Fundraising Ideas for Your Local Sports Club
Photo by Wikimedia // CC BY 2.0
Caption: Gather round, it’s time to raise funds…
Grassroots clubs are at the very heart of sports. Local clubs foster young talent, many who simply enjoy rugby for the physical, mental and social aspects, but some who will go on to become professionals at county and national levels.
Training these young people to realise their full potential is the rewarding part of the journey for any local club. However, attracting players to local teams is proving difficult enough in recent years. Financial strains add more stress to the situation. Very often, local clubs face struggles when it comes to raising the funds to stay afloat, let alone prosper and improve training ground conditions and equipment.
Regular fundraising is crucial for the survival of many local rugby clubs. From poker games held at the clubhouse, to bungee jumps that make grown athletes cry, here are some ideas to keep your accounts topped up and the future of your club secure.
Sponsored Challenges
The classic fundraiser ideas, aside from bake sales, involve sponsored challenges that take participants out of their comfort zone to confront their fears or push their limits. This could be anything from a walkathon or sponsored swim, to something more intense like bungee jumps or abseiling.
It’s a fine balance. Do something too dramatic and not many people will want to take part in the activity. However, real challenges tend to gather more attention and pull in more donations.
Team and club members can take part, with the invite extended to friends and to the general public. Social media is a good tool for getting the word out, whilst online sites like JustGiving.com make collecting donations a doddle.
There may be initial costs to starting this fundraiser. For example, if hiking a large mountain, most charity groups arrange for tour guides and emergency vehicles, as well as providing light snacks and refreshments. As such, participants will likely pay a fee to cover costs, with raised funds going directly back into the club.
Clubhouse Events
If your clubhouse has a bar, then you are onto a winner here. Utilise the bar to hold events and attract both members and non-members of the community. A solid favourite is the quiz, which is best held during the week, such as on a Wednesday evening when everyone is bored. Charge an entry fee and offer prizes, as well as selling food, drink and possibly raffle tickets.
You can take this a step further with a clubhouse poker night. Holding a poker night is one of the most fun ways to raise funds for your club. It’s something a bit different to the norm, and there’s plenty of opportunities to add income streams with raffles, drinks and food, entry tickets and more.
Holding a poker fundraiser is not much different from creating the perfect poker home game. You gather round the participants, have a croupier on hand to deal the cards, and make sure there are plenty of snacks and drinks. The main difference is that you want to extract cash from players to go towards your club’s kitty, not win chips for your own pocket. Charge an entry fee for the poker tournament and offer prizes for top place finishes.
Buddy Nights and Fun Days
It’s tempting to just focus on turning your clubhouse into a late night hang out and private poker club, but remember it’s good to work with what you already have. You’re a rugby club, and that is your greatest asset. With a bit of ingenuity, you can raise extra funds doing what you’re already doing.
It’s called ‘Buddy Nights’ or ‘Bring a Friend’, or whatever you want to call it really. Existing members of youth teams can bring along their friend to a training session. The buddies only pay a subsidised rate of a couple of quid.
These sessions should be designed more around fun and games, but the buddies should still go away feeling like they have learned some rugby skills. Hopefully, they will enjoy it so much that they will come back again to the weekly training. This is a great way to attract new players and improve the popularity of your club through word of mouth.
Fun Days require a little more effort and coordination outside of the usual training. Although they should still be rugby themed, and offer the chance to sign up to the club, fun days should have more of a festival atmosphere, with food, drink and games like conversion kick contests. You could also match these with the seasonal calendar, such as summer BBQs, fireworks on Bonfire Night or Christmas events.
Utilizing Your Club Brand and Facilities
Photo by Wikipedia // CC BY-SA 3.0
Caption: This ball is signed by players from the All Blacks. Smaller clubs can’t quite match stuff like this, but can still capitalise on club merchandise
Sticking with the theme of working with what you already have, you can also make the most of your club brand and facilities. This depends a lot on what you have. If you are training at someone else’s ground and borrowing your kits then there isn’t much to go off here, but if you have your own training facilities, team logo and website, then you have lots of assets for fundraising.
We’ve already mentioned using your clubhouse for events, but how about hiring out your training grounds as a 5-a-side pitch when you’re not using it? You could hire the clubhouse for birthday parties or to other local clubs or businesses for corporate events.
You could also sell merchandise, both on site during game days, and online through your website. This could include t-shirts, hoodies and hats with your team logo, rugby kits and gear and more.
Sponsorship is also another lucrative avenue and key source of income for top level clubs as well as local clubs. You can put signage at the grounds, logos on your kit and company banners on your website. If your club is very small you may not be able to secure cash sponsorships, but in this case local businesses are usually happy to support you by swapping goods and services in exchange for advertisement space – think kit repair, grass cutting, or half-time sandwiches from the local deli.
It’s not easy running a local rugby club. Sometimes, financial strains put pressure on what would otherwise be an extremely rewarding community role. With effective and regular fundraising be it from renting our your training ground to poker nights in the bar, your club can survive, and even come to thrive.
