35+ Best Booster Club Fundraising Ideas to Raise More

Booster club fundraising is a popular way to gain much-needed funds for school clubs and sports teams. Booster clubs are volunteer-led organizations that support and raise money for school sports teams, clubs, music and theater groups. These clubs are typically run by the parents of the students involved in the school group and are often nonprofit organizations.

Read on to discover the best booster club fundraising ideas with insider tips to ensure your success.

Start Here for the Best Fundraising Ideas for School Booster Clubs

One of the primary goals of a booster club is to provide the funding needed to cover costs associated with extracurricular school activities and programs. Your friends, family, and school community will be your go-to donors and supporters for your fundraising campaigns. What do they like to do? What type of event or sales campaigns are they most likely to support?

Here are some of the best booster club fundraisers to get your group started.

The #1 Booster Club Fundraiser: Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Events

Peer-to-peer fundraising has become the go-to school fundraising plan. That’s because it works! Peer-to-peer events raise money for booster clubs while bringing people together to support the cause.

Host a p2p crowdfunding campaign such as a 5K walk or fun run at the school track. A walk-a-thon or run fundraiser provides a great opportunity to raise money. Each participant and team works hard to bring in donations. This excites participants as they create a personal fundraising page to set goals, upload images, and share their stories. Try adding a theme such as a Color Run to up the fun and raise more.

Football, Basketball, and Baseball Crowdfunding Campaigns

These sports teams can easily fundraise via their preferred sport – kick-a-thons, hoop-a-thons, and hit-a-thons. Encourage healthy competition to motivate participants and teams to raise more donations by providing incentives and prizes for the best performers.

Make it easy for your sports team by providing a powerful peer-to-peer fundraising tool to easily customize their fundraising page and collect donations. Our P2P software for booster club fundraising includes a prize management system where participants get prize widgets when they reach predefined fundraising levels. Offer prizes for the top individual and team fundraisers, and your fundraising will soar. Your community sponsors can assist with prizes, too. For example, partner with a local sporting goods store that can donate new equipment for the team that collects the most donations.

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Community Serve-a-thons

A unique and meaningful booster club fundraising idea for marching bands, cheerleading squads, and other groups to consider is a serve-a-thon. In a serve-a-thon, participants commit to a service project at the school or in the local community. Serve-a-thons not only help to raise money for your booster club but also make a positive impact on the community. Club fundraisers raise money by reaching out to family and friends and asking for pledges and donations to support the service project. Supporters donate online to participant and team fundraising pages.

Booster Club Golf Marathons

With a Golf Marathon or golf-a-thon format, your golfers commit to raising donations to participate in your booster club fundraising golf tournament. They register on your golf tournament website and then contact friends, colleagues, and family members to solicit donations for your booster club fundraising campaign. This is a great event for the golf team as well as parent supporters of the booster club.

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Host a Special Event for the Community

While community participation can be rewarding, going down this path often requires more logistical planning. Special events for booster clubs often center around food – BBQ tailgates, pancake breakfast fundraisers, spaghetti dinners, and more. You will likely need to have some cash on hand for an effort like this.

Paint Night

Painting nights offer a chance for your art-inspired students and parents to shine. With this event, participants sit in front of a canvas and paint together while one of your art teachers supervises. These events are increasing in popularity and can even be held in wine bars or with wine for adult-only events.

Movie Night

A movie night is an excellent consideration for an easier booster club event. Sell tickets to the show and advertise in advance at all sports events. You can even get creative and allow people to set up camp with fold-out chairs and blankets on the football field and come through the rows with concessions.

Comedy Show

Gather up some teachers, parents, community members, and student comedians to host a comedy show night, which can take place in the school auditorium. Asking a professional comedian to donate their time is another option, as giving of their talent for school fundraising may be right up their alley.

