Fundraising Ideas?

[steyr762khx]

Before i get yelled at for not searching the archives for a similar subject, i was wondering what some of the collegic club fencing teams have done to raise money (successfully). We've tried the normal stuff (demonstrations, bake sales) but nothing seems to make any money except holding tournaments. Any ideas from fellow cash strapped college clubs?

[fluidfencer]

A lot of organizations (fencing and not) waste tons of time and talent to make a few hundred dollars. Concentrate on the returns you can make. Remember that bake sales and car washes have significant elements that are out of your control... number of cars, those that will stop, number of cakes, people that will come by. Try to do things that remove that element.

I suggest taking the example of the recent fence-a-thon. Get a bunch of fencers involved and get them to sign up lots of sponsors. In that instance, you are only limited by how hard your fencers are willing to work. You get a good group willing to contact lots of friends and family, and you can make a bunch of money.

If you want to leverage your efforts, publisize the fence-a-thon, get university students to come by, tag on a bake sale or something else as "gravy" to what you are already earning without having to add more personnel (people who are not fencing can sell). Sell stuff that is easy for your customers to take with them (a bag of cookies, not a cake). Our swim association made a bunch of money selling inexpensive but cool looking sunglasses for $10. College students will get that.

If you are willing to work, you can make a lot.

[steyr762khx]

thanks for the imput. I always wondered if the fence-a-thon idea would work. I suppose that if we got family and friends to donate we could get a good amount of funding. no more begging in the street for us!

[Ordway]

Find out if your college has any ongoing fundraiser things that you can sign up for. I recall one fundraiser we did was to show a film in the campus center. There were films being shown on a regular basis there, with different groups sponsoring each one, and of course that group being responsible for selling tickets at the door, etc. Since it was an ongoing thing, I don't think we did a whole lot of advertising.

Another fund-raiser that I recall that I think worked fairly well was "Rent-a-Fencer." The idea was that people in the community would pay for an afternoon's labor from one or more fencers, and the fencers would do whatever chores the person needed done, with the money going straight to the club. At the time I think it was something like $60 got you a fencer for 6 hours. I spent a day mulching a garden; other people did things like painting, cleaning out garages, etc. The good thing here is that the outlay is minimal (just advertising).

OTOH, I do not recommend selling 25-cent pieces of candy door to door in the dorms. That was, uh, time-consuming. Also, if you sell t-shirts, it is a good idea to have a GOOD design, not a lame one, and even so, you can't do repeat sales semester after semester, because the market gets flooded.

[steyr762khx]

how did you advertise for your rent a fencer? we're still at the "i didn't know we had a fencing club" stage on campus. of course, hopefully that'll change in the near future.

[GreenDot]

You could look into running concessions for other sports. We made a fair amount of money working the Northwestern football games.

-James

[KD5MDK]

Can you get paid to do stadium cleanups and such? There's big money in that at my University, but my club isn't willing to do the work.

[GGK]

Check with you student activities office. We use to get money from the student government (if all the paperwork was filled out in time)
We also got money cleaning up after basketball games. Or selling/running the concession stand for a game. The theater on campus would pay us to setup and takedown chairs for a play/concert.
Lastly, we also worked for a credit card company, where you sign up people at a table in the student union for new credit cards and got $/application

[oiuyt]

The credit card application thing got the highest return for time spent that I've seen. Sounds sketchy, it's hard to get details from the companies, they seem to go out of their way to raise the possibility that they're just setting you up to get minimal pay after all your work, but when the team at UMass actually decided it was worth trying once it ended up being fine. Why they aren't just open about how it works I don't know.

UMass also successfully ran bakesales, handmade soap sales, art sales, tournaments (as mentioned, can be a good money-raiser), magazine sales, rented out copper strips, worked as referees at USFA, collegiate, and high school meets/tournaments (good way of bringing in noticible money, additionally raised the profile of the club in the fencing community), etc. in the past few years. In the slightly more extended past they've done stadium clean-up, raffles, rent-a-fencer (as mentioned by Holly above), t-shirt sales (little hint, putting the date on 300 t-shirts with a lame design 3 years in a row is a Bad Idea), asking friends and family for donations, and a bunch of other things.

All of that is in addition to annual dues (UMass has theirs set at $200/year, which is towards the high end for collegiate fencing clubs, although considerablely lower than what UMass Hockey or UMass Crew collected from their members), funding from the student government, and funding from the athletics department as a sports club.

-B :)

[Ordway]

(little hint, putting the date on 300 t-shirts with a lame design 3 years in a row is a Bad Idea)

Yeah, telling freshmen that "if you buy this shirt that has last year's date on it, people will think you're an upperclassman" was not quite an effective marketing strategy.

Even so, I believe Brad is thinking of the BETTER of the two t-shirt designs. Hint: if you come up with what seems like a funny pop-culture reference at 2 AM at a party (which is where I suspect the designing happened), definitely rethink it in the cold light of day *before* you send it off to be printed without telling anyone else on the team about it... "I've fallen and I can't reach my beer" with a stick-figure illustration must have broken all previous records of just how unsaleable a t-shirt could possibly be.

