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Youth Sports Posts

3 Tips for Successful Team Fundraising

May 01, 2019
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Whether it’s for a school, event, non-profit, or athletic department, nowadays, there are a plethora of ways to fundraise. Even with all these ideas and approaches, some things remain constant.

When it comes to sports team fundraising, these 3 areas are key to having a successful fundraiser:

1. Communication

One of the keys to successful fundraising is getting everyone involved on the same page. Make sure to fully communicate with your team, program, players, and parents. Let them know exactly how you will be fundraising this season and what is expected.

If not everyone understands what to do, then your fundraiser may suffer. If there are open lines of communication and proper coordination, then everyone can fundraise together.

2. Incentivize

A lot of times, athletes and coaches just need a little push. Don’t be afraid to incentivize those that are extremely active during your fundraiser. Have rewards like apparel, gift cards, or tickets, that you can give to the athlete who raised the most money or the coach of the team who raised the most overall.

Even if your fundraising efforts are mandatory for each player, providing rewards is a great way to make sure they try even harder and go above the minimums necessary. You can set team or individual goals and provide incentives when those goals, such as reaching X amount, are met!

Don’t think about having to spend the extra money you don’t have to provide these incentives either. Factor that into your fundraising goal and use part of the money raised!

3. Using the Right Tool

You have communicated with your entire team or program and you have incentives for those raising money. Great! But, how are you actually going about your fundraising?

Having the right tool in place is key. Security, safety, and visibility are the big 3 when it comes to necessities with the right tool.

You want to make sure the tool you choose is secure. Donations can quickly add up and with large amounts of money being raised, it can be easy to lose track or miscount.

A lot of traditional ways of fundraising, like canning or going door to door, can be unsafe for athletes. Make sure when deciding how to fundraise, you factor in the safety of your players, and donors!

Visibility, accountability, transparency. No matter how you slice it, the right tool should show you exactly how your fundraiser is progressing. Whether it’s tracking total donation amounts, donations received by each player, or who have contributed, as the organizer, you want to make sure you can see it all.

 

In the end, these are only 3 major factors when setting up a successful fundraiser. The rest is up to you. If you’re looking for a new approach that can help check off all 3 of these areas, take a look at SportCoups.com.

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What to Look for: Sports Program Fundraising in 2019 and Beyond

Apr 22, 2019
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Fundraising for an entire program is no simple task. You must manage a lot of different directors, coaches, and players. A lot of times, it’s not even one large fundraiser, but a handful of separate teams all fundraising under the same program.

Do you find yourself in that situation? Here are a few areas to look out for when deciding on what fundraising platform you should use for your entire program:

Ease of Use

Fundraising is important, but you don’t want to waste extra time having to deal with those efforts. You want to be able to get back to other priorities and responsibilities you have. As a result, you need a fundraising platform that is extremely easy to use.

Fundraising doesn’t need to be overcomplicated. Sometimes old ways, like trying to sell candy or canning, can get complicated and are time-consuming. Look for a tool that cuts out that hassle and focuses on easily raising money.

Transparency

When you are managing a large program or department, there are many participants and moving parts to your fundraisers. Make sure the tool or platform you choose is not only easy to use, but highly accountable and transparent.

You should be able to see everyone involved in the fundraiser, from the players to the coaches, to the donors. The right tool should also tell you exactly how much each player has raised and who donated to them and when.

Security

This speaks for itself. With old school fundraising efforts, there is a lot of grey area with handling cash and passing off from person to person. Make sure you look for a tool that is fully secure with your money.

Eliminate having to handle cash. Provide the ability for direct donations straight to where you need them.

Out with the Old

Each of those above points has one thing in common—Mobile fundraising. It’s 2019, enough with going door to door or canning. Those types of fundraising efforts are no longer as effective. Think mobile.

Find the right mobile fundraising platform, like SportCoups, that provides security, complete transparency, and is extremely easy to use.

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4 Benefits to Fundraising as a Team Today

Apr 09, 2019
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Almost every season teams and programs are tasked with fundraising. Usually, it becomes another headache and distraction to deal with. However, if you are fundraising as a team, it be can be very rewarding.

Here are 4 benefits to fundraising as a team today:

1. Raising Money

Let’s be honest, the actual amount of money raised is the first benefit of fundraising as a team. If you’re fundraising, you need to raise money. That much is clear.

When combining the efforts of all the players and coaches, you can reach a lot more people. When you are reaching a lot more people, that means a lot more potential donors.

