Team fundraising makes raising money for your sports club more fun and accessible. Individuals don’t have as much success in fundraising as they do as part of a team. Each team includes people with different skills and abilities who can support each other during stressful campaigns and events, which is why many nonprofits build fundraising…
Team fundraising makes raising money for your sports club more fun and accessible. Individuals don’t have as much success in fundraising as they do as part of a team.
Each team includes people with different skills and abilities who can support each other during stressful campaigns and events, which is why many nonprofits build fundraising teams.
In this article, we’ve shared 14 unique and exciting team fundraising ideas for sports clubs, as well as tips to help you succeed.
Fundraising isn’t only a way to raise money for your club. It’s also an excellent way for team leaders to teach collaboration, communication skills, and the importance of giving back.
Fundraising allows team members to participate in various activities, including ticket sales, event planning, design, copywriting, and connecting with potential sponsors.
You can have your entire sports team raise funds for your club. Alternatively, you can let them create smaller teams or groups.
Select team leaders and let them lead their teams to raise funds through peer-to-peer fundraising. Each team should have a fundraising page of its own. You can add incentives and encourage competition between teams to raise more funds. This process helps you raise more donations.
When you use a simple and effective tool like Donorbox Peer-to-Peer, you can easily invite your teams to fundraise. Just input the team name and email address of the team leader in the tool. That person will receive an email invitation to sign up and create a fundraising page for their team.
Look at how James and Laura are raising money together for The True Athlete Project’s summer fundraising campaign. Take inspiration from this live example and prepare your teams to get started.
Start Team Fundraising with Donorbox Peer-to-Peer
Has your traditional fundraising campaign for your sports club gone stale?
Below are 15 team fundraising ideas that will not only boost donations to your campaign but also substantially increase the outreach of your team.
Some of these ideas are unique and creative; others have been popular for years, but they’re all fun in the end!
One of the most popular New Year’s resolutions is losing weight or exercising. Your team can help supporters with their resolutions this year and offer an in-person or online exercise class.
Create different teams that can offer specific fitness classes to your community. Promote this opportunity online: through emails and social media posts. Get each of your teams a fundraising page with which they can accept signups in exchange for donations.
Remember to take pictures and share them on your website and social media pages. Ask supporters to share their pictures on social media tagging your sports club.
Pro tip: To ensure you can reach beyond the community and raise more donations, keep the class online or make it hybrid. Let people join in online. You can sell tickets in advance. Also, make it possible to give through a donation form during the class. If you’re using Donorbox for fundraising, you can easily add your donation form to Airmeet, an all-in-one virtual event-hosting platform.
Another fun fundraising activity is a walk, run, swim, bike, or even a bowl-a-thon. These athletic events are an excellent way to reach out to a larger audience to find new donors.
Choose a day or month to hold your a-thon event. Ask team leaders to create peer-to-peer fundraising pages to help their teams raise funds for your club. Each team will reach out to their networks for accepting donations as a token of support for them.
A month-long virtual a-thon event lets your teams choose when to walk, run, swim, or bowl and still keep the excitement going.
In the example below, Lisa’s Resident Assistant Team is raising money for The Lisa Marzullo Fly Again Foundation’s peer-to-peer fundraising campaign through a 31-mile walk event.
Create a Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Campaign
A popular competition idea is to have a game between your sports team and the teachers at your school.
You can sell tickets to this event. Also, enable both the sports team and the teachers’ team to have their own fundraising pages to accept donations from their supporters. This will help boost the outreach of your event.
Your club can find sponsors and partner with local sports-related businesses for extra revenue through this event.
Challenges usually address personal difficulties or achievements, making them different from competitions. Your supporters may have a unique challenge in mind to climb a mountain, train and run in a marathon, or read 100 books in a year.
There are no limits to personal challenges, making them an exciting way to raise funds with your sports team.
Create different teams based on the challenge they have in mind and set leaders for each. Invite them to create their fundraising pages on an online peer-to-peer tool that’s easy for all to use. You may want to provide them with initial training and tips.