I eventually managed to dispose of my stack of unsold XL beer t-shirts to a Hampshire College student, at a cut rate. Don't ask me why he wanted 20 of them; at that point, I wasn't asking questions!

For the rent-a-fencer, I don't know how it was advertised; at the time, I was "warm body to be set to work" rather than "participant in fund-raising planning". I think there may have been ads taken out in the local community newspaper, as well as things sent around to parents of fencers.

Incidentally, I'd suggest starting some sort of newsletter and mailing it out to parents and (when you have them) alumni. Parents and alumni are potentially valuable sources of donations. The newsletter doesn't have to be anything dazzling at first, but even a one-page thing sent round to parents talking up the latest competition results (naming lots of names, of course) will make them feel more of a connection to this oddball thing their kid got involved in.

[fluidfencer]

By the way... How many people are in your program? How much do you need to raise? I have a bunch of other questions but those are key.

Before i get yelled at for not searching the archives for a similar subject, i was wondering what some of the collegic club fencing teams have done to raise money (successfully). We've tried the normal stuff (demonstrations, bake sales) but nothing seems to make any money except holding tournaments. Any ideas from fellow cash strapped college clubs?

[KD5MDK]

One suspiscion about the credit card thing is that if the kickbacks were too public students might realize what a bad deal they can be. (Some cards, that is.)

Is $200 a year particularly high? We pay the same ($100 per semester, actually) and while it feels high, we get a lot (new timing boxes, lots of club gear to checkout). Actually, we get a lot of gear. Plus 3 coaches, and it helps pay for nationals.

I suppose the state of other fencing teams in the area ought to have clued me.

[steyr762khx]

whew, come back from work and there's people here.

I figure i'm safe saying at least which club i'm from - i'm the president of Miami University (OH) Fencing club. We have about 10 active members, 15 learning fencers, and that's about it. The best fundraisers we've had are our tournaments, which have gone pretty well. We sell t-shirts, which either barely make a profit, or they don't by 5 dollars, which seems to be why we keep selling them. Bake sales have gone miserably, and thats about all we've tried. we're trying to get together an alumni list, but we'll have to see how complete that can be. We do get reasonably well funded via Associated Student Government, but not nearly enough to grow the club into something that can sustain itself (try to explain to a non-fencer the importance of getting good blades...or after the cheap blades were bought, why we need so many). Thanks for all your ideas, they're really going to help the club along.

BTW, i wish we could charge as much as you guys do at UMASS...our dues have reached an all time high at $35 dollars a semester!

[melihop]

(try to explain to a non-fencer the importance of getting good blades...or after the cheap blades were bought, why we need so many).

With this part of it.. make fencers buy their own blades!!!! Or somthign like that, you break it, you buy it type of thing. Use club money to pay for the frist one, than from than on, make them pay for it. Less money that the club has to pay, and teaches the fencers not to get too close when learning, if every time they get too close they snap a blade!

[steyr762khx]

thanks again everybody. my girlfriend also figured out that krispy kreme will sell you greatly discounted dougnuts if they know you're a non profit orgainzation. we're going to try that as well as the rest of your ideas. i'll start a new thread once school starts and tell everybody what works. thanks!

[fluidfencer]

I'm still not sure what you are trying to accomplish. What amount do you need to raise, in what timetable, and for what purpose? Be as specific as you can. Be as specific as possible.

thanks again everybody. my girlfriend also figured out that krispy kreme will sell you greatly discounted dougnuts if they know you're a non profit orgainzation. we're going to try that as well as the rest of your ideas. i'll start a new thread once school starts and tell everybody what works. thanks!

[Jas2on]

Just curious, but how much does your school provide for funding? Here at the University of New Mexico we get a budget of $1500 a semester. However, a fundraiser might be a good idea so we can get a few fencers to Duel in the Desert next year

[steyr762khx]

FluidFencer

We basically would like to raise enough money throughout the year to buy 20 weapons (10 foils, 10 epees; they're used as backups for fencers who've purchased their own weapons basically, and this years project is to update the club jackets (we need about 20 in various sizes). We'd also like to get enough for 2 sets of boxes and reels, so we can have electric fencing at practice (we only have 2 right now, and its not enough for the club to use.

Jas2on

We got about 2000 dollars, but thats after a few years absence of begging for money. One time we asked for a special budget for our spring tournament...we got 6 bucks. It varies.

[KD5MDK]

Won't you need lames too?

No sabre?

[steyr762khx]

We bought a bunch of foil lames last year. As for saber...somebody would have to teach it to us. We've had saberists come in to fence with us, then find out we were all beginners for saber and leave promtly at the end of practice never to return. The joke was we'd get saber gear for only the largest members of our club, and if you could fit you could fence. Needless to say, you won't be seeing any champion saberists coming out of Miami any time soon. Epee and Foil are a different story