Fundraising - Hints and tips

While some people may be able to pay for the tour from their own resources, Breakaway Sports Tours realise that others may have to rely on some form of financial assistance.  Your team may be able to obtain sponsorship from local companies, however, another alternative is fundraising.  Whilst obviously financially rewarding, fundraising can be fun and enjoyable at the same time. 

Below is a list of fund-raising tips for your team…

1. Establish a realistic goal for total fund raising budget.
2. Start fundraising as early as possible and establish “milestone” dates and budget goals for these dates.
3. Involve the players themselves in these efforts and provide incentives for them
4. Use a variety of fundraising programs. No one event will get all the funds you need.

Here are some proven fund raising ideas to get you started…

• Hold a raffle and sell tickets for donated merchandize and services. 
• Hold a competition eg. Guess how many sweets, Guess the weight of a toy etc.
• Ask local companies to sponsor your team.
• Hold a coffee morning or home-made cake sale.
• Organise a garage sale or a car boot sale
• Go on a sponsored pub crawl.
• Hold a quiz night – charge an entry fee per team and make sure you hold a raffle.
• Make a Calendar featuring the players – Mr March, Mr. April etc.
• Sell T-shirts, tea towels, etc. featuring your team photo.
• Make a cookbook – ask as many people as possible to donate one special recipe and create a cookbook
• Car washes - Spend a sunny weekend morning or afternoon washing cars in your community.
• Barn dance, Barbeque, 60’s Night, Disco etc.
• Supermarket Bag Pack – ideal for children’s tours!  Contact your local supermarket and arrange a morning’s bag pack.  Cover as many of the tills as you can and make sure that there is plenty of adult supervision.  Do some initial training to make sure that all the customers are asked if they want help packing their bags and then that the grapes don’t get packed under the canned goods for instance.  Have adult people at the back with collection cans and make sure that the customers know where their money is going – Hinckley RFC U16’s – Tour to Dublin!
• Buy a Square – sell squares on the board of your clubhouse with the winner having a free tour.
• Marathon/Sponsored walk/swimathon/sponsored roller blade.
• For Mini’s teams, get the kids to fill empty smarties tubes with 10pence pieces in return for sweets
• Make a list of well-known phrases and sayings and take the first letter of each word to make them into acronyms.  Photocopy the list and sell them for people to guess the original phrases for a prize. 

Should you have any other proven fundraising methods, please let us know – we can feature them here for the benefit of other groups!