Once they’re ready, ask teams to reach out to their supporters and raise donations. There’s no competition here to win or get a prize. Once the teams have completed their challenges, you can host an event to appreciate their efforts and the supporters for their donations.
Fundraising doesn’t always have to be for your team. Instead, your team can create a giveaway for local charities that need your help.
A creative giveaway idea for your team could be to create baskets of canned and boxed food or personal hygiene items for your local food pantry. You can also add handwritten cards or videos to make it more personal and memorable.
While this idea is purely from a generosity perspective, you can also implement this in partnership with a local charity to receive a percentage of donations for your club.
Dunk tanks have a long history of raising money from people trying to get back at their coach or teacher. This can be a fun addition to an established outdoor event.
Your team can put up a dunk tank at the school to get students in on the fun. If you don’t want to rent a dunk tank, you can always bake and throw pies. Your sports team can also raise enough money from the community to convince your coach to shave their head.
Live streaming has become a popular entertainment choice for many.
Your team can take advantage of this trend by live-streaming games. Their supporters will donate to be able to watch the games. Create a fundraising page for them to use for this purpose.
Your team should start a YouTube channel and share videos of their best plays and funny screwups. Use these videos to promote this event and encourage more signups.
Pro tip: During the game, use Text-to-Give to attract more donations. Ask your team members’ parents and friends to send your online campaign ID to a texting number and make a donation in support of that member. With Donorbox Text-to-Give, they’ll also be able to easily repeat their donations. Here’s how Text-to-Give works on Donorbox –
A bingo fundraiser is an excellent chance for a team fundraising idea. Create your bingo card with smaller donations ranging from $5 to $30. Now, encourage all team members to reach out to the community and collect enough donations to fill up their bingo cards.
You can provide prizes to the bingo winner and the first team member to collect all the donations.
Venmo has become popular with Gen Z, and nonprofits can use this app to collect funds quickly and easily with this team fundraiser. Create a donation page and add a QR code linking donors to your Venmo account. Alternatively, use Donorbox.
Donorbox UltraSwift ™ Pay lets you offer digital wallet options like Venmo, PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Pay, etc. to your donors. This option comes enabled with every new campaign you create on Donorbox.
You may remember the famous “Ice Bucket Challenge” from 2014. The ALS Association raised millions of dollars and developed several treatments for those living with the disease.
Your team can get creative and have fun with a viral video fundraiser. These fundraisers don’t require extra money to get started. Get your team to brainstorm and create a fun video that will entertain supporters.
Build an online crowdfunding campaign with this video and encourage people to record their own videos to join in on the fun. Your team members will promote this page to their individual networks and help raise money.
Enable peer-to-peer fundraising so that supporters can also opt to raise money for you. Donorbox Peer-to-Peer lets you add a button to your fundraising page so that anybody can choose to sign up and raise money for you. You’ll have the ability to approve such campaigns.
Car washes are popular team fundraisers for a reason. They don’t take a lot of additional funds to run, and they can be held just about anywhere. The other plus to holding a car wash is the fun your team can have.
Be sure to get everyone involved, design posters, advertise online, purchase necessary items, and choose a music playlist for the event.
Put up QR codes at the venue so people can easily make donations to your online campaign. Your team should be able to explain to donors how this car wash fundraiser is meant to help the club and the sports team.
Donor walls are a traditional fundraising tool used by many nonprofits. Your team can start a donor wall with a twist. Your team members can use the donor wall to encourage gifts from friends and family. These walls can be online on your donation page or in person at your facility.
As each team member collects more donations for the wall, you can move their name up a graph. Whoever ends up at the top of this list can receive a prize and credit on social media.
Donorbox lets you add a donor wall to your donation page or embed it on your website. While making the donation, donors will leave their comments including the team member’s name. Their comments and donation amounts will show up on the donor wall. You can then use this information to select the winner.