BBQ Tailgate Events

If you’ve got some grill masters in your booster club, take it to the next level and have them do their due diligence behind the grill at a tailgate/BBQ fundraiser. Although this will involve considerable effort (consider the amount of meat, chips, and drinks you must have to handle the hungry crowd before a football game), it can be quite profitable.

School Carnivals

One of the more complex booster club fundraising events to host, a school carnival has many aspects that can be integrated for a fun family night out. You’ll need to organize fair stalls, rides, a bouncy castle, food, and more for a successful carnival. Popular games can be engineered with some ingenuity (such as milk bottles and basket tosses).

Scavenger Hunts

A scavenger hunt is something that many organizations do around the spring or summer holidays, so why not make it into something bigger for the students, teachers, and parents to participate in? Funds can be raised through registration fees and upgrades to improve hunting advantages.

Spirit Night at a Local Business

Reach out to your town’s favorite hang-out spots or restaurants to host a spirit night, where a percentage of proceeds for the evening are donated to the school. Booster club fundraising happens when your community has fun and shares stories of the day.

Host a Booster Club Tournament or Competition

Sporting events and tournaments can be fun booster club fundraising ideas. They generally raise money successfully (after all, you know your audience is sports fans for sports boosters).

Golf Tournaments

Golf tournaments are popular fundraisers for many sports groups. Some organizations use mini-golf events so that the whole family can play. Proceeds can be amplified by getting golf tournament sponsors on board and hosting a post-event celebration luncheon. All of this is easily managed with our donor-friendly golf tournament software.

Dance Competition

Why wait for prom? Dance-a-thons are a great idea to raise money for the booster club and get some exercise. If there are dance schools or notable instructors in the area, you can upgrade this fundraising event to “Dancing with the Community Stars,” increasing event proceeds to $10,000 or more.

Bocci Tournaments

A bocci tournament is a great idea for booster club fundraising, bringing in net proceeds that may surprise you. If your school can offer the space for the tournament and you can figure out ways to rent the bocci balls, you’ll be coming in with minimal costs. Event ticketing software allows you to register players, promote sponsors, and take the tournament to a higher level of professionalism.

Basketball Tournaments

Basketball tournaments can be fun and familiar fundraising events to host that can be done with just three or more team members. They can be single or double elimination to manage the time. You can get a helping hand from your school’s basketball coaches with the tournament logistics and referee assistance.

Battle of the Bands

Gather students, teachers, and parents to perform oldies but goodies or bring a bit of competition to the stage and have a Battle of the Bands. Donations come from ticket and refreshment sales. The fun of this makes it one of the best school fundraisers.

Booster Club Fundraising Sales

Many booster clubs sell items to raise funds. This school fundraising idea provides a great teaching opportunity for students to learn about business, marketing, and selling, gain confidence, and reach goals. Just be sure to choose products based on the interests of your target audience. Here are some ideas:

• The go-to choice for booster club fundraising is typically sweets of all kinds – candy bars, chocolates, frozen cookie dough, and lollipops. These fundraisers work especially well around the holidays.
• Selling gift cards for restaurants or dinner/movie combos can be a great choice for a booster club fundraiser.
• Show your team spirit with custom merchandise sales – hoodies, t-shirts, baseball caps, and more.
• In rural and suburban areas that tend to have space for gardens have options to purchase planting kits, bulbs, or seeds.
• Magazine subscription sales.
• Candles or home decorations.

Profit shares for this type of fundraising can range from 30% to as high as 90%.

Unique Sales and Service Fundraising

Booster Clubs can consider selling handmade and unique items instead of relying on affiliate companies and pre-made goods. These types of booster club sales typically include bake sales, garage sales, or arts and crafts sales. Organizations can also sell services, including ideas such as a car wash and gift-wrapping service during the holidays. Since volunteers provide the labor, the costs are low, and profits can be quite high.

More Great Booster Club Fundraising Ideas

Here are more lucrative fundraising ideas for school booster clubs. Consider the costs and resources required when running a special event to ensure the potential proceeds are worthwhile.

