People Giving Back: Maggie

We have had so many people interested in involving their sports team in fundraising for Joyful Heart Foundation, and we could not be more thrilled! Below, you'll hear from a representative from WAKA (World Adult Kickball Association) who works with New York based leagues. They incorporated many different types of fundraisers into their season and we hope you can use some of their ideas for your team!

Maggie's Message:

Hi Joyful Hearts! My name is Maggie and I am the Senior Customer Service Representative for the World Adult Kickball Association in NYC. We are a social organization that, in addition to playing kickball as adults, also chooses a non-profit organization for which we raise funds each season.

Members of our board meet and present different charitable organizations prior to the start of each season and for the past few years, Joyful Heart Foundation has been unanimously voted as the cause to which we dedicate our efforts. The mission and vision ring true to our men and women alike and we are proud to say that this past season alone, we were able to raise over $5,000 for JHF!

Having played and been involved with WAKA since the spring of 2005, I have seen a variety of fundraising ideas attempted.  Some did not work as well as we would have liked but others were great successes. Not shocking is that competitive fundraisers work wonders for competitive people. So we keep trying new things, and if you're fundraising for a cause, I'd suggest you try to think outside the box and experiment with creative new ideas.

In addition to regular raffles, suggested donations, etc., our leagues have tried to add twists to conventional money-making efforts. For example, bake sales are time-honored traditional fundraisers. We decided to add a spin by giving teams points in proportion to the amount of money spent. Who would have thought that in a league with approximately 200 people, $700+ would have been raised by delicious treats in only a few hours?!

Penny Wars! This involves teams interacting with each other and collecting money that all goes to your charity. Change (pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, silver dollars) and checks made out to JHF by non-kickballers count as positive points for your team. Paper cash (dollar bills in any amount) are put in your team container by opposing/competing teams and count as negative points. Example for scoring - Team A collects $43.74 in change (4374 points), one player has a co-worker hand him a check for $10 (1000 points) and at the field, other teams contribute $25 in paper bills to Team A's penny war jug (-2500 points). Team A's point total for week 1 is 2874 but the amount they raised for Joyful Heart is $78.74. And that's only one of 8 - 16 teams. The contest continues through the next 7 weeks of the season. (This works best when players have cars to help them lug around the jars.) As prizes for the winning team (even more incentive than just being the best at fundraising), the charity chair, league representative and/or players approach local businesses for contributions. Sporting goods stores, restaurants, etc. are great places to check out for donated goods/services.

Most people have been involved with or at least heard of date auctions. Our spin with these is that our participants auction off different services such as cleaning the winner's apartment, shoveling snow (a much needed service this winter), grocery shopping, etc. These auctions go off quite well as the people who are spending their money not only know that 100% of the proceeds support a great cause, they also come away with a practical prize. Who wouldn't love to have their weekly chores done by someone else?! Especially if that someone else was on a team that beat your team the week before on the kickball field... Another optional twist is tallying how much each team raises and/or spends and offering a prize to the team that raised the most as well as the team that spent the most.

We also ran a charity poker tournament. We got the space donated from a local bar and the "kitty" or "pot" was split 45% JHF, 35% 1st place winner, 15% to the runner up and 5% to third place. We followed Texas Hold'em rules, and each player bought in at $25. We allowed for "re-buys" for which we charged $35, with $10 going directly to the charity and the rest going into the pot to be split like all the other money. We had a number of poker enthusiasts loan us their poker chips and cards so we didn't have to pay for anything. (Luckily everyone had different chips so they were easy to split up at the end.) 

For our playoff's, we tried something called "Pledge for Runs." It worked like this:

Each team specified a dollar amount that they agreed to pay for every run the team scored during their playoff games. For example, if the team pledged $10 per run and scored 10 runs during the play offs, the team collected $100 to donate to the charity. (For teams as large as most of ours, 26 people, this amounted to about $4 per person.)

However, to make it interesting, not only did the team pledge an amount for their own runs, but they also chose a team to bet against! For example, my team could decide that we didn't think our opposing team will make as many runs as us, so we will pledged $20 for each of their runs.

We encouraged all our teams to dig deep and give big by awarding a "Philanthropy Award" that came with a prize. Every dollar the team donated at any of our fundraisers went to their season total and at our End of Season Party we announced the winner. This season it was OBFY, pictured below.

If you are not sure where to start, look for recreational sports leagues with a charitable focus in your area. WAKA is not limited to NYC.  As the word "world" denotes, we are probably in a city near you! So find and join a league, take on the role of charity chairperson and start helping others learn about and support our Joyful Heart Foundation."

These are such great ideas! We will be posting how-tos and other tips and ideas on our new Get Involved page of the JHF website, we will be sure to post an update on the blog and Facebook to keep you in the know!

BIG THANKS to WAKA and the NY STAR league for their incredible generosity and their very joyful hearts.

Do you play sports? How have you raised awareness or funds through your sports team? Tell us in the comments below.