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Published January 23, 2023
Running a sports or after-school program is a great way to get kids involved in something meaningful, but the unfortunate fact of the matter is everything costs money. If you run your program directly through the school, you’ll receive some funding from them, but it never seems to be enough. That leaves you looking for special cheerleading fundraiser ideas or methods best suited for your program to get the money they need.
These days, many fundraising options exist for people to pursue. Traditional fundraisers still get the job done, but newer crowdfunding methods have found their way to after-school programs and have been quite successful. How exactly do these types differ? We’re here to review the key differences between traditional fundraisers and crowdfunding so you’re not left wondering about it.
The Time Investment
First, let’s look at how much time you and your students put into each fundraiser. Both methods are similar as far as setup goes. You have to work with an outside company to figure out what you need to do before getting others involved. However, traditional fundraisers might take longer since you’ll need to figure out what your students are going to sell.
After the initial setup, crowdfunding will take far less time. Other fundraisers involve kids going around the neighborhood or to their parents’ offices to sell products to people. For crowdfunding, kids just need to send out a few emails, texts, or social media posts and they’re pretty much done. They’ll still need to follow up with people, but that’s far less time-consuming than the traditional route.
What Supports Get Out of It
The main aspect of crowdfunding is people simply send donations and receive nothing in return. While this might sound like a bad thing, many other crowdfunding sites have proven that this method works. People like to help those in need out of the kindness of their hearts.
In most traditional fundraiser sales, the majority of people who buy something want to support your program. Unless you’re selling Girl Scout cookies, random people won’t be interested in supporting you to receive an overpriced product in return.
What You Get Out of It
What you likely want to know about the difference between crowdfunding and traditional forms of fundraising is what your program gets out of it. With both forms of fundraising, you get a lot of money to help your program. However, you’ll receive more funds with crowdfunding.
It comes down to the fact that pretty much every dollar raised goes directly to you. With traditional formats, you have to pay some of the money you earn back to the company you worked with to cover the cost of the products you sold. While that process doesn’t happen directly, you’re still missing out on that money.
On top of that, crowdfunding can reach many more individuals. Spreading a campaign online without worrying about sending a product will expand your donation potential, leading to larger profit margins.