The below example is from a crowdfunding campaign on Donorbox, which includes a donor wall to highlight comments and donations from donors. You can use a page like this or a simple fundraising page to implement this team fundraising idea.
Quiz nights can be a fun evening for your team and supporters. You can raise a few thousand dollars in one night. Registration fees of $50 aren’t unusual for this type of event.
Offer discounts for teams of five or more to bring in more attendees. Quiz games can cover your team or school’s history or popular culture. Your team can raise more funds with a raffle and auction during the evening’s festivities.
This can be a great team fundraising idea if your club comprises younger kids. A school-wide sports day is an excellent way to encourage them to raise a little money from their parents.
Set up obstacle courses, games, and easy athletic challenges for kids of all ages. You’ll also want to include activities like face painting and small prizes for kids to win.
If kids are too young to run their own fundraising pages, you can ask them to collect pledges from their parents and other supporters. You can later reach out to them for helping them make their donations.
The final idea on this list focuses more on volunteering and long-term relationship building. Your team can rent itself out for a day to businesses and individuals for projects they need help with.
These activities may include moving, shopping, painting, building, or babysitting. Volunteering is an excellent way to teach your team how to give back and build up good feelings around the community.
Based on their skills, you can create different teams. Each team leader can create a fundraising page and raise money in exchange for the good work. They should also be able to explain how these donations would help your club.
Fundraising is fun, but it’s never easy. You must train your team to be able to fundraise effectively.
Introducing fundraising lets each team member play a primary role in the campaign. That’s why it’s essential to involve members from the beginning.
Children are not used to being listened to. So if you give them a chance to come up with ideas, they may surprise you and genuinely enjoy taking part in your fundraising efforts.
Even if your team comprises older members, the more you involve them in the planning, the better will be your results from team fundraising.
Make it more about teamwork right from the start than just utilizing your team for fundraising. The next tip emphasizes more on this.
After coming up with and deciding on a fundraising idea, it’s time to split the roles and responsibilities among your team members.
Everyone has different skills. Your fundraising campaign or event will give you a way for each team member to use these skills to benefit the campaign and team.
Create a list of steps and things you’ll need, including –
If possible, you should let team members choose what they want to do. If they’re excited about the project, they’ll work much harder toward fundraising.
But also, remember to not overwhelm them with a lot of tasks. That is why it is important that you let them decide how much they can take on.
The most popular and effective fundraising idea for team fundraising is peer-to-peer campaigns. Your team members are naturally competitive and likely have solid personal foundations of people that want to support them.
As a team leader, you must provide them with basic training on the tools you’ll be using and other tips to excel. You must also set reachable goals and provide training and regular fundraiser updates.
Donorbox Peer-to-Peer is a simple solution that requires absolutely no training to use. You will toggle a switch on a campaign dashboard to enable peer-to-peer. Then, you can invite team members to fundraise. They’ll be guided on the tool to easily create and customize their fundraising pages. All donations from your peer campaigns go to the original one.
We have a step-by-step guide to help you get started right away! Here’s a visual tutorial that’ll make it even easier to start with Donorbox Peer-to-Peer.
Get Started With Donorbox Peer-to-Peer
Team fundraising can help teams build stronger internal relationships and work together to raise funds. The team fundraising ideas listed in this article are inspirations to come up with unique fundraisers that will fit your sports team’s needs.
If you’re looking for more ideas and tips, you’ll find plenty of them and more resources on our Nonprofit Blog. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive a collection of these resources in your inbox every month.
Check out Donorbox and its powerful features for your team’s fundraising success. From Recurring Donations to Events to Memberships to Text-to-Give, and more, you’ve endless options to raise more money.
Let nonprofit experts at Donorbox help you become a pro – get access to coaching services and premium tools at personalized pricing. Explore Donorbox Premium now!
Kristine Ensor is a freelance writer with over a decade of experience working with local and international nonprofits. As a nonprofit professional she has specialized in fundraising, marketing, event planning, volunteer management, and board development.
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Kristine Ensor