Good fundraisers for youth sports

Saints Rest

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I’m the assistant coach on a summer league baseball team in Milford CT. It’s not an affiliated league (ie neither Little League nor Cal Ripken) so we’re mostly on our own for funds. Last year (9U) each kid/family paid $75 for the season. This coming summer (10U), we’re looking to travel down to Wildwood NI for a tournament so we coaches are already thinking about fundraising.

One of the guys suggested a Super Bowl box deal with half the money going to the team.

Any other ideas? Or variations of the Super Bowl boxes?
 

YTF

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I’m the assistant coach on a summer league baseball team in Milford CT. It’s not an affiliated league (ie neither Little League nor Cal Ripken) so we’re mostly on our own for funds. Last year (9U) each kid/family paid $75 for the season. This coming summer (10U), we’re looking to travel down to Wildwood NI for a tournament so we coaches are already thinking about fundraising.

One of the guys suggested a Super Bowl box deal with half the money going to the team.

Any other ideas? Or variations of the Super Bowl boxes?
Two quick thoughts. First try to pinpoint your expenses as best as you can. Travel, lodging, meal expenses, any other incidentals and total number of travelers. Be creative and stay away from fundraising products that leave you doing a lot of selling for small margins. Think service type efforts that are nearly 100% profit. Car washes fill the bill. Perhaps spring yard cleanups, bottle drives and depending on the community, you might be able to seek out some sort of sponsors. Banks are usually good bets. Sometimes pizza chains do a promotion where the team might get a percent of profits one night.
 

jayhoz

Ronald Bartel
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Jul 19, 2005
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Some things that local teams have done:

  • Raffle tickets for Pats game
  • Coupon book for local businesses (seems like a ton of work)
  • Flocking Fundraiser
  • Car Wash
  • Asking for donations outside the supermarket
  • Home Run Derby - not sure of all the details, but I think hitting certain donation thresholds gives the player more time, more outs or shorter distance.
 

Foxy42

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Mar 1, 2002
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A few towns in our area have done well with driveway logo painting. Getting the stencils made is pretty cheap, then you just have the coat of spray paint and some volunteers needed. Big margins. Our league charged $25 per logo and folks put them at the foot of their driveway, or under a hoop, etc.
 

Foxy42

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Mar 1, 2002
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Check out, ‘Spin for Marshfield Youth Hockey Tournament’ on Facebook. They’ve done a great job raising money for one of their teams to go away to a tourney through online raffles.
 

Omar's Wacky Neighbor

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Jul 14, 2005
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Leaving in a bit to the studio :)
A great fundraiser, and it’s renewable, that Scouts in our town use is to place (and remove 3 days later) an American flag on a 6-7 foot pole in each sponsors yard on every one of the major patriotic holidays. Granted, you have to lay out cash for the flags and poles in the first place, but each annual membership more than makes up for it.
 

YTF

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Some things that local teams have done:

  • Raffle tickets for Pats game
Perhaps Sox-Yanks, better still if you know someone with connections. Also think outside the box when it comes to selling raffle tickets. Players, parents, coaches, etc...are constantly going back to the same patrons. With something such as sports themed raffles you might be able to enlist the help of local bars or social clubs. That would expose you to new "customers" and if you, a coach or one of the parents is a member it likely helps your cause.
 

loshjott

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Dec 30, 2004
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Silver Spring, MD
I’m the assistant coach on a summer league baseball team in Milford CT. It’s not an affiliated league (ie neither Little League nor Cal Ripken) so we’re mostly on our own for funds. Last year (9U) each kid/family paid $75 for the season. This coming summer (10U), we’re looking to travel down to Wildwood NI for a tournament so we coaches are already thinking about fundraising.

One of the guys suggested a Super Bowl box deal with half the money going to the team.

Any other ideas? Or variations of the Super Bowl boxes?
First of all, kudos for keeping the team fee so low. Even at 9U, as I'm sure you know, many programs would charge more than ten times $75 for a season of travel baseball. Once you guesstimate your expenses as YTF suggested you could ask the parents to pay some portion of that and fundraise the rest. My son's HS team did a HR derby they called a bat a thon. Parents/families pledged some amount per foot and each player got a few swings and totaled up the distance. It's also a fun event, you could have a PA system going with over the top "commentary" and music, etc. And someone mentioned restaurant fundraisers. Those are easy. Chipotle sponsors them and probably many other chains and mom and pops in your area.

