The club fundraiser’s guide to achieving maximum return

“More money for my club.”

Sounds great right? Well whether you’re a multi-million-pound conglomerate or a small-town sports club, the following rings true when trying to increase revenue in an organisation that operates a cash flow:

• Increase the number of transactions you make
• Increase the value of the transactions you make
• Decrease the amount it costs you to make those transactions

Ideally, the best businesses set objectives to achieve a combination of all three, but when budget and resources are finite, especially when running a club, you have to think outside the box.

This is where a fundraising campaign can give you a much-needed boost. Since we help hundreds of clubs improve their efficiency across payments, admin and operations every day, we thought we’d share a thing or two from our own experience to help you. Whether it’s your first fundraiser or you’ve done them a few times, we hope you find our guide useful.

As you explore these further, consider fundraising ideas that relate thematically to your club. By doing this, the club – like any brand – can achieve improved results, both in donations and through increased awareness of your club throughout the wider community.

Discover our ultimate fundraising ideas for your club or organisation.

Return On Your Investment

Whilst you may be brimming with great ideas, ensuring the maximum return on investment must be your first objective. Essentially, this means minimising your expenses and maximising your returns.

This doesn’t necessarily mean you should opt for the fundraiser which is the cheapest to run – a fundraiser which costs more to run may generate greater revenue.

Calculating ROI can be difficult, especially if your fundraising idea includes many variables and unknown costs. Multi-channel efforts can further complicate your calculations. So, for the sake of simplicity, the ROI calculations on a single campaign can be explained as follows:

• Define your Goals: E.g total amount raised, earned media partnerships, new signups
• Make a realistic investment estimate:
  • Direct Costs: Those incurred specifically within the club that you manage
  • Indirect Costs: Those incurred outside of the club, e.g from suppliers
•  Return: How much do you expect to make? Once you’ve calculated your investment costs, calculating your returns is much easier. From here you’ll be able to work out the level of uptake you’ll need. E.g. number of ticket sales, number of new members, or a minimum donation amount per member

Fundraising Ideas with proven ROI potential:

Run a 100 Club (also known as a Supporters Club or Club Lottery)

A 100 Club is a form of club lottery, which works by selling a pre-determined number of ‘tickets’ e.g. 100 tickets for a 100 Club. You can vary the number of tickets to suit the size of your membership, e.g. 200 tickets for a 200 Club and so on.

Your members each pay a monthly/annual fixed subscription for their number. They can choose a number, it can be their membership number or your club administrator can allocate a number.

The draw takes place at the end of each month and only paid-up members are entered. The prize is a share of the pot with 25% allocated to the winner, 10% for a runner up and the net amount going to your cause.

Club lotteries can be administratively intensive, with a need to set up standing orders for members and the need for someone to check the club accounts each month to ensure members have paid.

LoveAdmin can help with that – so be sure to let us know if you need a hand to reduce the admin. A typical example of this:

• Estimated time to setup: 45mins in the LoveAdmin software + 5 minutes to set up a 100 club payment system via GoCardless
• Estimated net profit: 60%
• Revenue example: 100 tickets at £5 each = £500 per month (minus transaction fees of approx 3%) = £175 prize money and £325 to the club = £3,780 a year profit

Create a Supporters’ Membership

A supporter’s membership is a good way to get others involved with your club, even if they’re not directly involved with its core activities. A good example would be a junior sports club, where the parents are asked to join as supporters.

Here, each member child would be required to have one adult as a supporting member. Not only does this create additional revenue, but it’s also a good way for parents to become involved and increase social following, sharing your club’s content across social media.

LoveAdmin software can help collect the membership fees from these new supporting members, simply by helping you manage an annual fee system:

• Estimated time to setup: Just 10 minutes to set up the membership category if you’re already a customer
• Estimated cost to organise: Included in LoveAdmin’s normal transaction fees
• Revenue example: 200 members with 200 supporting members at £20 each = £4,000 per year, less approximately £260 in transaction fees = £3,740 a year profit

Ongoing donation campaign

Sounds easy, but framing the ask can sometimes throw people off – so making a good proposition is key. For example, if you have £XX.99 in any of your weekly/monthly fee structures. Why not ask members to round up the 1p and donate it?

• Estimated 300 members’ weekly fee, class or course = £3 x 52 weeks = £156
• Imagine if you charge £XX.75 and you ask to round up 25p per member = up to £3,900 per year
• Estimated setup time: 10 minutes to set up the donation appeal + 15mins for the integrated email campaign, all within our software
• Estimate cost to organise: None – it’s within LoveAdmin’s ongoing transaction fees. We only get paid if you get paid

One-Off Donations

Asking for one-off donations can be a good way to raise funds for specific causes, such as new equipment for your sports club or to meet the cost of building refurbishments. With LoveAdmin, you can easily collect this donation at the time of membership renewal or when new members join.

The amount of donation is voluntary, but you may want to suggest a minimum donation according to your goal.

You can create an email campaign to send to all your members with photos of the project, links or even a video. Think it’s going to be a fuss to get someone to code a fancy, tracked and repeatable email campaign? Well thankfully, LoveAdmin software does that all for you with a simple click:

• Estimated time to organise: If you already have LoveAdmin, just 5 minutes to set up the donation appeal + 20 mins to set up an email template
• Estimated cost to organise: All included within your normal fees
• Revenue example: £10 donation x 100 members = £960 profit after transaction fees

Hold a silent auction

Silent auctions can be a great way to raise funds and gain support from local businesses. However, organising an event can be both time and labour-intensive. That said, they do provide a great opportunity for an annual event that will grow year on year.

There are two tried and tested ways in which you can hold a silent auction:

Via the Club

The first is by holding the event through your club and asking bidders to write their bids down on a piece of paper. At the end of the auction, you could hold an open day or evening event, where you close out the auctions and announce the winners. This is a good choice if you can gather a large number of auction items.

Via Social Media

The other option is to run the auction via your club’s Facebook page. You could upload images of the items for auction and ask for bids to be placed in a private message. In the end, you can announce the winners on your page. This can be a good option if you only have a few items to auction. It does rely on you having a good number of your members on the social network though, and they, in turn, would need to share the auction across their own networks.

Typically, silent auctions run for a couple of days or up to a couple of weeks.

• Ask local businesses, friends and family for good quality items to auction
• By making this an annual event, you will find more local businesses willing to donate goods if they can see the promotional benefits to their business
• Estimated time to organise: 1 month+
• Estimated cost to organise: Dependant on the format of the auction. Costs incurred could include administration, promotional materials, transaction fees
• Estimated income received: Dependant on items auctioned
• Typically, small auctions expect to raise between £50 – £1000, and larger auctions expect to exceed £1000

Raffle a membership

As renewal time approaches, consider running a raffle to win a free membership.

Set a price per raffle ticket and through LoveAdmin, you can send a group email out to all members, prompting them to log in to their account. They can select the number of tickets they want to purchase and provide payment. The system will track all tickets sold, leaving you to simply download the list of names and make the draw.

The cost of a ticket should be determined in conjunction with the price of your club’s annual membership. When calculating ticket prices, keep in mind it needs to be attractive enough to encourage participation, whilst still making your club a worthwhile profit after transaction fees have been deducted.

• Estimated time to organise: 10 minutes to set up the option if you’re a LoveAdmin customer
• Estimated cost to organise: Part of your normal LoveAdmin transaction fees

LoveAdmin is built to help organisations and clubs manage fees, contacts and admin tasks – book your FREE software demo today.