A wonderful young lady named Kaitlin put together a great fundraiser at her school to support the Forever Home project that Bree has undertaken. Here is her step-by-step of how to put together a volleyball tournament (which could be done for any other sport.) Her small school of 100 raised over $1900 through this event. Way to go Kaitlin!

Kaitlin’s Step by Step on How to Fundraise:

Step 1: Find something you are passionate about.

I am very passionate about volleyball. I have played since I was twelve years old and fell in love with playing the game. I used this passion as a foundation for fundraising so that it would be an enjoyable experience to raise money for God’s Grace Orphanage.

Step 2: Recruit

You cannot do everything. There are limits to your abilities and outreach and certain things that you hate doing. Someone else might love doing what you hate doing. For example I hate brackets. So when I planned for how the teams would play each other, I delegated the bracketology to a friend who understood them better and enjoyed doing it.  Delegate everything you possibly can because usually people are more than willing to help.

Step 3: Get an assistant

I asked my best friend to be my assistant. This is really helpful when you are talking to people about the event and advertising for it. You are also held accountable by your assistant for anything you do with the money. People like to see that you are not just taking the money yourself, it calms people’s nerves.

Step 4: Advertise!

No event is successful without good advertising. I came up with a catchy name, “Volley for Africa” and put posters up around the school about a month before the event. Then every day at lunch and at every assembly I would announce that the event was coming and that people needed to get teams to me by a certain date if they wanted to participate. I passed out flyers and made sign-up sheets for teams. I also had the school office announce the event every day at the end of the school day. This is probably the most important step.

Step 5: Involve Everyone

The more people that you involve, the more money you will raise. Tell everyone you know about the event even if they cannot participate because they still might want to donate. Volley for Africa only allowed High Schoolers to actually play volleyball (because of certain school restrictions), but I told everyone about the event and the money that came in from donations actually exceeded the money that was raised at the event.

Step 6: Prices and other such things

When I announced this I set the entry fee for the tournament at $10 USD per person. Now this price was a little high. If I could do something differently, I would do this differently. I would have lowered the price and extended the offer to play to more people. I go to a small school with only 100 people in the high school. If I went to a larger school, I could have many more teams and lowered the price. But since I go to the school I go to, this was impossible. However, I wish I could have had more people play. This could have potentially made a big difference in the money raised.

Step 7: PARTAY!!

On the day of the event, I stayed and set up for the event after school. We had concessions and sold drinks, candy, chips, popcorn, and other things (all donated. People love to donate J ). People asked me how they could help so I had people work the concessions, keep score, line judge, and be referees. We had the gym split in two halves so we could have two games going at once. We played loud music and had a great time! J