The organization of your gymnastics fundraiser will depend on how much money needs to be raised. Fundraising for an individual would entail using different ideas than if you are trying to raise money for a whole team of gymnasts.
Gymnastics is a demanding sport and the athletes who excel at it have endless training sessions and championships to attend. Besides the formal uniforms which they travel in, they also need training apparel, association fees, and travel costs. This adds up making it an expensive sport. Clubs rely on fundraising and sponsorships to try and alleviate the financial burden for the parents.
Tips on how to hold a successful fundraiser:
- There are countless fundraising ideas to choose from and it is often a good idea to make use of a fundraising company that will ensure that you get a high percentage of the profits. It is important that the fundraising company is flexible, offers advice and ideas, marketing material and reliable delivery. It also helps if they offer fundraising ideas that don’t need a cash outlay.
- You and your gymnasts set goals for their training and achievements. In the same way, you have to set goals for your gymnastics fundraiser. In order for everyone to work towards these goals share them with the gymnasts, their parents, other members of the committee, trainers, etc.
- Choose a product that is within everyone’s budget, otherwise, you won’t make enough sales.
- Take advantage of any free marketing materials that you are offered by the fundraising company that you choose to work with. It is important that people know what your fundraiser is all about.
Some fundraising ideas:
- Fundraising through a fundraising company – Effortless
Selling products from brochures has become one of the easiest methods to raise money and everyone in the team and their families can have a few with them at all times to promote sales. Products that everyone loves to buy include popcorn, cookie dough, flower bulbs, magazines, and pretzels. The genius with this system is that there is no capital outlay and the products get sent after you collect the money and send it to them. Your cause gets to keep the profits, which vary from one company to the other and on the quantity sold.
- Introduce gymnastics to others – Requires quite a bit more effort
Gymnastic camps are a wonderful way to collect money. They allow young people that are thinking about taking it up as a sport the opportunity to try it out. These camps are also wonderful for kindergarten aged children as they get to learn the basics of gymnastics from a young age. These can be offered as a one day or even a weekend event and can be repeated from time to time as an ongoing fundraising effort. Refreshments can also be sold for an extra boost to the campaign.
- Hold a fundraising dinner with an Olympic gymnast – Requires a lot more effort
This is the type of fundraising effort that everyone will scramble to attend and will have a two-pronged effect. Firstly, your effort will be well rewarded with a great demand for a seat at the dinner. Secondly, the gymnast that is invited to attend the event will inspire your young gymnasts with their motivational speech.
This type of fundraising event has the potential to raise a lot of money and can be combined with raffle ticket sales and autographed photograph sales.
- Have a 60s, disco or modern clubbing dance night fundraiser – Requires good organization
Everyone loves to dance and these events are always well attended and raise lots of money from many sources including, entry fees, raffle tickets, food, and refreshment sales.
Make sure that you get the services of a good DJ that will keep the music going and won’t deviate from the chosen theme.
There are many other ideas that you can use for your gymnastics fundraiser. The three above have been chosen to give you an option depending on how much time you can invest since we don’t all have lots of free time on hand.
Finally, these three efforts can form part of the yearly fundraising program, starting with the dinner and ending with the dance. The brochures can be available for the time between and you can offer a prize for the person who makes the most brochure sales over the year.
