Baseball team fundraiser ideas

[left210]

We are on a travel baseball team and are looking for fundraiser ideas to offset the cost for the team. Any suggestions?

 

[maleficent32]

car wash
spaghetti dinner
pancake breakfast
home run derby day w/prizes

 

[Happy Snowman]

My take--I don't participate in fundraisers for travel teams, dance studios, etc. School teams/activities, yes, but not for places that charge a fee to participate and are 100% voluntary like that. Sorry.

 

[wuzzles]

See if any local restaurants will let the kids sell their gift certificates.

We had some places that let us sell $50 gift certificates at face value with $10 of every $50 going back to the team. Others let us sell $50 certificates for $40 so the customer saved $10 but $10 still went to the team.

We did just a few local restaurants. Printed up order forms for the kids and took orders. We would call in the # of cards needed to the restaurants and then pick them up when they were ready. We never really held an inventory of the gift cards.

We actually ran it for most of the season with turn in being a practice day and the ordered cards being handed out on game day.

Smaller denominations might work better depending on the restaurants.

 

[jaybirdsmommy]

Do you have CiCi's Pizza there? Our local one let us sell discount cards as a fundraiser. $10 per card, they let us keep $5.

They were an easy sell, each card contained 6 buy one buffet get one buffet free stamps, so approximately $30 value for the $10 cost.

 

[maleficent32]

My take--I don't participate in fundraisers for travel teams, dance studios, etc. School teams/activities, yes, but not for places that charge a fee to participate and are 100% voluntary like that. Sorry.

Its a good thing you came on to this thread to let the OP know that.

 

[TAX GUY]

There's the usual calendar raffle with daily money prizes. You could also use something similar to that raffle. I just heard about it during a PTO meeting for school but don't see why it can't be used anywhere.

Have a raffle for a lottery scratch ticket basket. Buy $1000 worth of various scratch tickets. Sell 1000 raffle tickets for $10 each. That will gross $10k. Cost is $1000 for tickets and minimal cost for 1000 raffle tickets. Remaining monies collected, approx. $9k is for the team and related costs.

 

[Kae]

There's the usual calendar raffle with daily money prizes. You could also use something similar to that raffle. I just heard about it during a PTO meeting for school but don't see why it can't be used anywhere.

Have a raffle for a lottery scratch ticket basket. Buy $1000 worth of various scratch tickets. Sell 1000 raffle tickets for $10 each. That will gross $10k. Cost is $1000 for tickets and minimal cost for 1000 raffle tickets. Remaining monies collected, approx. $9k is for the team and related costs.

Indiana has weird laws about raffles and such. But if you do a dinner/fish fry at a place/hall that has a gambling license you can do 50/50 and raffles. What county are you in could you do a food booth a your county fair.

Car washes are great fundraisers. Find a business on a busy street. Car Dealers are places for car washes. Make it a donation not a set price you will make more money.

Kae

 

[left210]

Yes we are in Indiana. That raffle thing sounds like a fabulous idea with the profit it brings in; however, I dont know with the laws if we could do that. I will check into it more. I would love to come up with something that puts the boys to work instead of just selling something. Do car washes really make a substantial amount of money? We dont have a Cicis in our area. Wish we did!

 

[Happy Snowman]

Its a good thing you came on to this thread to let the OP know that.

Yep, fundraisers are a lot of work and most people I know feel the same about club sports, dance studio, etc. fundraisers....so, before they do all the work, might want to see how they are viewed in their area.

 

[tvguy]

Its a good thing you came on to this thread to let the OP know that.

Actually, at least here, that is getting to be a problem here, a big backlash against Travel teams. People are kind of getting fed up. So it certainly can be an issue for Travel Teams trying to fund raise. Folks are just tapped out after donating to Little League and Babe Ruth. When my son was 13, he was "offered" a slot on a travel baseball team. They wanted $7,500 up front per player, and hoped to get some donations to offset that. And that was in 2001.

 

[Patch'sD]

I would suggest a monthly 30 Day Raffle. You would sell or try to sell 1000 tickets numbered from 000 to 999. All tickets sold would be for a 50% share of the pot (number tickets sold) divided by 30 for each day winner. So if you sold 600 tickets at $ 5.00 each, the pot will be $ 3000.00. So each ticket sold would have 30 chances to win $ 50.00. The winning ticket could be tied to the winning three number draw of any State Lottery. The Club would be gauranteed 50% of the pot plus the winnings from any unsold tickets.

 

[sam_gordon]

What's the age of the kids?

If it's HS or MS, are they allowed to sell at school? If so, I suggest candy bars or large bags of M&Ms for $1.

