got funds can fence

[Pacific]

Firstly, wow, this new forum looks great. Green is a pretty strange colour, but thats just an observation.

I was wondering how clubs raise funds to finance their operations...my uni's fencing club is in a bit of a financial funk so i'm looking for a little advice.

[Tim P. Miceli]

Bake sales are suppose to work, and if you have the equipment, a small tournament, would also work.

Right now I am also searching for additional ways to make money with my club.

Well hope this helps.

[135711]

okay, i'll tell you why the dark green thing may not be such a great idea. there's this religious group that made a mandala, and they put it on dark green paper. every single one of those people is slowly going nuts, and i know i sound like one of those guys in one of those monster movies, but i'm telling you the truth, it has got to go. i threw away a perfectly nice dark green dress one of my best colors, just to discourage the use of the dark green mandala. i have a beautiful dark green winter coat that i keep in a suitcase and i won't give it to my sister. i only have one small dark green item, but i don't show it to anyone, because i don't want to confuse them.

I also believe that selling books, shorts, or bicycle pants under your knickers, to be worn for epee competitions, and spandex tops would be in order.

One more thing: as a former event planner in an Alumni House for a large University, one thing that does not fail is a party. It can be a fancy dinner, where everyone gets dressed up and spend money on a fancy meal and tells stories. You have to have a 'host' and an agenda. On the agenda should be the dinner, where various people make small speeches and presentations. Then, later on, people get reacquainted over coffee, and there
s the cocktail party for before dinner. ORRRRRR: you could arrange a picnic style event, or luau, or barbeque- on the beach, where people just go and have a good time etc. Then the event planner could arrange for games and so forth. Best overall policy is to plan several events per year that become traditions. So you could take a look at your city calendar and plan several events around their stuff.

[Catlady]

On the green thing, you know it's considered bad luck to wear green on-stage. Someone suggested it's because it's hard to light. It was also considered the color of the fairies. I sort of like green myself, ,maybe for that reason. As I'm already pretty unstable as it is, I don't suppose it would really hurt me anyway.

I wish I knew on the fund raising thing. My club could do with a bit more money too. We did try selling club warm-ups, but the issue there is in order to get a profit, you have to get enough people who want to buy them to cover and surpass the expenditure involved in getting them made. You might try to get an equipment grant from the USFA. The forms for last year's grant is in PDF format on the official site. It doesn't look like too much work to do. They may have a new form they'll require, but it'll give you an idea of what's involved anyway. It's not due until next June either. You could try other grant sources as well possibly. I'm trying to get my club a grant to start a wheelchair fencing program right now, and about to lose my grip over it,add that it's a school project too and on a definite deadline and that adds to the fun, but I digress.

[graham]

Our small, but growing, club last year did a Christmas gift basket raffle that worked very well. Each kid in the club was requested to provide (or have Mom and Dad provide) something attractive for the basket. We set no theme for the basket and there was a tremendous diversity of stuff but it all came together as a nice package. We then took the basket to several work places and sold tickets ($2 each/ 3 for $5). I also printed up an itemized list of the contents and the kids went door-to-door selling tickets. This worked well, but by far the best way to sell tickets was to take the basket to a local mall on a Saturday before Christmas, and have fencers in their gear selling tickets while other fencers gave a demonstration.

This requires a fair bit of work but is great exposure for the club and we were quite happy with the amount raised (over $700 on one Saturday alone).

Of course, a party/dinner sounds like much more fun!

GT

[DJ Apostrophe]

i like the basket idea... just make sure the kids who are in their whites and just selling tickets have recently washed said whites

[135711]

usfa could and should develop a plan for small upcoming clubs, meeting specific criteria it would be nice to have them develop a plan. i like the raffle idea....

now what would we raffel? a new weapon, a glove,
etc etc. silent auction, bids on great stuff, masks from the olympics, [sorry, i bought a foil from a fencer who bought a foil from a fencer who fenced real good, it was my excalibar]

[graham]

135711,
You don't want to raffle fencing equipment (keep that for yourself), what you want is stuff that is as attractive as possible to the general public. The biggest source of funds for clubs is the members themselves (how many of you have pumped money into your or your kids' clubs just because you think the sport is so damn good that you want to help out?); you need to tap into everybody else. Good luck.

GT