Fundraising Made Simple
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Key Takeaways
- Club fundraising works best as three distinct engines, not one: team fundraisers, recurring fundraising and big events, each serving a different purpose.
- Team fundraisers (car washes, quiz nights, sponsored challenges) suit specific, short term needs but shouldn't be relied on to fund the whole club.
- Recurring fundraising (weekly lotto, 50/50 draw, Split the Pot) builds predictable income over time, a €500 a week lotto generates €26,000 a year.
- Big events such as golf classics or major draws can raise significant money but are resource intensive, so they work best as the ceiling of a fundraising plan rather than its foundation.
- Fundraising per Member (FPM), total annual fundraising divided by registered members, lets clubs of different sizes compare performance fairly. Most clubs sit below €10 FPM, while the strongest clubs reach over €80.
Every club committee has some version of the same conversation at the start of the season:
“We need to fundraise more this year.”
But there’s another question that’s much harder to answer: how much should your club actually be raising?
Working with more than 1,000 grassroots sports clubs across Ireland and the UK gives us a unique view of how clubs fundraise. And one thing becomes clear very quickly: club fundraising isn't one activity.
It generally falls into three distinct categories: team fundraisers, recurring fundraising and big events.
Each serves a different purpose. The clubs that build the strongest fundraising programmes tend to understand the role of all three rather than expecting one fundraiser to do everything.
1. Team Fundraisers: Small, Focused and Goal-Driven
These are the fundraisers almost every grassroots club knows well.
Usually for one or two teams, with a specific fundraising goal. The U14s need new gear. The women's team has a tournament away. A juvenile team needs help covering travel costs.
Someone suggests a car wash, quiz night, sponsored challenge or Last Man Standing competition and the fundraising begins.
These campaigns work particularly well because there is usually a tangible reason behind the ask. Supporters know exactly where their contribution is going, while teams can take ownership without requiring the entire club committee to get involved.
Done well, they're relatively quick, focused and place a manageable burden on volunteers.
They shouldn't, however, be expected to fund the wider club.
That's where the second fundraising engine becomes important.
2. Recurring Fundraising: Your Club's Financial Engine
Think weekly Club Lotto, 50/50 Draw, Split the Pot or a monthly draw.
Recurring fundraising isn't always the most glamorous activity in the club calendar, but it can be one of the most valuable.
Instead of starting from zero every time the club needs money, recurring fundraising creates income week after week and month after month.
A €500-a-week lotto, for example, generates €26,000 over a year.
More importantly, the right recurring model doesn't require volunteers to resell the fundraiser every week. Building a base of supporters on automatic recurring subscriptions allows the fundraiser to keep generating income without relying on constant cash collections or ticket selling.
That creates something every treasurer values: predictability.
3. Big Events: High Effort, High Reward
Then there are the major campaigns. A golf classic. A major annual draw. A sponsored challenge. A large community event.
These campaigns can raise serious money and are often necessary when a club has a significant ambition such as developing facilities, building a gym or funding another capital project.
But they're also resource-intensive.
They require volunteers, sponsors, promotion and considerable community engagement. That makes them incredibly powerful when used at the right time, and potentially exhausting if they become the club's only fundraising strategy.
A major campaign should be the ceiling of your fundraising model, not its foundation.
“Three Engines. One System.”
See how your club's fundraising compares, and get every team fundraiser, lotto and big event running through one platform.
Why the Best Clubs Use All Three
The strongest model combines the three.
Recurring fundraising gives the club a dependable financial foundation.
Team fundraisers allow individual groups to fund specific requirements.
Major campaigns give the entire club the ability to mobilise around bigger ambitions when needed.
The problem arises when a club relies almost entirely on one.
If everything depends on one annual fundraiser, one disappointing event can leave a significant hole in the budget. If every financial need results in another small fundraiser, members and volunteers eventually experience fundraising fatigue.
Balance matters.
But How Much Should Your Club Actually Raise?
This brings us back to the question most committees struggle to answer.
Simply comparing total fundraising isn't particularly useful. A club with 1,000 members should naturally have greater fundraising potential than one with 200.
That's why we've started tracking and looking at another number across ClubZap clubs:
Fundraising per Member (FPM)
The calculation is simple:
Total annual fundraising ÷ registered club members = Fundraising per Member
It strips out a club site, so a 200 member rural club and a 900 member city club can finally compare like with like.
If a 500-member club raises €10,000:
€10,000 ÷ 500 = €20 FPM
Suddenly, clubs of very different sizes can start comparing fundraising performance on a more meaningful basis.
Across the clubs we work with, most sit below €10/£10 per member in digitally tracked fundraising.
At the other end of the spectrum, our 90th percentile club generates €81.06 per member.
That difference isn't necessarily because their volunteers work eight times harder.
Often, they simply have a better system.
They combine different fundraising models, build recurring revenue, track results and make better use of the volunteer hours available to them.
Turn Fundraising Into a System, Not a Scramble
Track team fundraisers, recurring income and big campaigns all in one place, and see your club's Fundraising per Member at a glance.
What's Your Club's FPM?
Before your next committee meeting, take 30 seconds to calculate it.
Then ask:
Are we relying too heavily on one fundraiser?
Do we have recurring income coming into the club throughout the year?
Are individual teams able to fundraise efficiently for their own requirements?
And when we have a major ambition, do we have the structure to mobilise the whole club behind it?
Those questions create a much more useful fundraising conversation than simply saying:
“We need to raise more money this year.”
Got questions? We've got answers!
What's the difference between team fundraisers and recurring fundraising?
Team fundraisers are one-off campaigns run by a specific team for a specific goal, like a car wash or quiz night. Recurring fundraising, such as a weekly lotto or 50/50 draw, generates income every week or month without needing to be reset each time.
How much should a sports club be fundraising each year?How much should a sports club be fundraising each year?
Should a club rely on one big annual event to fundraise?
How can a club build more predictable fundraising income?
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