 

[lovin'fl]

My girls do travel softball and here are the fundraisers we've done over the years:

the one that yields the most profit is a Bingo (we sell tix for $20 and have 20 games...10 Coach purse prizes and 10 Pandora bracelet prizes and for extra $$ folks can play 3 special games for bigger Coach or Pandora prizes). We have 2 a year, sometimes 3 and it really knocks out a lot of our costs. We have one coming up.

Then we do a Super Bowl square thingy which it might be too late for you guys to do.

We have done, and I like because it's easy, a pancake breakfast at Applebees...some Applebees allow you to use their restaurant and their cook who makes all you can eat pancakes and sausages...they only take a small fee per person to cover food cost (sell tix for about $7.50pp and Applebees got like $2.50). You will have to find a link for your area, but here is the one for ours: http://www.rosegroupdining.com/neighborhood-involvement/flapjack-fundraiser.asp The kids do all the work to serve and clean up...but it's super easy and the kids have fun. Can have a few baskets there to do silent auction as well (we set them up on the bar).

Car wash didn't yield much profit but we've done it (no cost for us, so that's good).

We also will find some sort of prize (a family on the team that has connections to something) like tickets to a game or, around here- AA Co Maryland- a big one is, a bushel of crabs and case of beer...that sort of thing to raffle.

Another one is the 3 pick lottery for a month where you makes up tickets for every 3 pick combo and sell them for $5 each. Each day has a set winnings and that gets listed on the tickets. You really have to sell the tickets out (or most of them) to make a good profit. Someone mentioned this above**

 

[cepmom]

my DD's dance on the high school team, we do lots of fundraisers to help offset the cost of uniforms, competition fees, etc...

one of our most successful fundraisers is the meat raffle. There is a local restaurant in town that hosts meat raffles every week, there is always a group that uses this as their fundraiser. The restaurant makes out because many people go to the restaurant and bring in business for them.

The restaurant provides the space for the raffle, they provide the raffle prizes (we do pay for it from the proceeds).We have 6 raffles, 6 consolation prizes and 1 grand finale raffle. The regular raffles are each different but usually include things like a prime rib roast, 5 lbs turkey tips and stew beef, pork loin roast, etc. consolation prizes are smaller, typically ground beef, italian sausages, split chicken breast etc. The grand finale was big, steak tips, boneless chicken breast, lobsters etc etc.

we sold the regular raffle tickets 3 for $2 and the grand finale 3 for $5. We usually make about $3000-$3500 after paying for the expenses (meat, tip for the raffle announcer, other related expenses)

We have also done a "silent" meat raffle where we just sold the tickets and picked them on a specific date then delivered the prizes to the winners...no event at a restaurant. That was pretty successful as well, but not as much earned as the meat raffle night at the restaurant and was super easy to do.

 

[Kae]

Yes we are in Indiana. That raffle thing sounds like a fabulous idea with the profit it brings in; however, I dont know with the laws if we could do that. I will check into it more. I would love to come up with something that puts the boys to work instead of just selling something. Do car washes really make a substantial amount of money? We dont have a Cicis in our area. Wish we did!

They can it takes alot of word of mouth. Early Saturdays are the best. We have also done them at golf courses too. Do you have access to water for hoses a the ball park. Get hoses from a few parents. Have each kid bring a sponge, bucket & rags from home. Make big signs and when you make the signs make sure you put that it is for the baseball team. I hate when I am driving and they don't put who the fundraiser is for.



Kae

 

[luvsJack]

There are several restaurant chains that do easy ones:

Pizza Hut--they have one that you just have a stack of printed coupons. No one has to pay a cent extra. You just give out the coupons and folks just give it to the cashier when they pay for their pizza. The organization gets a certain amount of money for each coupon turned in.

Papa John's, Applebees, Chili's and a few others will do a night of fundraising. You pick a night and a percentage of the profits go to the organization that night.

These don't cost you anything so if you don't make a lot, you aren't out anything.

And around here fundraisers do just fine for that kind of stuff. People are always willing to help out especially when its something they are going to buy or do anyway.

 

[cepmom]

car washes are great too...we usually make about $900 per car wash and the girls do most of the work which is even better

What we found that worked well, instead of a set price per car wash, we put "donations accepted", people are far more generous this way and often give more than what could have been $5 per wash or whatever.

we also like to have the girls do something rather than sell things all the time...
we do junior dance clinics where kids can sign up to attend,learn a dance routine then perform the routine with the dance team at half time during a high school basketball game. This is pretty popular with the little kids.Maybe the baseball team can run a baseball clinic for younger kids??

 

[moniqueand2]

Bottle and can drive (I guess this only works if your state requires bottle/can deposit).

Let neighbors know in advanced to put bottles and cans out on a certain Saturday and the players come by and pick them up and take them to a return center for the money.

 

[Psychodisney]

One very successful fund raiser we did for my DS's travel baseball team was Christmas Wreath/garland sales. Won't help you for this year, but if you set it up for next year you'd be all set. This was VERY successful for several year.