A custom discount card fundraiser has become a very popular way to raise money for youth sports organizations, especially in this struggling economy.  They’re a bona fide win-win-win for (1) local businesses that service your community and often sponsor your teams.  (Your local merchants will appreciate the extra foot-traffic discount cards will drive through their doors); (2) the families in your community who can support your program by purchasing a fundraising discount card for $10 or $15 and end up getting all (or double or triple) their money back when they use the card; and (3) your youth sports program.

For a youth sports organization the profit potential can be huge—and all but guaranteed—if the fundraiser is implemented correctly.  For example, if you have 300 players on roster and each player is responsible for selling just 5 discount cards at $10 each, your program stands to net $9,000 in profit.  If you sold the cards for $15 each, your net profit would instead be $16,500.  Either way, selling 5 discount cards is a lot easier than selling 5 pizza kits or 5 tubs of cookie dough, and your program will get the added benefit of having 1,500 little billboards out there advertising your program.  Discount cards are among the best—if not the very best—fundraising ideas for sports teams.

You may have noticed that there was a caveat in the previous paragraph.  It said “if the fundraiser is implemented correctly”.  Unfortunately, some youth sports organizations are so enamored of the opportunity to make so much profit with so little effort (because the discount card company usually does most of the work) that they don’t stop to think about what could go wrong if the discount card fundraiser is not properly implemented.  Part of the problem is often a failure to recognize that a discount card fundraiser is not a true “order-taker” fundraiser as is, for example, a pizza kit and cookie dough fundraiser. 

Food fundraisers are typically conducted with order-taker brochures whereon (as the name implies) orders are taken by the sellers and then orders and money are remitted together.  Everything that was ordered from the fundraising company was also paid for.  Custom discount cards don’t work that way. 

To build a good discount card it takes a lot of work and expense to negotiate discounts with the merchants in a league’s community, and to design and print the discount cards—and all that has to take place prior to the start of the fundraiser.  Therefore, the organization conducting the discount card fundraiser must be prepared to commit to a minimum order before the cards can be produced.  Fortunately, the discount cards are quite easy to sell—so the issue of converting them to cash is almost never a problem from a sales standpoint.  However, the way a discount card fundraiser is administered may still negatively impact the outcome of a discount card campaign—and some mistakes or oversights can have very serious consequences.

1.  The discount card fundraiser is introduced in a venue that is not conducive to collecting the proceeds as the cards are distributed.  The perfect distribution venue for starting a discount card fundraiser is at player registrations where you will encounter parents with checkbooks.  (Those who register and pay online can also be accommodated and the discount cards can be mailed to them.)  Actually, any day—especially between your first registration and a couple of weeks prior to the start of the regular season—that offers an opportunity to hand out the discount card fundraising packets while attempting to collect the proceeds at the same time is better than trying to give out the packets without an opportunity to collect money.

2.  No attempt was made to collect the proceeds at the point of distribution.  Not asking for money when giving out the discount cards means that you’ll probably have to chase after most of the people who took the cards and didn’t pay.  Even accepting a post-dated check is infinitely better than entertaining the delusion that everyone will remit the proceeds later on their own recognizance.  Make it easy on yourself; every check you can collect on the front end will save you a lot of frustrating work on the back end. 

3.  The discount cards are not distributed in packets that are each labeled with a player’s name.  At player registration you won’t be able to do this because you don’t know all those who may show up to register—and nor will you need to if you are keeping a record of who took packets.  However, once you have a roster it is good to know who did or didn’t get a packet.  With labeled packets you at least always know who didn’t get one; they will be represented by the labeled packets that are still in your possession.

4.  The discount cards that are given out are not signed-for when received by the seller or seller’s parent.  Sometimes people forget.  Sometimes the cards must be given to the player instead of to the parent.  A signed receipt is always your best reply to someone who says they never received the cards.  At registration the best policy is to include a place on the registration form that states that a packet of registration cards was given to the player or parent and then ask the packet recipient to initial that part of the registration form as an acknowledgement of receipt of the packet and cards. 

5.  Parents are told that they can "buy out" of the fundraiser for an amount that is less than the expected proceeds.  For parents who wish to buy out of a fundraiser, the reason for wanting to do so is because they don’t want to sell.  There is nothing wrong with that, but it is not really fair to tell them it is alright to make less of a contribution to the organization than parents who choose to sell.  Therefore, tell parents they can buy out of the fundraiser for the selling price of the cards.  When they pay the buy-out you can then tell them they can keep the cards to use as stocking stuffers or they can give them away as thank you gifts or birthday gifts.

6.  No effort was made to resist returns.  Always let people know the cards you are giving out have already been purchased by your sports organization and the cards are therefore not returnable.  Not letting them know this opens the door for returns. 

7.  No effort was made to collect money owed by parents when the campaign has ended.  You should always make an effort to collect discount card proceeds up-front, but if you didn’t get payment for the cards when you gave them to some parents and the payment is not forthcoming, then give (or mail) an invoice and a self-addressed stamped envelope to the delinquent payer.  If you go through the math you’ll see that this is almost certainly worth the time and expense to do this—and you may also see that, with the amount that may be outstanding, you would be remiss not to do it.

To these points a few comments are in order.  First, a youth sports league is not a business; it is a non-profit volunteer organization.  However, the IRS have generally permitted a non-profit organization to engage in a business activity such as fundraising if it is incidental to the organization’s primary purpose and activity.  Volunteer members of such an organization, when engaging in sports fundraising, are—in effect—running a business for two or more weeks.  However, they don’t often employ the policies and procedures that are essential for running a successful enterprise.  Avoiding all or most of the above mistakes is just a matter of anticipating what can go wrong and then practicing due diligence.  Not only will avoiding these mistakes make your fundraiser easier from an administrative standpoint, but they could also prevent a fundraising catastrophe.

The second point is that there is often an unjustified fear that asking or expecting parents to participate in a sports fundraising campaign will invite recrimination from the players’ parents.  For those charged with running a fundraiser, this often creates an ambivalence that can severely cripple your campaign.  (See The Cure for Ambivalence in Youth Sports Fundraising)  The bottom line is that you’re asking people to participate in a fundraiser because if the money is not raised through the fundraiser the organization will have to raise registration fees (and/or will be unable to cover important operational or emergency expenses).  If registration fees have to be raised it will mean that your program will become less accessible to families in your community.  Having your members understand the purpose of your discount card fundraiser is important and can only help your campaign.  Therefore, you should take every opportunity to make sure that everyone understands why their participation is requested. 

Finally, the fear of parents reacting adversely to the collection of fundraising proceeds up front is common, but almost always unfounded.  Not many years ago, before candy bar fundraisers were being abandoned for social wellness reasons, youth sports leagues would give out cases (or carriers) of candy bars and collect the proceeds at the same time.  They did this year-after-year and it was a generally accepted practice that ran very smoothly.  Those who have long served as volunteers in youth sports organizations know that sometimes it just takes doing something new more than once to start having people believe that “this is the way it is done” or even “this is the way we’ve always done it”.  The point is that even if you had one or two members voice a complaint or regret the first time out, the next year you would likely have no complaints.  It is simply a matter of “training” your members in one year so they’ll know what to expect in the next. 

Fundraising discount cards rank as one of the easiest and most successful fundraising ideas the fundraising industry has to offer.  You have finally found a fundraiser with a product that can actually help families save money throughout the year and, at the same time, generate an enormous amount of profit and PR for your youth sports organization.  If you take care to not make any egregious mistakes the first time out, this fundraiser will certainly become your legacy.

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