Thread: Fundraising

Its been a challange fundrasing for this years team it may be due the the economy and all but i know there are ways to come up with funds. Any suggestions...? New ways to raise money...?

Id appreciate any feedback!!!

1. the best fundraiser we have found is Texas Hold-em parties. Depends on the laws in your state, but if charity poker is allowed, find a place that holds the parties on a regular basis and see if they can fit you into their schedule. This only works if you are a registered non profit organization. We make about 16K per year doing this. Great part about this is the venue usually attracts all the gamblers, you don't have to ask anyone that you know to come and play. You just show up with your license from the state and a couple of a people at a time to sell and redeem chips.

2. Bowling parties. Find a bowling lane that will give you a deal on the entire place. Usually this will be at 10:00 at night on a Saturday. When we did this the lanes charged us something like $10 per person for 3 games and shoes (plus they got all the bar business and food) then we charged $20 in advance, $25 at the door. We scoured all the local businesses and rounded up some door prizes, plus the parents on each team ponied up some prizes or cash for prizes, and we raffled them off. Plus the usual 50/50. We usually made $1500+

3. We organized a gambling junket. Bus ride into town with a keg of beer on the bus, and the bus took us straight to the casino. We pre registered with the casino and each member of our party got some free chips to use, the bus dropped us off at noon and brought us home at 6:00. The bus was fairly cheap and we charged each person $25. They felt like it was only $15 since the casino tossed in some chips. Last time we did this we had 2 full buses of people.

I forgot one. My son was part of a travel baseball start up team. Started from scratch. We ended up paying zero dollars for the year. We raised enough money at a golf outing to pay for everything.

Each family donated one prize basket that was raffled off. At the end of it all, that was the only direct cost we incurred for our son to play.

Those are great ideas. Thank you. I think the bowling will definatley attract a wider range of people of differernt ages and families. Ill have to look into it.

Thank you again!!

Our best fundraiser has been to setup a table outside of a grocery store and ask for donations/bake sale. Most of the money comes from the donations. Best part is that the girls have to do most of the work.

In a small market one team made around $800 in under 4 hours.

Trivia nights are very popular around here. There's a group that comes in and handles the actual trivia game (tables of 10 work together on the questions, making it more of a party atmosphere), and the organization sells refreshments and whatnot. Usually there's a 50-50 drawing as well, and sometimes a silent auction.

Although a different season, last year a couple of weeks before superbowl we passed out flyers to homes for a can/bottle drive. All they had to do was place them in their driveway and we came by and collected them. The weekend after Superbowl we went out and collected them, ended up about $800 for a few hours of work.