WAG Fundraising

[tumble&turn]

I was wondering if anyone has some really good fundraising ideas that have worked or think will work? I was wondering if you could please say how much effort they took and roughly how much they raised?

My gymnastics club wants to begin fundraising this year except the ideas need to mainly be from the coaches and gymnasts as it will be up to them to really gather the support for the fundraiser.

I was wondering if anyone has had success with the sponsor each cartwheel/back handspring each gymnast does?

Has anyone had any success selling the Cadbury chocolate frogs or similar products?

 

[Gymdad2]

Gimmite,

In my fundraising experience (and there has been a lot of it over the years) the most important part of fundraising is committment to the project by the members of your group and the leadership that elicits that commitment from them. How you go about selling a product and the effort that all of your members put into selling the product is more important than the product itself, whether its cartwheels or candy or any of the other ideas for things to sell to raise money. Good luck!

 

[kayjaybe]

I think our 3 most successful fundraising events are (in no particular order): yearbook ad sales, cartwheel-a-thon, and hosting an invitational meet.

The cartwheel-a-thon is done in conjunction with the rec kids and part of the proceeds go to special olympics. Kids (team & rec) can get sponsors either by flat fee or per cartwheel. We set up in a local mall and the team kids help run the event for the rec kids (and the team kids participate, too). The rec kids love it because they get to interact with the team and also be "on show" at the mall. Don't know how much we profit.

The yearbook is something we publish once/year. We do have mandatory sales for each family. Ads run from $25 (1/8 page - business card size) to $150 (full page ad). We use a local tech school to produce it for us at cost. (Gives them good experience and gives us a break in the price.) I think we usually clear about $20k on that project.

The meet hosting is pretty self-explanatory. We host at our own gym which has plusses & minuses. We can't host as big of an event, but we also have less costs as no need to rent space or equipment. Don't know how much we profit.

 

[marie83]

We do bag packing at a local supermarket - Not sure if that happens where you are though - we've raised around £500 each time and there is no outlay on the club's part.
Cake sales are a big favourite - the gymnasts make the cakes and we usually couple a sale with an open day at the gym or some other event so people are about all weekend. These usually make around £200 -£300
We also run camps during holidays - usually 3 hours in the morning, 3 in the afternoon, or full days. We usually have 3 coaches per day who volunteer their time, and up to 20 gymnasts. They do as many sessions as they like during the week. These usually raise around £1000 - sometimes more.
At a lot of our fundraising events we also include a raffle and get prizes from local businesses which is always good!

We've done sponsored events, but it proved difficult getting all the money in.
surprisingly one of our least successful ones was a leotard design comp - although I know one of the members here had a really successful time with hers!

 

[GymnastCentralMom]

We have had a lot of success with gram sales at meets hosted by the gym, especially when we buy dollar store types of items (like fuzzy flowers or cozy socks) and sell them for $3 to $5 each. At a large meet, we made over $1,500. There isn't a huge time commitment involved, just a few parents working shifts at the meet, and someone taking a few hours to purchase the goods and make signs.

Goodwill can also be a great fundraiser. They will pay for donations. If you can get your gymnasts to get donations from friends & family and mobilize the rec classes to donate as well, it can be very effective. I believe that we got $1,500 for filling up one truck, which is pretty good for a fundraiser with no financial outlay.

Hosting a large invitational can bring in a lot of money, but it does take a huge amount of time, effort, and knowledge from volunteers.

 

[coachmolly]

My team is looking for ways to make some money for new equipment and we've managed one mediocre event. So I'm also interested in hearing what people have to say here.
A few ideas mentioned in my search that we couldn't do because they were not "okay-ed" by the school board were a raffle (Vera Bradley type bags were mentioned, but also other popular items) and discount cards. The cards involve getting a few local places to donate discounts (10% off, free drink, etc.) for anyone who presents a card. Get a laminated card that lists all the businesses offering deals and sell for a few bucks each. The raffles can be one "big ticket" item or a few smaller items with the cost of tickets based on the item being raffled.