2. Team Building

As any successful athlete knows, team chemistry is vital for team success. When not in the game, fundraising is a great platform for bringing players and coaches together toward a common goal.

3. Friendly Competition

Who doesn’t love a little friendly competition? When fundraising as a team, think about providing incentives for players, such as winning apparel for whoever raises the most money.

This will entice everyone to compete against each other and see who can raise the most money. In the end, will drive more donations and increase the amount raised.

4. Continuous Fundraising

Another benefit is simply the length of your fundraiser. Get your whole team involved and you can easily fundraise throughout the season. When individuals try to fundraise, it depends on their schedules. But, as a team, players can pick each other up and help at different times.

 

All and all, fundraising as a team can provide benefits beyond simply raising the money needed. Try a new platform today!

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How to Raise Money for Your Team in a Hurry

Apr 01, 2019
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Are you tired of having to deal with long, drawn-out fundraisers for your team? Are you on a time crunch and need to fundraise in a hurry?

If you said YES to either of those questions, it may be time to consider a new approach to your fundraising efforts. If you really want to raise money in a quick and easy way, make sure to look for a tool that provides these two features:

1. Direct Bank Connections

It’s 2019, stop wasting time handling cash or checks. If you need to raise money in a hurry, the best approach is to directly connect your bank account.

Imagine asking for donations and immediately seeing that donation in your account. Like many money transfer applications today, the right fundraising platform also provides the ability to easily connect your bank account.

Even if you are fundraising as a team or program, if you can connect one bank, no one on your team has to worry about collecting money or keeping track of the donations. With the direct connection, all the money raised will go directly to the same place.

2. Mobile

If you are on a time crunch, odds are you don’t have to time to go door to door or stand outside canning for hours. Find a fundraising platform that allows you to raise money from your phone.

There are plenty of fundraising platforms out there that you can do online. But, the key is to make sure it is mobile-friendly or a free downloadable app.

When in a hurry, you want to make sure you can fundraise whenever and where ever you are. Whether it’s before or after practice, at a team dinner, or sitting at home on the couch, fundraising from your phone makes it easier than ever.

 

So, if you’re looking for a new approach to fundraising, and in a hurry, find the right solution that provides direct bank connections and is mobile-friendly.

Have you heard about SportCoups? Not only is SportCoups available in the app store and on google play, but you can also easily connect your bank account to your fundraiser. Learn more today!

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Why Your Lacrosse Tournament Is Dipping In Attendance

Jan 10, 2019
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Taking part in a sport, such as lacrosse, as a child can impart valuable life lessons on teamwork, perseverance, and healthy living. Not to mention children often leave the team with lifelong friends. For these reasons, among others, almost a million youth athletes play lacrosse throughout the US. With that being said, the 1-year growth percentage of youths playing lacrosse has pretty consistently decreased with each passing year. In fact, in 2017 the percentage went into the negatives for the first time in that 11-year period. So with such positive benefits and outcomes, why then, are players and coaches seeing a drop in participation numbers among players.

Safety

As is the case with any contact sport, the safety of their child is always a concern among parents. And while football has received the brunt of this backlash, lacrosse is in no way immune to the critics.

For lacrosse and many other sports, the rules of the game vary depending on whether the child is male or female. While boys’ lacrosse allows for a lot more contact than girls’, they also have much stricter rules in terms of protective equipment. For example, boys’ lacrosse requires helmets with facemasks while girls may wear a soft helmet if they choose. But even with these safety guidelines, injuries such as sprains, strains, bruises, and more major injuries still occur relatively frequently.

Cost

As many parents have quickly come to realize, the cost of having even one child play a sport is astronomical. New equipment alone costs $800 on average and can go as high as $1600 depending on the brand and quality. And while you can typically cut the costs of gear by purchasing gently-used items or receiving hand-me-downs from a friend or family member, there is no way to avoid the fees or travel costs for tournaments. As a result, there is a smaller number of players as well as a huge economic gap in lacrosse, particularly on travel teams or at a tournament as lower income families are forced to forgo the additional expenses.

There are many ways to move past these barriers and help increase the number of players present at games and tournaments. Most, if not all, injuries sustained during a lacrosse game can be avoided with proper gear, an understanding of the sport, and respect for the rules in place. In regards to costs, fundraising is always an option especially since there are great tools on the market such as SportCoups that allow you to raise money without having to look up from your phone. Because in the end, these barriers that lead to decreased attendance in any sport are only resulting in children missing out on valuable lessons and skills they can gain from taking part in youth athletics.

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