and come back with all 20 cards so we switched to this and it has been the best decision. I have had a few parents complain, but I will also allow kids to do payments because they know they are getting these cards in May they start making payments in January. I have had parents tell me that they are basically making a $200 donation to the program and I will tell them that is their choice because they are not making their son go out and sell the cards.
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Post by fantom on Jul 14, 2017 10:35:14 GMT -6
Yes, they pay up front. They get the cards and then they can choose to sell them and keep the money or they can sit on them and do nothing. When we first started out we would give the kids 20 cards and they would bring back the money, but we had so many kids that would not make an effort to sell them and come back with all 20 cards so we switched to this and it has been the best decision. I have had a few parents complain, but I will also allow kids to do payments because they know they are getting these cards in May they start making payments in January. I have had parents tell me that they are basically making a $200 donation to the program and I will tell them that is their choice because they are not making their son go out and sell the cards. If we required our kids to pay $200 up front we'd have a VERY lonely locker room.
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Post by freezeoption on Jul 14, 2017 10:47:42 GMT -6
Gun raffle or a bow raffle would go great at my area, I may have to do that. I'll keep my eyes open for deals on guns maybe get one or two and go from there.
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Post by freezeoption on Jul 14, 2017 10:50:33 GMT -6
I forgot to add, we had a farmer donate half a cow, we sold raffle tickets to that. Split that half and had two quarters, so there were two winners. Tickets were 50 bucks.
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lws55
Sophomore Member
Posts: 225
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Post by lws55 on Jul 14, 2017 11:11:30 GMT -6
Yes, they pay up front. They get the cards and then they can choose to sell them and keep the money or they can sit on them and do nothing. When we first started out we would give the kids 20 cards and they would bring back the money, but we had so many kids that would not make an effort to sell them and come back with all 20 cards so we switched to this and it has been the best decision. I have had a few parents complain, but I will also allow kids to do payments because they know they are getting these cards in May they start making payments in January. I have had parents tell me that they are basically making a $200 donation to the program and I will tell them that is their choice because they are not making their son go out and sell the cards. If we required our kids to pay $200 up front we'd have a VERY lonely locker room. That is why I took payments. I would also let the kids by 3 cards and go sell them and then come back and buy 3 more etc... as long as they were bought before we hand out pads they were good. smart kids buy them right away so they can sell to the teachers before school was out
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Post by CS on Jul 14, 2017 12:49:18 GMT -6
Teamed up with the softball team when I was the baseball coach and sold suckers for a buck a piece at the school.
Made 7,000 in about 3 months. Best thing is the kids come to you and they sell themselves. It did help that I was at the junior high/high school and the softball coach was at the elementary so we had the whole school buying those things.
It takes more time to get money than these other suggestion but its super easy.
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