Does Your Team Need Money Now That Youth Sports are Resuming?

Three ideas that will put the “fun” back in fundraising.

Photo by Author, Krista Bennett

Youth sports are important skill-building activities that often require us, as parents, to financially support. To make the sport affordable, many teams use fundraising to buffer the cost for parents.

But no one likes to sell stuff. Who here likes putting the fundraiser brochure out on the breakroom table keeping your fingers crossed someone buys something.

I hate doing that, don’t you?

Instead of selling cheap, overpriced, “Made in China” crap or chocolate candy bars that have shrunk to the size of a Sharpie permanent marker we decided to hold fundraisers that involved the whole team working together to earn the money they need to support their team.

Spring Fundraiser

Community Clean Up

Every April, our Streets Department holds a trash & branch pick-up. The community is instructed to place any dead winter-fall branches out at their curb and on a designated day the town will bring around a wood chipper and chip up all the branches and haul them away where it is used throughout the community parks as mulch.

We are also instructed to pick up any trash and place it in orange bags provided to us by the town and then the town picks up the trash bag and takes them away.

We decided to have the teams work together to help the community with the branch and trash pickup. Donations were accepted but not required.

Following are the steps we took to host this very successful fundraiser:

1. Create a brochure or flyer explaining the fundraiser which will include:

• The name of your organization;
• The dates and times the team will be in their neighborhood or on their street to clean up branches and trash;
• Detail about how the money the kids earned would benefit their program;
• Include an envelope for them to give to the kids on clean-up day.

2. One week before the scheduled clean-up have the team drop off the flyer to the community around the school…