We live and breathe grassroots sport. We play it, we love it, we service it.
We also know how tight for cash it can be for Cricket clubs up and down the country, especially during the current cost of living crisis. Most of us are tightening the purse strings and those involved in running any organisation, whether that’s a sports club or otherwise, are having to think creatively to increase revenue.
That’s why we’ve put together a list of ideas that can help you raise all important cash for pitch fees, umpire costs, summer tours, kit and whatever else your club spends money on.
These ideas have all been recommended to us by our cricket customers as having been uccessful for them and their clubs.
Reverse Draw
Depending on the size of your club, the idea is to sell numbers 1-50 or 1-100 or anything in between. You could charge, for example, £20, £30 or £40 a number. Clearly the more you charge, the higher the prize pot and the higher amount raised for the club. But you’ll have the best idea of how much individuals from your cricket club would be willing to pay.
For example:
- 100 numbers x £20 a number = £2,000
- £1,000 to club
- £1,000 split in prizes
Turn the prize draw into a fun event for the club to get people into the spirit of it. It can be used as an alternative to a more traditional race night, or could even take place as part of a race night alongside it.
It basically works like a reverse raffle. One by one, pull the numbers out of a hat (or a helmet) at semi-regular intervals and the last five numbers left in win the main prizes. The tension slowly build throughout the night, especially amongst those who’s numbers are yet to be pulled out.
Prizes can be split. For example, 1st prize (last number out) £400, 2nd prize £200, 3rd prize £100, 4th prize £50, 5th prize £20 (thats £770).
Then you can do a few random prizes throughout the night to win their £20 back. For example, first number out gets £20 back. Anything remaining in the prize pot can go towards a food or a BBQ for the evening.
If there are any unsold numbers then you can hold these back and add them into the hat when there’s 10-15 numbers left and auction them off on the night. So people might pay £50/£60/£70 for the numbers which now have a higher chance of winning, and that money goes straight to the club fund.
These nights are always fun but it does need a confident host on the microphone to really keep it interesting.
Last Man Standing
A firm favourite for many clubs of all sports. Utilise the network of stakeholders you already have by setting up a last man standing tournament based on the weekend’s football fixtures, that rolls from week to week.
Typically, a club will explain that a percentage will go to the winner, with the remaining amount going back to the club. Speaking from experience, we’ve seen 70/30 in the winner’s favour, down to a straight 50/50 split.
LMS is a great fundraising tactic, should the club have a wide enough network to amplify appropriately. The last thing you want to be doing is going to the effort of collecting money, chasing selections and updating your LMS sheet for the sake of £50. Get players, friends, family to join and you’ll be onto a winner (maybe even literally).
Create your competition on a Google Sheet, give participants the link on view only and they’ll never have to pester you about how many people are left. Easy!
Here’s an example layout below.
Race Night
This is a much more traditional one, especially amongst cricket clubs, so we won’t do too much explaining.
Whilst logistically a little harder to setup compared to a LMS, race nights are something many people look forward to throughout the summer. They are often used as a closing party to the season. We could write more than 1,000 words about how to setup a well-functioning race night, but instead we’ll leave that to the experts:
Club Fines
This one is probably aimed more at adult clubs, and even then you’d need to have buy-in from all players before implementing a fining system.
You hear regularly in professional sport about fines for players turning up late, being on their phone etc, but it’s a little easier when a) the fining system has been established for a long time, and b) expendable income isn’t really an issue. Players are already paying subs to be there, so charging them on top of that may have some pushback.
On the flip side, it adds an extra layer of competitiveness (depending on whether you make this performance based), as well as making players more punctual.
Some fines we’ve come across that you could implement into your own version:
- Lateness
- Missing training/a match without a valid reason
- Not washing the kit after being designated that job for the week.
- Getting a duck.
- Not attending a social event without a valid reason
- Forgetting your kit (stackable offence, depending on what’s forgotten).
- Not paying subs in a timely manner.
Lottery Bonus Balls
This one is pretty simple. You sell numbers 1-59 for a set fee per week or for the duration of the season. This can be any amount you’d like, again depending on your own thoughts on how much your club members would be willing to pay.
Then every Saturday when the National Lottery is drawn, whoever has the bonus ball that comes out is the winner that week and wins the set prize, whatever you decide it should be.
We spoke to one club who raised around £1180 this season using this method. But remember to keep some of the money for the club and don’t use it all for prizes. That’s the whole point remember!
iPod/Spotify Shuffle Night
This one is along similar lines to the reverse draw. Before the even, sell songs for a set price. Say, £10 each for example.
Sell enough to create a 2-3 hour Spotify (or whichever service you prefer) playlist. Split the money evenly between the club and a prize pot.
On the night the last three songs to be played on the playlist win the three main prizes (whatever you decide). Again, similar to the reverse draw you can drop in random prizes too and the tension/excitement builds as you get towards the end of the playlist.
Smarties Tubes
Looking for something for Junior teams? Try this one with all of your players.
Provide each player with a big smarties tube (sweets included of course), and give them 2-4 weeks to fill the tube back up with 20p’s. Head to high areas of footfall and give it a go. It’s a novel, non-intrusive way of getting people to part with their change, especially in the name of supporting their local cricket club.
Having spoken to a club that deployed this fundraising tactic, they generated more than £300 to put towards their pitch costs for the season, not bad going!
Raffle Tickets, with Unique Prizes
One local team in Sheffield found an artist that paints garden gnomes, among other things. So they sent him a picture of their kit and asked him to paint some gnomes up with a club raffle in mind.
At £28 each they were reasonably inexpensive for the club to acquire, and the novelty of owning a unique garden gnome went down a storm. Tickets were charged at £2 each or 3 for £5 and they sold just short of 500 of tickets. Take out the gnomes and the cost of the raffle tickets and they raised over £430.
Whilst painted gnomes might not be an appropriate prize for some clubs and their demographic, the same raffle ticket process can be applied to a host of other unique, club specific prizes. Let your imagination run wild!
A Free Kitlocker Sponsorship Deck
Getting new sponsors on board is really the ultimate long-term fundraising method. However, it can be quite daunting to go out there, find potential sponsors and sell your club to them.
We’ve made that a little bit easier.
We understand that not everyone has the technical skills to make a flashy presentation which they can approach local businesses with. And that’s why we’ve devised our very own template that can be customised to your club.
Fill in your details HERE and we’ll be in touch to provide you with your very own presentation that will wow your potential new sponsors.
Get in touch!
If you’ve implemented any imaginative fundraising activities at your club, we’d love to hear about them. In grassroots sport, we’re all in it together, so it’s always great to share ideas and best practice.
Or, if this article has inspired you to try any of the methods listed above, we’d love to know about that too. Give us a shout on socials and let us know how you get on!
