How Does Your Club "fund" Itself?

[Megastink]

How does your club raise money? I'd like to hear some different ways. My old club in Wisconsin used to do minnow races for kids and make thousands. Some clubs host tournaments. My club now sells raffle tickets, which i feel there is a better way. I'd like to hear from you.

[Scott F]

First off, my club is not a tournament club and a lot of the money we raise goes toward conservation projects. When our members spend money, they know it's going to improve smallmouth fishing in our state.

Our big fundraiser for the year is our annual banquet. The $30 ticket covers our costs for guest speakers, dinner and the banquet hall. Our 2016 featured speaker will be Jeremy Smith from Lindner's Angling Edge TV show. We have silent auctions of guided fishing trips donated by members and professional guides. We also have a raffle. A $1 ticket (25 tickets for $20) gets you a chance at one of 100 prizes purchased by us or donated to the cause. We usually get between 175 to 200 attendees and by the end of the night we raise over $10,000.

[Leonidas]

Just annual dues and tournament fees. Pays for insurance, ramp fees and winning places. A certain amount gets allotted for year end fish off.

No actual fund raisers.

[MidTNKayakAngler]

We are a relatively new club. Was created 3 years ago, and have been funded solely out of the owners "my partner, and I's" pocket. Last year we tried a shirt sale and it worked out well. We sold about 90 shirts in just 2-3 weeks and most pre-sold. We have been able to recoup some of the expenses i.e. website, paper, laptop, and other expenses of the club. We don't charge membership fees, or dues, and we don't keep any of the money from tournament fees. When we started this was to bring a good tournament series available to everyone to our community. Our 1st year we were averaging 15 boats per tournament, 2nd year 27 boats per tournament, and this year we averaged 30 boats per tournament. We have a great group, and many regulars. We do withdraw money from entry fees for the Heroes on the Water Foundation $2 per entry, and to help fund the Tennessee State Championship $1 per entry which we also help run. Our time and most of our resources are volunteered so we can have the best payouts possible. I have been fishing our tournaments, but I probably will not next year as it takes a lot of time and preparation, and it's cutting into valuable fishing time.

 

Jeremy

[umckibben]

Cheese county bass club, Southern Wi.

cheese county bass club/ facebook

 

We get local businesses to donate 100$ spots on the backs of club tee shirts, (20 spots @ 100$/ea = 2k), use a portion of that money to buy shirts (150 shirts for 500$) sell the shirts at 10$/ea 1500$, that's 3k/year if all goes well, plus a 20$ annual membership fee (20$/20 members = 400$, all that funds our annual kids event and free raffle each year and buy what we need for the club to be effective and efficient!

I should point out we haven't taken in more than 2400$ in a single year, lots of shirts get donated or sold cheap just to rid stock for next year!

Always looking for ways to improve, and our way relies on member involvement in order to succeed. 

Edited April 21, 2019 by umckibben
Added current club shirts

[Sam]

$45 annual dues.

$5 each tournament you fish and we have 8 tournaments

Open tournament every year or so open all fishermen

Did a Brunswick Stew a few years ago

[ww2farmer]

I don't have a club per-say....but I run an open tournament trail. Despite what many people think, putting tournaments on is not free. There's permit fee's, scale/weigh-in equipment replacement/maint./upgrade costs. I pretty much donate my time.

 

I don't search out sponsors, or collect dues. I just cover expenses out of tournament pots, and everyone knows this going in. I am one of the few...maybe the only... area open tournament who gives a transparent break down of what/where/when/why the money goes where it goes. 99.9% of the guys are supportive. The clowns who are  not are asked to take a hike and never come back.

[Logan S]

$60/year for annual membership dues.  This is used for operational stuff like scales, permits, weigh bags, meeting spaces, costs for our annual family picnic and banquet, etc... None of the annual dues money goes to tournament payouts.  

 

Tournament entries are $30 for single day and $40 for 2-day.  95% of the money from the entries are paid out in each specific tournament with the remaining 5% being held over to be put toward the Classic Championship payout.  100% of entry fee money is paid out in tournaments and none of the entry fees money goes to operational expenses.  

 

We're a pretty large club, averaging over 50 members for the last 20 years.  We provide a lot of stuff to members including weigh in bags for standard tournaments and identical scales for MLF-format tournaments.  Our tournament payouts are pretty decent compared to entries, especially the Classic which is typically over $500 for first on only $40 entry.  We have split divisions so we payout top 3 boaters and top 3 Co-anglers for every tournament.  

 

It's definitely not the cheapest to fish with us...But in my admittedly bias opinion it's a great value for local organized tournament fishing...Smaller than BFL/ABA for sure, we get 20 boats or so for our tournaments, but it's also significantly cheaper and more personal.