Put the “fun” in fundraising with six team fundraising ideas that can benefit school, club, and local sports organisations.
Sports clubs, programmes, and teams do a lot more than keep kids busy for a few hours after school. Think of a fond memory from your own high school sports team — or maybe marching band or drama club? Besides being a ton of fun, we bet that experience helped shape your identity and your future in a pretty big way.
Keeping these activities running year after year is a labour of love for everyone involved. When you consider the cost of everything from uniforms and gear to registration fees and travel expenses, it’s easy to see that team activities get expensive fast.
Raising enough money without exhausting athletes and their family members can be a struggle, and for some, it can make the difference between participating and sitting on the sidelines. If you’re the parent or coach in charge of this year’s fundraising efforts, coming up with team fundraising ideas that are both effective and easy enough is your first challenge.
A little hard work is part of the rite of passage, but families have a limited amount of time and money. Putting some fun into the fundraising process can make the entire experience more rewarding and even increase participation. Read on for our best team fundraising ideas and tips to plan a successful (and fun) fundraising campaign for your local youth sports team.
Set Team Fundraising Goals
Before you start, it’s important to know exactly how much money you’ll need to raise for the whole team. Remember to factor in any income you can expect from ticket sales or a concession stand. Now divide your total fundraising goal by the number of participants. Is it realistic to expect individual families to contribute that much? Could you plan a fundraising event or two to bring down the amount each family will need to raise?
Partnering with a local restaurant, selling team T-shirts, or running an old-fashioned car wash probably won’t cover everything, but it can give you a head start. Getting sponsorships from local businesses is another effective way to bring costs down.
Design Your Campaign
Once you know exactly how much the average family will need to raise, you can get creative. Coming up with easy team fundraising ideas depends on the personality of your team and the strengths and assets you have when you come together.
What kinds of services or entertainment could you provide to other community members? Do you have a mascot that everyone loves? What venues and spaces do you have access to? Get in touch with parents and use the resources you have on hand first. Finally, make sure your team fundraising ideas are age-appropriate for your team members.
Don’t forget that you’ve got a helpful set of tools for online fundraising that were just developed in the last few years. Raisely’s peer-to-peer model makes it easy for families or whole teams to create their own donation page, collect virtual contributions, and track their progress. We’ve incorporated ways to gamify your fundraiser to encourage some friendly competition, and offer plenty of templates and automations you can use to create a successful fundraiser.
Team Fundraising Ideas
Need some inspiration? Take a look at some of our favourite sports team fundraising ideas:
💰 Monetise Your Training Camp
If your team is already training over the summer, you’ve got a great opportunity to monetise that hustle! Imagine how much money a cross-country team could raise if members asked for just $1 for every mile they run in July and August, or $5 for every mile during training camp.
With our Strava integration, tracking workouts is a breeze. A basketball team might hold a shoot-a-thon where sponsors pledge money for each basket, and the same principle can apply to a soccer, volleyball, hockey, or baseball fundraiser. Get coaches and high-profile community members to participate for a little extra fun!
🏋🏻♀️ Fitness Challenge
While your team builds up their muscle, they can challenge friends and family to do the same! Raisely takes your traditional walk-a-thon to a whole new level: Use the Strava integration to track distance for walking, running, or cycling workouts, or have participants track their steps with a pedometer app.
Create a window of time for the “official” event and make sure you ask your community to set their fundraising goals, create their fundraising page, and start taking donations well in advance. You’ll encourage your whole community to get their exercise while supporting your sports team!
🏃🏽♂️ Host a Field Day or Fitness Classes
For younger kids, especially in school settings, it can be fun to get other students involved with a field day or summer sports camp. Have your team work together to create an obstacle course or plan a day of skill-building workshops and scrimmages with their friends.
If anyone in your organisation can lead a yoga class, spin class, or Zumba session, open it up to other families with an affordable entry fee. It doesn’t have to be competitive to be a valuable and worthwhile sports team fundraising idea.
🤳 Social Media Challenge
This idea can be a really great way to get "fans” and supporters excited for your sports team’s next season. Create a challenge that captures your team spirit, like a TikTok dance, a pie in the face — basically anything that might get some cheers at a pep rally. Have your mascot, coach, some teachers, the school principal, or other familiar faces make the first videos to create a buzz.
And, of course, come up with a catchy hashtag! As people complete the challenge and nominate others, encourage them to make donations of any amount and make sure to like and comment with lots of “thank yous” from the team.
🏠 Clean Up Your Neighbourhood
This one works best for older middle school and high school students. It’s not glamorous, but it’s definitely an effective team fundraising idea for summertime. Have your team offer to mow lawns and do basic chores and yard work for older members of the community.
If you’re fundraising during the winter, snow shovelling is a great alternative. Also, if your season schedule is ready, have team members leave a physical copy with donors and ask them to come out to a game or two. Word of mouth is a powerful promotion strategy.
👟 Shoe Drive Fundraiser
When it comes to kids, you know they’ll outgrow a pair of shoes long before they’re really worn out. But did you know there are companies that buy back those shoes and resell or recycle them?
Hosting a shoe drive fundraiser is good for the planet because it keeps the shoes out of landfills, and it allows parents to donate those gently used sneakers to a good cause instead of throwing them away. Everybody wins!
Amplify Your Team’s Efforts
Fundraising is rewarding, but it’s also a lot of work. Make the most of your team’s time and effort by spreading the word about your campaign across multiple platforms and finding sponsors who’ll match donations. Send fundraising letters to local businesses to ask for sponsorships, and feature their logo on T-shirts, banners, and programmes.
Create some shareable social media graphics and ask your school, sponsors, and other community organisations with a big following on social media to spread the word with a link to your fundraising page. We’ve created templates and tools so you don’t need a degree in marketing to create eye-catching materials.
Engage Donors
Remember that your team fundraising idea is an opportunity to create excitement about games or competitions. Anyone who invests in your team probably has some interest in showing up during the season, and higher attendance means more ticket and concessions sales. Share your season schedule at the bottom of your fundraising page and think about how you can use these outreach efforts to start getting donors into team-spirit mode.
For instance, share their challenge videos on your team’s social media, get permission to thank your most generous donors publicly, and use photos of families in their jerseys and team colours in your promotional materials. Make them feel like all-star fans!
Set Up a Fundraising Home Run on Raisely
Most of the ideas in this article work with our easy-to-use templates for peer-to-peer fundraising and events. We’ve made the process of collecting online donations seamless, so your local sports team can focus on building connections and having fun with their fundraising efforts. Request a demo and see what you can do with Raisely today!