 

[gymgal]

Kay,

Can you give more information on the yearbooks? I really like the idea! Do you include rec and team? Do you devote a certain # of pages for each team? What type of pics and who takes them?

Sent from my ADR6400L using ChalkBucket mobile app

 

[PalmTree]

I would also like info about the yearbooks!!

 

[kayjaybe]

The yearbook is team only. Each family must sell $75 in ads (1/2 page). If you sell a full page ($150), your child's individual photo appears in the yearbook.

There is a photo of the Jr team (L5, 6, & prep-op) and Sr team (L7-10). There is also a photo of all state and regional qualifiers by level. Plus, any team member that scored 1st place in AA at a state or regional meet gets a photo.

All photos are taken by a professional photographer when we take individual photos that you can order. The photographer gets plenty of sales from the individual sales that he donates the photos for the yearbook.

Then, we have an order form to sell ads. People go to local businesses that they frequent (i.e. your pizza shop, plumber, dentist, landscaper, etc). The businesses purchase ads which are organized in the yearbook, usually near the photo of the gymnast they are supporting. The ad can be anything. Some strictly advertise their business and some will also put a message to the gymnast. Personal ads are also welcome --- so grandma & grandpa can post a message to their gymnast if they want to buy ad space.

The whole book is black & white, except the cover. A photo of the graduating senior girls is on the cover.

One of the tough things is that some people want to place an ad but don't have any artwork, so individual parents often need to work up an ad for them. Some people are better at this than others. I had an advertiser last year that I had to do a lot of artwork to get the ad the way they wanted.

There are order forms for the ads and the artwork gets submitted directly to the tech school that is assembling the piece for us. But a copy also goes to the yearbook organizers along with the check. I think our organizers also do the initial layout. I would guess it is a LOT of work.

I'm not sure how effective the ads are for the advertisers, but it is estimated that our books reach about 1,000 families. They tend to do it primarily to support a gymnast who's family they do business with regularly. (i.e. we get pizza, etc from our local shop every single weekend. They buy a $25 ad, probably just as a courtesy as we are such regular customers.)

I'm happy to answer any other questions you might have.

 

[gymgal]

re: yearbook

Who buys the books? I would have assumed it is just the team members, (and probably not all of them) but you say the book gets seen by about 1000 families so I'm unclear. Or do you sell them with rotation schedules during hosted meets? We were at a meet last weekend that did something like this...

 

[kayjaybe]

Actually, very few books are sold. The distribution goes back out to people that have placed ads and the team members. Anyone who buys at least a 1/4 page ad gets a book. The book is over 500 pages....so that is a lot of ads and people that are getting the books!

We do sell them at meets for a couple of bucks and often a grandparent or other relative might buy one, but that isn't where we make the money or get the distribution.

 

[tumble&turn]

Thank you for everyone's fundraising ideas. I also really like kayjaybe's year book idea. The only problem is that we are a relatively small club so I'm not sure how well it will work for us. Do you think it would be worth it for a smaller club?

Please keep the ideas coming

 

[kayjaybe]

I'm not sure what defines a "large" or "small" club. We have 67 gymnasts across levels 5-10. Not sure how that ranks.

If you host any meets, you could start really small by just doing a program for the meet and sell some ads. The program could list all the gymnasts in the sessions, include a coupon for something at the pins & flowers stand (I often see a $1 off coupon which can help drive people to that stand), and then ads for local businesses. You might want to limit to business card sized ads for something like this so the program doesn't get too big. Do an ad for $10 or something. It is a good way to get started and see what it takes to put together something small.

Don't forget you will need to print it, so watch your costs!

 

[AlexsGymmyMom]

At our hosted meet we do a fundraiser called "best seat in the house". We raffle off tickets at each session and pull a number out and the winner gets to sit closer to the action. We have a sofa and coffee table borrowed from a local business for the winner. They also get a $5.00 concession card to use to purchase snacks during the meet session. No upfront cost so it is all profit! It has worked really well for us in the past!