It’s almost fall, and you know what that means. Soon, the sound of whistles will cut through crisp air. Early morning and afterschool practices will be the norm, as will exciting Friday night games and loads of extra stinky laundry. And don’t forget fundraising for your team (lots and lots of it). That’s right—football season is almost here.
While there’s no perfect gameplan that’ll guarantee sports fundraising success—every team, youth league, and community are different—there are winning plays. Whether you’re a coach, parent, or player, these youth football fundraising ideas will help your team score a win.
Football Team Fundraiser Ideas
Team Up
Peer-to-peer is a game-changing strategy for football team fundraisers. The premise behind a peer-to-peer fundraiser is to turn your players, friends, and family into advocates who raise funds for your cause individually. This, in turn, broadens your reach (and money raised) far beyond your immediate network. It’s also a natural fit for any youth sports team because it turns fundraising into a competitive game, something they already enjoy.
You may be more familiar with peer-to-peer as a walk-a-thon or run-athons event. However, it’s important to note that it can be adapted to almost any fundraiser, including crowdfunding campaigns, making it a versatile and effective strategy.
Here’s a basic framework for how peer-to-peer works:
- Set up the fundraiser of your choice on your fundraising platform.
- Invite football players and team members to set up individual fundraising pages with information about the fundraiser and why the team needs funds, such as to cover travel expenses to attend a tournament.
- Encourage them to rally their personal networks by sharing their page on their social media account.
- Each player can share their page on social media, track their progress, and see who’s scoring the most donations.
Find inspiration for your peer-to-peer fundraiser among these a-thon ideas, or learn how to organize a walk-a-thon.
Skills Challenge Event
Anyone who’s ever watched a combine or practice knows sometimes the drills look fun or something you’d like to try. Capitalize on that FOMO when fundraising for a football team! Organize a football skills challenge where players, parents, and the community can participate in events like field goal kicking, throwing accuracy, obstacle courses, or agility drills. You could charge a ‘donate what you can’ entry fee and offer small prizes for the top performers.
Ways to increase fundraising potential:
- Set up a crowdfunding page so you can reach out to people who can’t attend.
- Order printed flyers and postcards with QR codes directing to your crowdfunding page and distribute them in your community. This will help you reach people who aren’t aware of your team.
- Sell team merch at the event.
- Run a 50/50 raffle and sell tickets during the event—you won’t have to worry about finding a great prize!
Team Spirit
Open a print-on-demand ecommerce storefront featuring custom merchandise and promote it on social media and your website. Although this high school football fundraising idea may not bring in a large sum of money all at once, it will serve as a continuous source of donations.
You can open your ecommerce storefront using our fundraising platform and integrate it into your site! Alternatively, you can create a standalone storefront. Either way, we’ll drop ship purchased merch straight to the customer. All you must do is choose your products, add your artwork and branding, and list them.
Ways to increase fundraising potential:
- Offer team merch with a twist and apply peer-to-peer. Ask creative players to develop artwork based on your team brand. List the various designs in your store, then create a competition for the design that sells the most. Invite players to promote their shirts far and wide within their networks. The winning artist could win a prize such as a free pass from suicide drills.
Sponsor-a-Player
This unique peer-to-peer fundraiser is an excellent way to engage the community and raise money for your youth football team. Instead of running a special event (like a walk-a-thon), people pledge to support a specific player throughout the season.
Here’s how it works:
- Set up an a-thon on your fundraising platform and ask your team to create individual fundraising pages.
- Ask each player to identify potential sponsors among family, friends, neighbors, and local businesses.
- Sponsors can pledge a specific amount per game, yard gained, or touchdown scored by the player.
- Offer rewards or recognition to sponsors, such as tickets to a football game, team merchandise, or public acknowledgment.
- Your fundraising platform will automatically track pledges, and each player will record their performance to ensure accurate and timely payments.
Ways to increase fundraising potential:
- Keep engagement high in your sponsor-a-player fundraiser by continually generating interesting social media content.
- Feature player profiles (with a link to their fundraising page) and highlight what makes them unique or an important member of your team.
- Share a photo or video clip of a local business and have followers guess which player is sponsored by them. The first correct guess wins a prize.
- Post football trivia questions related to your team, players, or the sport in general. Offer a small prize, perhaps team merch, tickets to the next game, or a refreshment voucher.
- Share before-and-after photos or videos of players’ improvement. Encourage followers to share their own transformation stories.
- Ask fans to share their favorite football memories or why they support the team. Share these on your platforms.
- Give fans an exclusive look at practices, team meetings, or other behind-the-scenes moments.
Ready to Kick Off Your Football Fundraiser?
With these winning football team fundraising ideas, your team is ready to take the field and score the funds you need. If you’re looking for a better way to manage your football fundraisers, we’d love it if you gave Eventgroove a try! Our nonprofit fundraising platform is a powerful yet user-friendly tool equipped with fundraiser-type templates, peer-to-peer functionality, and more. Plus, our integrated printing services make it easy to order printed postcards, raffle tickets, flyers, and invitations branded to your team and event.
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