What is fundraising to your club?
It started with a simple question, “what is fundraising to your club?” This was the fundamental question that kick-started a two-hour interactive masterclass on fundraising strategy development. This session was facilitated by Amy Power and Darren McMahon from 2into3, specialists in this area.
There is no silver bullet to fundraising. Opinions and past practices of the clubs were challenged. The masterclass also covered ways of building relationship-based fundraising. Participants worked on ways to create a fundraising strategy and setting goals and relative to the ambition of the club. Participants were asked to self-reflect on the ethos of their own clubs, what makes them unique, and how to create a culture of giving from within.
Almost every club highlighted youth development, subs collection and the acquisition of new equipment as priorities going forward. Issues around these points included lack of a suitable database, possible donor fatigue and limited finances resulting in short term year-to-year ambitions. Clubs were urged to look consider the following when approaching these issues, use events as a means of networking for new volunteers and potential donors, developing an adequate fundraising mix, using a dedicated database to contact past members and to be ambitious in developing long-term targets for the club.
Feedback of the event has been very positive and will no doubt help Cricket Leinster clubs prioritise their fundraising strategies in the coming weeks and months.