5 tips to fundraise for your sports team
Written by Daniel Stevens
We all know fundraising isn’t easy. There’s a magic number out there you have to make in order for your team to survive. Whether your fundraising is for your league fees or for the beer garden here are some tips that could make fundraising easy for your sports team.
- Use Social Media
It’s the way everyone is communicating these days and you don’t want to put yourself out of the loop. If you’re hosting any events then put them on Facebook. Even if you only get a couple hundred “maybe” replies you may have snaked some “going” out of that. Twitter is a little tougher to use in this respect but if you have a strong following let them know. 2-3 tweets a day about your event is enough to remind your followers and not enough to annoy them. Use Instagram to remind your followers, make a video reminding them what it’s for and why you need the turnout. Make sure everyone on your team is inviting and sharing!
- Go to the pub
Team up with a local bar or pub to host an event. Most, if not all, local bars accommodate such things. Put on a suit and go into your local pub and see what the numbers are. Usually when you sell tickets to these events you split the profits with the establishment and patrons get a burger and beer.
- Auction
One of the best fundraisers I’ve ever been to had some memorabilia. We all know baseball fans like their memorabilia so sift through your garage, call your old buddy who knew a pro. Get all the gear you can from your network and push set up an auction. One year we paid for all our new bats by selling one of Justin Morneau’s signed bat! This can be a slow burn or a quick sell: put it on your team’s website or Facebook page and sell to the highest bidder. Or bring all your memorabilia to an event and add your auction portion into the mix for a big pay day.
- URstore
An incredible way to fundraise in your sleep is through URstore. Firstly we purchase all our team gear through them at our own store. See, they set up an online store just for your team with all the gear and merchandise you want. At every game I tell people about our store then they go there, buy their gear and URstore sends me a 10% kickback. There’s my fundraising for the year! Because it’s so easy it barely feels like fundraising but it is, and it’s painless! No setup required or 
anything. You literally just give other people the URL to your store and they get cool gear with your team logo on it and you get 10% of that sale to go towards your fundraising goals! Check them out at www.URstore.ca.
- Money Tournament
This requires a lot of work but the payoff is great. It depends on the size of your reach really. Reach out to other leagues and see if they want to play in a fundraiser. This can be a tournament style set up or a one-off game. Work it like a 50/50 draw where 50% of the money goes to umpires and field booking and the other split going to the winner 80-20 depending on how cruel you decide it should be. It doesn’t have to be a serious game either. Sometimes this is a great year end event where you invite player’s kids or spouses to play. It costs a couple bucks but they get to take part in the festivities.
Hope this helps you fundraise! Remember the easiest way to do this in your sleep is through URstore. Get the gear, look amazing, and make money while you do it. Hope this works out well for your team. We know it did for ours!
From our team at URstore.
