Innovative & Sustainable Fundraising Ideas for GAA Clubs

BetheChange · 26-07-2010 11:24am #1

Like most GAA Clubs we are looking for new and innovative ideas for fundraisers. We are in good financial condition having raised a decent belt of money in a one off development draw at the start of the year, but over the past few years it appears as if the day-to-day funding is getting tighter. As a hurling and football club with a strong underage section we need roughly €100k a year to meet ongoing expenses. Having worked our socks off we are now back into running another once off fundraiser in the next couple of months to balance the bank account for this year

Ours is a small community with a small and hardworking committee so I am looking for new, fun and sustainable ways of making money. We already run a club lotto, a membership scheme and generate good income out of selling tickets for the model county draw.

I have searched the threads and not found anything about this and I am sure there are plenty of clubs who would benefit from a pooling of ideas and schemes.

Thanks for any contributions you may have.

rebel105 · 26-07-2010 11:49am

This year our club is doing a thing with sportsprophet.ie

Everyone paid €20 and predicted the winners of 20-30 various sporting events (Provinicial championships, all-ireland, eircom league, world cup, wimbledon, formula 1, golf etc etc) and you get points depending on what you get right and there's prizes of €500, €200 and €100 for 1st, 2nd and 3rd. I think once the club makes up the prize money and whatever the fee is to the website, whatever is over and above is profit.

I'm doing absolutely crap in it but it's been a bit of a laugh watching the leaderboard and seeing who's doing better than who, so to my mind it's €20 better spent than on some raffle ticket that your never going to hear about!

homerjay2005 · 26-07-2010 11:59am

BetheChange wrote: »

As a hurling and football club with a strong underage section we need roughly €100k a year to meet ongoing expenses.

:eek::eek::eek::eek: thats madness. what on earth are ye spending that much money on? i would love to see your EOY expenses report cos sounds like a few lads are having a good time.

only thing i can see a huge burden would be if you are undergoing constant redevepment of facilities such as new lights, dressing rooms etc etc.

nice_guy80 · 26-07-2010 5:17pm

homerjay2005 wrote: »

:eek::eek::eek::eek: thats madness. what on earth are ye spending that much money on? i would love to see your EOY expenses report cos sounds like a few lads are having a good time.

only thing i can see a huge burden would be if you are undergoing constant redevepment of facilities such as new lights, dressing rooms etc etc.

have ye a large mortgage for development of facilities? big registration fees?

cut down on all unnecessary expenditure - physios, new gear, manager costs etc
buy hurleys in bulk from one hurley maker, same with sliotars, footballs etc

get a good club lotto going - with members automatically being entered each week - via increasing the membership by €20/€30 for the year. give discount to non members who register for the lotto on a yearly basis

UpTheSlashers · 26-07-2010 5:46pm

Do ye run a GAA summer camp for the juveniles? It could run from 10-2 for 4 or 5 days some week in august and registration could be €25 or €30. It does require a lot organisation and manwork though.

homerjay2005 · 26-07-2010 6:20pm

my club has a club lotto which keeps the entire club running from year to year.

they also had a night at the dogs which cleared out any loans we had for a huge redevopoment of the club grounds.

Olaf · 26-07-2010 10:59pm

I assume you're probably doing this already, but just in case, selling advertising space around the grounds for matches, and renting out the clubhouse if it's big enough to local groups etc. Maybe advertise in the local paper to attract other groups, publish competitive rates compared to other similar facilities in the area etc.

Magi11 · 26-07-2010 11:20pm

rebel105 wrote: »

This year our club is doing a thing with sportsprophet.ie

Everyone paid €20 and predicted the winners of 20-30 various sporting events (Provinicial championships, all-ireland, eircom league, world cup, wimbledon, formula 1, golf etc etc) and you get points depending on what you get right and there's prizes of €500, €200 and €100 for 1st, 2nd and 3rd. I think once the club makes up the prize money and whatever the fee is to the website, whatever is over and above is profit.

I'm doing absolutely crap in it but it's been a bit of a laugh watching the leaderboard and seeing who's doing better than who, so to my mind it's €20 better spent than on some raffle ticket that your never going to hear about!

That's brilliant but I can't see why you would need sportsprophet, surely you could do it on your own?
Great idea though.
We started Bingo, literally saved the club but still not out of the woods.

Magi11 · 26-07-2010 11:26pm

BetheChange wrote: »

As a hurling and football club with a strong underage section we need roughly €100k a year to meet ongoing expenses.

Ours is a small community with a small and hardworking committee so I am looking for new, fun and sustainable ways of making money.

Thanks for any contributions you may have.

How could it take 100k a year to run the club, if it is as you say a small community? You must be paying your manager(s) the 2006 rates!!

rebel105 · 26-07-2010 11:32pm

Magi11 wrote: »

That's brilliant but I can't see why you would need sportsprophet, surely you could do it on your own?
Great idea though.
We started Bingo, literally saved the club but still not out of the woods.

Possibly you could do it without the help of the website but it would take a whole lot more work and organisation, using the website everyone paid their money and logged on and picked their own choices and (unless you had some IT person on board who would make a website and update it with results) you wouldn't be able to check your progress as each sporting event passed. So all in all, I think its worth using the sportsprophet website.

