Almost every year youth sports organizations are faced with the prospect of raising player registration fees.  In recent years, the increasing cost of running a sports program has far outpaced increases in member-families’ disposable incomes and, at the same time, many sports fundraising ideas, when implemented, have proved less productive than expected.

If you are old enough to remember, youth sports fundraising once enjoyed a more accepted and respected role in contributing to the financial health of a youth sports organization.  No matter whether the product was fundraising discount cards, dollar candy bars, cookie dough, or frozen pizza kits, member participation rates were much greater and, on average, each participant sold a greater number of items.  In addition, sports fundraising had more of a communal “feel” to it. Those days are largely gone. 

Unfortunately, as youth sports fundraising campaigns have declined in productivity over time, the need for more funds has often been answered with a call for another fundraiser in the same season.  This just exacerbates the problem of declining productivity.  Too many families with children in various activities are just feeling "fundraisered-out" by the sheer number of fundraisers in which they’re asked to participate—as well as the number of fundraising products they're asked to purchase—each year.

In fairness, board members of youth sports leagues are often faced with a dilemma.  If they increase their player registration fees they fear they will financially place their sports program beyond the reach of many families in their community—or risk losing players to competing youth organizations.  On the other hand, if they elect to run more than one product fundraiser in a season, they will place an added burden on their members and contribute to the super-abundance of under-performing fundraisers that have already fatigued their members as well as the community at large. 

There is a three-step process board members of youth programs can utilize to make better sense of sports fundraising and perhaps eliminate the need to raise registration fees.  The first step should be a discussion to determine whether there truly is a need for more funds.   

It may seem odd that the first step in avoiding an increase in registration fees is to determine whether these fees should be increased.  However, in some instances members may prefer an increase in registration fees over doing a fundraiser.  If so then, by all means, eliminate the fundraiser.  However, if there is an obvious need for a fundraiser to keep registration fees low, then engaging your members in the decision-making process will help to remove all doubt of the fundraiser's necessity, it will make parents and coaches feel more invested in the fundraiser's outcome—and it will make their support and participation more likely. 

The second step should be to determine how just one fundraiser might be made sufficient to avoid raising registration fees.  The point is that the board shouldn't leap to the conclusion that a second fundraiser will be necessary just because your first fundraiser is not producing sufficient funds.   If a first fundraiser can be made more productive, then perhaps it may eliminate the need for another.  It is almost always better to have one productive fundraiser than it is to have two under-performing fundraisers.  (One can learn how to increase the productivity of a fundraising campaign in another blog article entitled Three Elements of a Successful Youth Sports Fundraiser.)  

The third step is to ask for the support of your member families.  That doesn't passing out fundraising packets and saying that you hope they'll support the campaign.  It means asking so that you get an answer—whatever that answer may be.  It doesn't matter whether you are selling cookie dough or doing a discount card fundraiser.  Just the act of asking will likely produce a positive response as well as positive results.  

Many board members and coaches are simply quite timid about—or even afraid of—asking for fundraiser support from their players' parents.  If board members or coaches have been carefully brought through the first two steps of this process and have come to feel that one good fundraiser is worthy of support, they may feel more confident about asking for player and parent participation.  A coach that makes a sincere appeal for support from players and their parents is likely to get it.    

Good fundraising ideas—in fact, the best fundraising ideas—are not necessarily about product; they're about how a fundraiser is conducted.  If the directors of a youth sports organization have made the collective decision that a fundraiser can and should play an essential role in their organization, then it should make the commitment to its success as well.  At the same time, it should offer to its general membership a promise that if the goal of this single fundraiser can be met then the board will neither ask the members to participate in another fundraiser this year nor vote to increase registration fees next year—and that is indeed a very worthy objective.

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