How Winning Programs Do (And Do Not Do) Fundraising Differently

Every coach wants to win.

So, it’s natural that every coach tries to answer:

What do the best coaches do?

Most of this time, this question revolves around tactical, sport-related items, i.e:

• What schemes are they running

• How are they organizing their practices

• etc.

But have you ever considered how the best coaches might be fundraising differently?

I certainly did.

So I split my data from surveying 100+ coaches into two buckets:

1. Answers from coaches with winning records the prior year, and

2. Answers from coaches with losing records the prior year

And here’s what I found:

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Winning programs are not fundraising more frequently

If anything, they’re fundraising less frequently

Take a look at the chart below

62% of the coaches that responded to our survey had winning records

The average number of fundraisers run by those coaches?

2.0 per year

Compare that to the average number of fundraisers run by the coaches who had losing records in 2022

That was slightly higher, at 2.3 per year

What explains this?

Perhaps its simply a skill thing: more inexperienced coaches may often spread themselves too thin by trying every fundraiser under the sun

As time progresses and those same coaches level up, they eventually zero in on the 2 fundraisers each year that will reach their budgetary needs.

Again - this is just a theory. But I find it to be a potent one.

Winning programs aren’t putting any more work into fundraising

In our survey, we also distinguished between what types of fundraisers coaches are running

The most popular fundraiser across all coaches were crowdfunding-style fundraisers (I define crowdfunding-style fundraisers as the type where you blast emails and/or texts out, asking for just donations on your team’s behalf).

Because there’s less work involved with this style of fundraiser (and theres no value provided to donators in return), you might think that this group was more popular amongst coaches who were just starting out (and therefore less successful, so falling into our bucket of coaches with losing records).

But that’s COMPLETELY FALSE

Check the chart below - these style of fundraisers showed no difference in usage across winning vs. non-winning programs

In fact, the more successful programs actually seem to be leaning in to fundraisers that take less work - not vis versa!

Check the chart again, and you’ll see this dynamic play out across categories - winning programs were less likely to run more labor-intensive fundraisers such as golf outings, discount cards, and bake sales 

This is a counterintuitive point, but it is consistent with our data above: we already pointed out that winning programs seem to fundraise slightly less time per year….. and it appears that when they do fundraise, these same programs also put less work into it.

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Winning programs ARE getting more out of their camps & events

One area where winning programs do seem to focus their fundraising more?

Camps & events.

I’m reposting the graph from above, so you can zoom in on these two categories:

Winning programs were far more likely to mention there program’s camp or annual event (such as a tournament) as a part of their annual fundraising plan.

How does this fit with our data?

One hypothesis is that winning programs do have higher player participation.

And as player participation increases, camps & events are more likely to be fruitful fundraisers.

However, this is just one potential explanation

It’s also possible that we’re picking up on a third variable that’s driving both… i.e. perhaps winning programs are already more resourced, so they don’t feel the need to run more labor-intensive fundraisers.

We’ll have to dig in further in future posts 🙂 

That’s all for today’s note!

If you want to read more insights from our fundraising survey, check out our previous post:

Also, if you’re looking for an easy & fast fundraiser for your team, check out our product, Teamfi

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