Parents Fundraising

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Our gym is not willing to allow us to put together a booster club. I need some fundraising ideas on things that do not require a tax id number. I have bake sales and a garage sale on the list. What else have you guys done?

Thanks!
 
Our gym does an annual spaghetti dinner and auction. Gymnasts receive 1 free ticket and are expected to help clear tables etc. Adults are$10 and Kids $5. Most items sell thru silent auction but perhaps 3 or 4 bigger ticket items go in a live auction. Examples we have used: Having you DD's picture on the website homepage for1 year
A framed copy of Gymnastics artwork done by one of "retired" gymnasts
Buying out of some of your volunteer hours Eg working at a bingo

Each family is expected to donate one item of $50 value for the auction and to sign up to make sauce, salad or dessert. Our expenses are the hall, buns, juice, parmasean cheese etc but we usually approach a couple of grocery stores for gift cards to cover these items.

We typically raise close to $3000 dollars at this event and everyone enjoys it. Our club had approx 30 kids in the competitive program when hosted this event this year.The nice thing is you can open it up to the community so you aren't tapping on the gym parents wallets.
Good luck fundraising is certainly tough business in these times.
 
DDs old gym also did a turkey raffle each year around Thanksgiving. They would sell tickets to family/friends for a dollar each and raffle off a few turkeys. I think they were donated, but even if you bought them, if you got them onsale, it could be possible to make some profit. Better than nothing.

Rada Knives was also a good one. Good variety, good feedback as well. Don't remember the profit margins though. Welcome to Rada Mfg. Co.â„¢
 
We have made raffle baskets and sold them (each gymnast was responsible for 10 tickets minimum) and each time made $100-150 profit depending on the item. We have also done Yankee candles, the profit is 40% and if you don't have a non-profit tax ID you just charge sales tax. We also do bowling nights - charging each person double what the lane is charging. Our local supermarket offers a small incentive of 5% for each $100 gift card purchased, minimum is $2000 each time, we run this one once a month.
 
How about a Little Ceasar Pizza kit sale? Idk if they need a tax id, I don't see why they would though. We have pretty good success with that one. We do it through the gym and our school does it also and makes out very nicely. At the gym, we also do a geranium sale in the spring and I had quite a bit of success with that one also. The other ones that we do would require tax id, so won't go there.

Chicken BBQ dinners usually go over nicely also, and you could look into whether a VFW Post would like to sponsor the girls. Our local VFW makes all kinds of charitable donations. You just have to submit a letter detailing what the Organization (Team) is about and what the money would be used for (new leos, equipment, meet fees, etc...) and when they have their monthly meeting they'll discuss what organizations they'd like to sponsor.
I've heard of teams that print up Tshirts with sponsor names on the back. Business pay to have their logo printed on the back. That is very profitable, but don't know if businesses will donate if they can't use is as a tax write-off (which they can't do unless your a non-profit organization...you need to have more than a tax id for that and is a pain the rear to do). Might be worth a try though to see if businesses would be willing to for-go the tax write-off.

Good Luck
 
Here are some other ideas…

1. Carwash tickets - We sold tickets from Mike's Express carwash for $8.00 each for an express wash. You keep about $4 for every ticket that you sell. You probably don't have a Mike's where you are, but check with your local carwash places. They might offer something similar. I did this one for both gymnastics and softball, and the tickets are pretty easy to sell.

2. Holiday wreaths and poinsettias. I've done the poinsettias also for both gym and softball. Check with local greenhouses in your area.

3. Pies - We did a pie sale this year for softball right before the Christmas holidays. We bought pies that were made and frozen from a local cafeteria

4. Garage Sale - Never in a million years would I have thought this would work. We did for dd's softball team this year. Every family that wanted in had to provide at least $50 in donations and work the sale. We had it at a house but had discussed doing it at a church or other facility as well. We only had 7 families participate, and we all earned almost $100 each.

5. Used leo sale - I don't have any experience with this, but many places seem to do it

6. Pizza sale- We did this for softball, and it was a popular one too. Check with your local pizza places. You will probably find more of the local places willing to working with you on this vs. the chains such as Pizza Hut. We made 30% of every pizza sold. Pizzas come prepared fresh and you take home to bake or freeze.
 

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