Magi11 · 26-07-2010 11:51pm

Fair enough. I suppose to make it profitable you're going to need at least 50 players so going DIY probably wouldn't be feasible.
PS I'm probably going to nick this and pass it off as my own idea! Hope you don't mind!!!

BetheChange · 27-07-2010 12:10am

Thanks for all the suggestions and ideas.

I am only back around after a while away and was a bit surprised too when I saw the costs. Yes physio costs and medical are a bit high. But players demand care and attention in a way that they previously would not. There is always scope for tightening up but the treasurer runs a fairly tight ship and doesn't flash the cash. We do have one old loan which is a bit of a draw and adds about 20k but with 7 adult teams and a full compliment of underage hurling and football the money is easily spent.

We run a lotto and we have a 300e membership package linking in with lotto and other ticket sales which works very well with another 25k profit coming in from the annual county draw.

I like the idea of the pitch hoardings. Somebody suggested to me over the weekend who wants to be a thousandaire and a fight night which both look like big money spinners and a bit of crack.

Anybody any ideas in relation to an ongoing sponsorship model which includes a range of high value and lower sponsorship on an ongoing basis?

ted1 · 27-07-2010 12:16am

sell the naming rights of the clubs main pitch to an insurance company

they'd get good media coverage.

Magi11 · 27-07-2010 8:12am

BetheChange wrote: »

Thanks for all the suggestions and ideas.

I am only back around after a while away and was a bit surprised too when I saw the costs. Yes physio costs and medical are a bit high. But players demand care and attention in a way that they previously would not. There is always scope for tightening up but the treasurer runs a fairly tight ship and doesn't flash the cash. We do have one old loan which is a bit of a draw and adds about 20k but with 7 adult teams and a full compliment of underage hurling and football the money is easily spent.

We run a lotto and we have a 300e membership package linking in with lotto and other ticket sales which works very well with another 25k profit coming in from the annual county draw.

I like the idea of the pitch hoardings. Somebody suggested to me over the weekend who wants to be a thousandaire and a fight night which both look like big money spinners and a bit of crack.

Anybody any ideas in relation to an ongoing sponsorship model which includes a range of high value and lower sponsorship on an ongoing basis?

Ok, mystery solved! What you have their my friend is (by Monaghan standards anyway) a big club!! And therefore a big community.
We had a big problem with physio bills a few years ago as players were choosing to go to whatever physio they wanted without telling the club. This ended up with guys getting injured playing for their college, using a local physio and billing the club for it!
Situation now is that we made a deal with 2 local physios for a preferential rate, players must get a signed voucher from either the Chairman or Secretary this is sent back to us with the physios invoice and if it isn't included with the invoice it wasn't paid.
Monaghan ran a boxing night over Christmas which I thought wouldn't work due to the recession, but made about 80k! However the reason it worked is that you had players from different clubs fighting each other.
Some club in Donegal did a version of Strictly Come Dancing spaced over 4 weeks.
My dads club are 300k in debt after a major development project. They decided to ask 300 people for €250 a year for 4 years. After 4 years, all they will be asked for is the weekly blotto. No gimmicks, no prizes. They can't believe how well it's going. Mostly families who know their kids will benefit from the facilities. €250 also means that the club can claim tax relief on top of this. €250 per year works out as €4.81 per week, or roughly half a packet of fags. An argument that convinced more than a few sceptics!!
Our club runs bingo. It makes good money, it's exactly the clientelle that you would expect but they can spend their money as well as anyone else!!! but it is in it's 3rd year and is getting to be a bit of a drag as you are asking the same people to come out and help every Tuesday. But like I said before it literally saved the club so we keep soldiering on!

Royal Seahawk · 27-07-2010 12:56pm

Fight Nights seem to be the big thing at the moment, great craic and always guaranteed to get a big crowd in.

BetheChange · 27-07-2010 6:45pm

How do the fight nights work?

I understand that you involve multiple clubs and you promote the fights in different weight categories.

I would love to talk to someone who has been involved in running one to work out what is actually involved if anyone can private message me.

rpurfield · 27-07-2010 7:50pm

strange i was only thinking about when our club lotto started down here today.dunno if the club still do it but we went thru a phase of giving commisson of 25% of what ya brought in once ya sold over 50 tickets,it expanded it past the few die hards selling and got us into the estates and a few pubs that previously werent tapped into.another way of spreading your lotto is sending home five tickets per child from underage training,theyll love selling them.

over the years our club has done race days at navan and fairyhouse.theres a company arranges it for a small cut but they get lovely prizes like holidays etc and everyone thats bought in to a table is in the hat for the prize.they also get a jockey in while your eating to go thru the card and colm murray off the news mc'd the navan one.

we also done a 1-20 draw were basically if you got ticket number 1 you paid a cent ticket number 435 you paid four euro 35 etc all the way up to 20euro.the beauty of that was everyone that got an odd amount generally rounded it up to the nearer euro!!prizes were all cash.

years ago we used to organise a band and bbq etc on the field during the summer was fierce popular and weve done car draws race nights golf classics all the usual stuff.