Best of luck to you, I coached/organized youth baseball for my sons for 15+ years and now the youngest is in college...I already miss it - sometimes.
 

Saints Rest

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I couldn't decide if I should start a new thread or reopen an old one, but since there seem to be a lot of Excel threads, and this one is related to my son's baseball team, I figured I would put it here. And this may be more of a math question than an Exel one anyway.

So we are running a Super Bowl squares as a fundraiser for his summer team as discussed above. The plan is that half the proceeds will go the team, and half will pay out to the four winning boxes. But here's the thing: any unsold boxes will be "held" by the team, so the if any one of those empty boxes hits, then the team just adds those winnings to the kitty. So I'm trying to figure out how to calculate expected winnings based on number of boxes sold.

Without the empty boxes issue it's pretty simple: (100 * [$ per box]) - ([# of boxes sold] * [$ per box]). So the more boxes sold, the more money the team gets. Or put another way, once we sell half the boxes, every box sold goes straight to the bottom line.

But an unsold box has a 1% change to hit and add money to the bottom line. The more unsold boxes, the higher the cumulative percentage that the team holds, right? IOW, if there are 25 unsold boxes, we have a 25% chance to hit, correct?

Do I simply multiply the cumulative percentage against the possible winning for each quarter to determine "expected winnings." Is that even the right way to look at it?

If it matters, our current plan is $20/box; $125 for 1st and 3rd quarters; $250 for halftime; and $500 for final score (not end of 4th Q).

So ultimately is the formula [net of sold boxes] + ["expected winnings" of 1st Q] + ["expected winnings" of 2nd Q] + ["expected winnings" of 3rd Q] + ["expected winnings" of final]?? Or is it more of a binomial probability type calculation??
 

Matty005

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Aug 28, 2005
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Arlington, MA
Debating doing a Super Bowl Squares fundraiser for my high school team. I got the, "OK," from my AD but it makes me nervous as he isn't always the most on top of things. Would hate to jeopardize anything for a few hundred dollars. Any thoughts from people here?
 

Saints Rest

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Apparently it's technically illegal to run this as a fundraiser (i.e. where the orginizing entity takes a cut). But it seems about as commonly enforced as sodomy laws.
To keep it safe, don't make reference to "SUPER BOWL" in your Venmo or PayPal memos.
 

Ferm Sheller

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Mar 5, 2007
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My son earned $600 for charity last year by hiding Easter Eggs filled with candy on Easter Eve in the yards of people who donated $30. I think it took him about three hours to do 20 houses.
 

YTF

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I couldn't decide if I should start a new thread or reopen an old one, but since there seem to be a lot of Excel threads, and this one is related to my son's baseball team, I figured I would put it here. And this may be more of a math question than an Exel one anyway.

So we are running a Super Bowl squares as a fundraiser for his summer team as discussed above. The plan is that half the proceeds will go the team, and half will pay out to the four winning boxes. But here's the thing: any unsold boxes will be "held" by the team, so the if any one of those empty boxes hits, then the team just adds those winnings to the kitty. So I'm trying to figure out how to calculate expected winnings based on number of boxes sold.

Without the empty boxes issue it's pretty simple: (100 * [$ per box]) - ([# of boxes sold] * [$ per box]). So the more boxes sold, the more money the team gets. Or put another way, once we sell half the boxes, every box sold goes straight to the bottom line.

But an unsold box has a 1% change to hit and add money to the bottom line. The more unsold boxes, the higher the cumulative percentage that the team holds, right? IOW, if there are 25 unsold boxes, we have a 25% chance to hit, correct?

Do I simply multiply the cumulative percentage against the possible winning for each quarter to determine "expected winnings." Is that even the right way to look at it?

If it matters, our current plan is $20/box; $125 for 1st and 3rd quarters; $250 for halftime; and $500 for final score (not end of 4th Q).

So ultimately is the formula [net of sold boxes] + ["expected winnings" of 1st Q] + ["expected winnings" of 2nd Q] + ["expected winnings" of 3rd Q] + ["expected winnings" of final]?? Or is it more of a binomial probability type calculation??
At $20 per square you should probably have no issue selling tix, depending how folks feel about you getting half the pot. I will say that IMO keeping unsold squares for the team on top of a 50% rake of the pot may not be well received and could be a deterrent for some. One other thought, if you choose to go that route I would expect the runner of the pool (the team in this case) to purchase the unsold tickets to make the pool whole. I think it would be poor not to. However it shakes out, I hope the team does well in it's fund raising efforts.
 
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