Swim-a-thon Fundraisers and Fundraising Ideas
Hosting a swim-a-thon and exploring unique swim team fundraising ideas can be a great way to bring in extra funding for your swim team or swim club. Like many other sports and team organizations, swim teams often need additional funds to help cover equipment, training tools, and travel expenses for competitions. Swim team fundraisers can also be great for updating the pool, bleachers, and other swim facilities. Of course, not only swim teams can host swimming fundraisers. Schools and other charity organizations can also host swim-a-thons. Keep your audience in mind, and always have a lifeguard on duty.
Below we’ve outlined the basic guidelines for hosting a swim-a-thon fundraiser and included more interesting swim team fundraising ideas.
How Do Swim-a-thon Fundraisers Work?
A swim-a-thon is a team fundraising event, most often designed to raise money for swim teams and clubs. A swim-a-thon is a peer-to-peer fundraiser (p2p) where participants collect pledges and donations for swimming laps. This concept seems to work well for swim teams because team members can earn funds and entertain the community while doing what they love to do the most… swimming! Participants agree to swim for a set amount of time, such as 30 minutes to one hour. During that time, the goal for each participant is to swim as many laps as possible. Team members collect pledges per completed pool lap they swim with our Athon platform, and a maximum number of laps can be established. Donors can also choose to donate a set amount. Our crowdfunding platform makes fundraising easy.
Collecting Swimathon Donations
An online p2p crowdfunding campaign is essential to raising money with a swim-a-thon fundraiser. Crowdfunding websites allow your swimmers and coaches to share their fundraising page and get donations from friends and family. Some key features of our peer-to-peer software for swim clubs are below.
- Personal and Team Fundraising Pages: Each participant has a personalized page with images, videos, a Donate Now button, a fundraising thermometer, and social media (Facebook and Twitter) links.
- Social Sharing: Participants can send friends and family an email or social media donation request, including a link to their personal campaign page. Making it easy for potential donors to contribute via online and mobile giving is key.
- Team and Individual Registration: Participants can quickly create or join teams. Teams could be arranged by age group, swim club, school, or another group.
- Prize Management: Track multiple award levels and print reports to distribute prizes easily. Prize widgets and leaderboards motivate your swimmers.
- Reporting: Check the progress of online registration and fundraising goals in real time, to plan that extra push and promote your event strategically.
- Custom Product Sales: Sell customized merch like swim caps, water bottles, t-shirts, after-party tickets, and other related swimathon products on an integrated online store.
Provide incentives and prizes (think swim gear, gift cards, electronics) for the top fundraisers to encourage healthy competition and motivate participants to raise more donations. Read more about how our software helps to encourage your peer-to-peer participants to fundraise.
DoJiggy’s Donor-Friendly Crowdfunding Software Makes Hosting Swim-a-thon Fundraisers Easy
Unique Swim-a-thon Fundraising Ideas and Variations
You can plan many variations as part of your swim team fundraising event to encourage teamwork and add an extra element of excitement. The creative options are endless – just have fun!
- Arrange participants into teams and offer awards for the team that swims the most laps during the event.
- Add a twist to your swim-a-thon and host a swim-a-thon relay. A relay removes the pressure from one individual as team members alternate laps, giving them a short break to catch their breath between turns and encouraging teamwork.
- Coaches can participate in the fundraising event, and a coach can even swim for a team or relay.
- Swimathons are popular high school fundraisers, but a swim-a-thon can be created for swimmers of any level or age group. If you are raising funds to help support the development of a children’s learn-to-swim program, your swim-a-thon event can be based around laps swam by kids on kick-boards or the amount of time spent treading water.
- Dive teams could create dive-a-thon events in which divers are challenged to execute several different dives in a specified amount of time.
Hosting a Swimathon After Party
Swim-a-thons are great fundraisers because not only are they bringing money in to support the swim team or club, but they also provide an opportunity for sports teams to interact in a fun, social environment while increasing community awareness. Some organizations make an entire day out of their swim team fundraiser, which allows you to raise even more money. Following the actual swimming event, attendees and participants are invited to a community picnic or BBQ. Food and drinks are donated by local businesses, and tickets are sold. Perhaps a local band or D.J. is interested in performing in support of your cause.
Additional activities can be included as part of a Swimathon campaign, such as a fundraising raffle or charity auction. Local businesses donate gift certificates, goods, and services to auction off as prizes at the event. Raffle tickets can be sold during the swimathon, and the winners are announced at the social gathering, along with awards for the top-performing swimmers and fundraisers.
Read more on planning great nonprofit events.
Recruiting Swimathon Sponsors
Another great way to bring in funds for your swim group is to look for local business or corporate sponsorships. Businesses often seek ways to engage with the local community by supporting a noble cause. Use your networks to reach out to businesses and encourage their participation by becoming an official sponsor of the swim team or swim-a-thon through a tax-deductible donation. Offer benefits such as recognition in event programs, on the club website, and on signs around the pool. In addition, a company can choose to sponsor a student by matching the donations a student will raise. Ask sponsors to help spread the word about your fundraising event by posting announcements on bulletin boards, special mentions on websites, and encouraging employees to get involved.
Always be sure to thank your sponsors for their contributions! If they feel appreciated, they may sponsor the event again in future years.
Other Fundraising Resources for Swim-a-thons
For more information to help with hosting a swim-a-thon, visit our Walk-a-thon resources. These guidelines and templates will assist you in planning, including sample flyers, pledge forms, and tips to help recruit event sponsors and create a sample press release to promote your fundraising event.
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