augustus gloop · 27-07-2010 10:24pm

on the lotto tickets, offer advertisement space on the back of the ticket, a publican and electrican on the back of our tickets ATM.

texas holdem poker nights are god for a bit of banter and make a small bit of money, the good thing with it is it can be done quite reguraly.

put 3 sets of numbers on the lotto tickets instead of 1... 1 box for 2e or all 3 boxes for 5e. very few people will do just 1 box.

just a few things, wont make ye millions but every penny helps in a club:pac:

Blue Magic · 12-08-2011 1:22am

rebel105 wrote: »

This year our club is doing a thing with sportsprophet.ie

Everyone paid €20 and predicted the winners of 20-30 various sporting events (Provinicial championships, all-ireland, eircom league, world cup, wimbledon, formula 1, golf etc etc) and you get points depending on what you get right and there's prizes of €500, €200 and €100 for 1st, 2nd and 3rd. I think once the club makes up the prize money and whatever the fee is to the website, whatever is over and above is profit.

I'm doing absolutely crap in it but it's been a bit of a laugh watching the leaderboard and seeing who's doing better than who, so to my mind it's €20 better spent than on some raffle ticket that your never going to hear about!

Sportsprophet is an excellent one alright. Raised nearly €2k in our club with it this year. Thinking we might be able to make up to €4k if we can get an extra 100 names next year with a bit more of a push from the club members

Blue Magic · 12-08-2011 1:25am

Magi11 wrote: »

That's brilliant but I can't see why you would need sportsprophet, surely you could do it on your own?
Great idea though.
We started Bingo, literally saved the club but still not out of the woods.

The brand of Sportsprophet is growing and that attracts people. Also, having the online aspect of it makes it easier for people too.

Bingo is some draw at the moment lads. Iff ye can have one of those monster ones 3 or 4 times a year then you can raise up to €25k - seriously. Talking €6-7k a pop

Blue Magic · 25-08-2013 3:20am

Anything new and fresh in the way of fundraising lads??

davegrohl48 · 25-08-2013 7:43am

Blue Magic wrote: »

Anything new and fresh in the way of fundraising lads??

Operate a small sales stand at all home games right beside stand Club gear at low prices, club lotto, coffee n tea, simple snacks Some people have a thing about hit drink n a cadburys when watchin a game You can store all that in club house n will earn big for bigger crowds Maybe even free club lotto above tenner seen as margin is high Then club gear is easier to access than usual Polo shirts easy sell

rpurfield · 25-08-2013 1:59pm

Blue Magic wrote: »

Anything new and fresh in the way of fundraising lads??

recycling day?? collect old scrap metal etc. take me out and strictly come dancing seem to be popular these days too

newkidondblock · 11-09-2013 2:54pm

think theres a new crowd in kerry doing fundraising for clubs. same crowd that do the bubble soccer.

newkidondblock · 11-09-2013 2:59pm

the texas holdem night are good but the casino nights are better as they have more widespread appeal.

Blue Magic · 06-01-2014 6:38pm

Any new fresh fundraising ideas for the new year people?

How about a Strictly Come Dancing (Irish Dancing or Salsa or whatever)?

Would be looking for a fundraiser to make €2,000 before the summer that ain't a bingo, night at the dogs, usual raffle/lotteries? Am thinking of trying Sportsprophet again? Anything else?

newkidondblock · 09-01-2014 1:23pm

St. Pats in Kerry did the SCD recently and raised 10,000! It was a mighty night too by all accounts and there was a huge crowd there. Not sure who did it for them but I can find out. If youre only looking for 2000 though prob not worth it as I hear theres a lot to it.

Blue Magic · 10-01-2014 1:33am

newkidondblock wrote: »

St. Pats in Kerry did the SCD recently and raised 10,000! It was a mighty night too by all accounts and there was a huge crowd there. Not sure who did it for them but I can find out. If youre only looking for 2000 though prob not worth it as I hear theres a lot to it.

If we could make €10,000 one would be happy to do a lot! Can you find out who did it for them please?

Thanks

rpurfield · 11-01-2014 11:15am

Heres a good one for people, its called pick a winner. Im in the middle of it with a soccer club but the premise is you pick ten rounds of games, the club are using the premier league, and you can only pick a team once but over the ten rounds you get 3 points for a win and a bonus point for each of an away win a clean sheet and winning by three goals, meaning the maximum amount of points in a week would be 6. It could easily be adapted for the national league I reckon, and it keeps people more interested than a last man standing as you need to work out your strategy for the ten weeks

newkidondblock · 22-01-2014 1:30pm

Company was Trendhouse Events. Over 500 people attended, it was sell out from a week before! Im told it was a huge success.

newkidondblock · 22-01-2014 1:46pm

Has anyone been to a take me out? Is it financially rewarding? I assume it would be good craic!

Smurphy2014 · 18-04-2014 11:07pm

Has any club every organised a 5k run or a short fun run as a fundraiser? I'm thinking of organising one. Charge participants €15 and get some prizes and refreshments donated. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Innovative & Sustainable Fundraising Ideas for GAA Clubs

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