You can’t keep knocking on the same door

In December of my first year as president, I cancelled our Christmas numbers boards and gave everyone their money back. The letter I sent said I hadn’t been able to give the fundraiser the time it deserved, and that “I’m sure that no one wants to see the club lose money in what is supposed to be a fundraiser.” Both true.

The fuller version is that I left the run too late. I was new in the job and flat out chasing sponsors, so I relied on people messaging the Facebook page instead of getting out in the community and down to the local pub (also one of our bigger sponsors) and selling the numbers myself. The people who did buy were the handful who always buy. We were far too passive, and it just didn’t work at that time of year.

What I took from it wasn’t really about Christmas. It was about who we kept asking.

The first is game day, in season. Raffle tickets, meat trays, 100 boards, walking through the crowd while people dig out their loose change. Every club does it, and it works, up to a point. It’s the same people at the ground every week, and some of them are doing it tough. That’s just society. Ask them ten different ways over an afternoon and it gets a bit much. And the money is limited. A donated meat tray at $2 a ticket costs the club nothing, but you might need five of them to make $1,000. It’s tough going.

The second kind is planned. It happens away from game day, and people know it’s coming.

Ours was a weekly lotto: 100 numbers, $10 a week, and a draw every Friday night at the local pub. I’ve mentioned the pub was one of our bigger sponsors. That’s why we held it there. It was set up to clear $12,000 a season for the club. It wasn’t free. Someone had to be at the pub every Friday for 25 weeks, and there were always a few people to chase for money. But the numbers sold, because people knew it was coming up and they planned for it. The same 100 boards that died in December sold the next year, when people had seen it before and we actually went out and sold it.

Then there’s the audience you don’t have. In 2024 we ran a ladies’ long lunch, an idea we borrowed from a bigger club in our competition. Very few of these ideas are original. Outside the season, women only, 100 tickets, one long table, a couple of speakers, and the place done up properly. We priced it as a day out, not a raffle ticket, and that was deliberate. The people we were trying to attract were people who had never been to the football club, or hadn’t been for a very long time. We got sponsors on board, ran an auction, and sold every ticket.

So here’s what I’d say to any committee. You’ve got to know your demographics. Know who you’ve actually got access to, and be honest about how often you’ve already asked them for money. You can’t just keep knocking on the same door week in, week out if they are unable to give. If you don’t have access to the right people, the job is working out how to attract them.

Go back through your last three fundraisers and write down who bought. If it’s the same names every time, those people are loyal, and you’ve been leaning on them harder than is fair.

There’s one more group worth thinking about. In rugby league we call them the old boys. Other sports will have a different name for it, but it’s the former players and the people who’ve had something to do with the club over the years. A lot of them have moved away, so they can’t get to games or be involved the way they used to. I’m confident they would support the club if they were asked. The trouble is that nobody asks them, because they’re not at the ground.

Club Funding builds fundraising tools for clubs, and that’s how this gets paid for. This isn’t the pitch. Nothing above needs anything from us.

If you haven’t got the Sponsorship Playbook, it’s free and available here:

Jason Shannon — Founder, Club Funding. Former President, Oakey Senior Rugby League Football Club.