Additional Fundraising Ideas to Smash Your Fundraising Target

Additional Fundraising ideas to smash your fundraising target

The Sweepstake

Pick a sporting event that finishes reasonably close to the Football Marathon. The Champions League final is on 6th June, and the FA Cup final is on 30th May.

Organise a sweepstake amongst your friends, family and/or colleagues by:

Printing off the names of the competing teams/people/horses/etc
Picking the names out of a hat and allocating them to competitors in return for a small fee
Giving a prize to the owner of the winning ticket

You could even run a sweepstake on the Football Marathon itself – for instance the total number of goals scored, the number of times you will fall over or the position in which your team will finish.

Your prize could be something you could buy or make – for example a cake or a bottle of champagne, or a share of the total pot, or something you can blag for free.

The advantage of the sweepstake is it’s fun, creates some interest in what you’re doing, and you may find it easier to ask people to buy a ‘ticket’ than to just give you cash. You also get the money up front which helps you hit your target before the event and benefit from seeding points.

The Inter-team Fundraising competition

One of the biggest challenges for a team captain is getting all 8 team members actively fundraising early on and sticking with it regularly until they’ve smashed their target. One way to help with this is try to monitor the amount that each player in your team has raised, and then have incentives and penalties for those that contribute most/least to the team effort.

How to monitor how much each player has raised:

VirginMoneyGiving allows you to invite players to your team page, and then donors can select which player they are giving to
Justgiving has a Team Page function where each member sets up their own page, plus a summary team page which shows the amounts raised on each sub-page
Even on a normal page it’s usually possible to see who has raised which donations – and the process of asking the team who is claiming the anonymous donations is a good way to build engagement

Ideas for incentives and penalties:

These are all ideas that have worked in the past for different captains – choose those most appropriate to your group dynamic

Top fundraiser’s referee duty is covered by the bottom fundraiser
Top fundraiser takes all set pieces
Top fundraiser is captain for the day and gets to pick the starting lineup for each game and dictate substitutions and goalkeeper duty
Top fundraiser gets to demand foot-massages from bottom fundraiser
Bottom fundraiser has to wear a tutu/banana costume on the day
Bottom fundraiser brings food and drink for the top fundraiser/whole team
Bottom fundraiser has to pay the difference to get the team up to target on the day of the event (!)

This last one is difficult to enforce but usually creates enough panic to get everybody active so nobody has to pay out!

The Great Football Marathon Bakeoff

Bake some delicious cakes or biscuits, perhaps using some sporty themes here
Sell them to your friends/colleagues/family
Pay the money into your justgiving page

If you bake 50 cupcakes and sell them for £2 each, you’ll raise £100 and impress 50 people with your new-found baking prowess.

The Football Marathon Pub Quiz

Find a well-placed pub that will give you some space in which to run a pub quiz
Invite your friends/colleagues/family to attend for a small fee in return for the chance to take place in a pub quiz
Beg, borrow, steal or buy a prize for the winning team
Write some questions or use our quiz pack (available on request)
Ask people the questions and mark their answers. Have fun.
Give the prize to the winning team
Ask everyone to sponsor you

If you get 10 teams of 5 people to pay £10 per head to come to your quiz and spend £50 on a prize, you’ll raise £450.