Duct Tape Your Coach to the Wall

Something fun and easy to do for some small proceeds or in conjunction with a school crowdfunding event is to charge a small fee to duct tape a coach, teacher, or principal to the wall. Someone who is a student favorite will bring in the most donations. Simply charge for the strips of duct tape ($1 to $2). Let kids stick them on, and hilarity is bound to ensue.

Car Wash

The good old car wash is a frequently visited fundraising idea. On a nice summer day, you can even consider adding another idea, like a BBQ or fresh lemonade stand, to satisfy patrons’ appetites during their wait.

Yard Work for Hire

Students and booster club supporters can sign up for yard services such as lawn mowing, raking leaves, or shoveling snow. These services can be pretty expensive and require only a strong work ethic.

Booster Club Membership Drives

An excellent option for booster club fundraising is a monthly membership campaign. Your group can establish an online donation website where supporters can easily make a safe and secure online donation and select to make it recur monthly. To promote this booster club fundraiser, simply send email blasts with a link to your fundraising website and post a fundraising widget on your school’s home page. You’ll also want to share it on social media, partner sites, and blogs. Encourage booster club members to post on social networks and create viral campaigns. Consider offering a prize for the best video appeal – a great way to spread awareness and drive traffic to your website.

Give the Booster Club a Fundraising Boost with Auctions and Raffles

There are many ways to increase revenue during fundraising events. One proven method is fundraising raffles and charity auctions. Raffles can take different forms, but 50/50 raffles are always popular with booster clubs. Promote these fundraising campaigns during high school sports and music events. DoJiggy can help with easy-to-implement raffle fundraising websites.

Looking for Virtual Booster Club Fundraising Ideas?

Many Booster clubs have taken fundraising online and are enjoying the benefits of virtual fundraising. We’ve compiled this list of the best virtual fundraising ideas for schools and booster clubs.

Booster Club Sports and Groups We Support

Use a Free DoJiggy Website for Easy Booster Club Fundraising

While traditional booster club fundraising methods involve door-to-door sales and cash collecting, fundraising websites make planning and collecting funds much easier. For ticketed shows or events, an events website does the job of online ticket sales. If you’re selling services or goods, a fundraising store provides ease of payment and the data you need.

Our crowdfunding software is designed for booster and sports team fundraising of all types – basketball, football, cheerleading, swimming, track and field, volleyball, softball, baseball, and more. Booster clubs and their supporters collect donations for their clubs with our flexible peer-to-peer platform, which can work with flat-rate donations or per unit of effort pledges (i.e., per mile walked). You’ll be able to easily configure your booster club fundraising website creatively to meet your club’s specific needs, and your participants will learn and have fun as they personalize their fundraising pages.

Booster club fundraising events vary from club to club, and it is important to customize the fundraiser specifically for your booster club.

Considerations for Booster Club Fundraising Efforts

Booster Clubs must carefully and honestly access their resources when deciding on the best fundraising ideas for their club. Busy parents generally run booster clubs, and time is of the essence. How big is your booster club, and how much can supporters contribute to planning and executing fundraising campaigns? Are you looking for an easy fundraising idea, or do you have the resources for a more complex campaign? While hosting a black-tie gala may sound lucrative, an online raffle may be more in line with what your organization can accomplish well.

Remember that this is a teaching opportunity for students. Booster club fundraising can be an empowering experience for participants. The club is a part of a bigger picture, serving the needs of students and the administration, teachers, the athletic director, and coaches behind the scenes. Meeting with the administration and coaches, advisers, or teachers of the teams or clubs you are fundraising for is always a good idea to get an idea of their needs.

Plan the Booster Calendar

Once you know your fundraising needs and resources, start planning the calendar for the school fundraising year. What fundraising initiatives will your Booster Club run, and when will they happen? It is best not to overwhelm your school and community with too many fundraisers. Instead, plan just two or three fundraisers a year. With strong, focused planning and promotional efforts, your booster club can successfully reach its goals.

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