Fundraising for sports teams is essential for obtaining new equipment, funding travel to competitions, purchasing uniforms, and providing other essential necessities for players. However, finding lucrative, engaging, and interesting fundraising ideas can be difficult. Until now! With 360 Photo Contests, you can get the whole community involved in fundraising simply by taking a few photos.
9 Photo Contest Fundraising Ideas for Sports Teams
- Action Shots
- Team Spirit
- Athlete Portraits
- Equipment
- Good Sportsmanship
- The Win
- Team Moms
- Team Dads
- Unique Sports
Photo contests are one of the most unique fundraising ideas for sports teams. Since everyone enjoys taking pictures and posting them online, it’s an easy way to get the entire community involved. It doesn’t matter how large your team is—with a photo contest as one of your youth sports fundraising ideas for the year, you’re sure to enjoy a boost in revenue to get through the season.
Benefits of Contests for Sports Fundraising
When you’re looking for fundraising ideas for youth sports teams, you need an idea that has the potential to generate a large amount of funding for your team. You also want something that is simple, effective, and efficient. That’s why photo contests are one of the best fundraising ideas for sports teams.
Photo contests create a sense of rivalry, sportsmanship, and enjoyment for all who participate. They’re also a great way to get the whole community involved and encourage creativity from every individual who decides to join the contest.
Before you set up a photo contest, it’s important to learn how a photo contest works. With our photo contests, you have a completely customizable sports fundraising concept at your fingertips. It’s easy to implement and enables everyone to participate on their own terms. Since the entire contest is completed online, it’s incredibly easy to set up, requires no extra equipment, employees, or expenses, and is accessible to everyone due to its virtual nature.
Fundraising for high school sports can be difficult when every sports team or club is focused on fundraising ideas for sports that have been done many times before. By choosing a photo contest, you’ll introduce an online sports fundraising idea that everyone can get excited about. It’s also an ideal way to collect contact info and gather a pool of interested and involved people who might be interested in helping with future fundraisers.
In short, online fundraising for youth sports with a photo competition is:
- Easy to Set Up
- Saves Time
- No Extra Employees or Costs
- Very Efficient (Low Cost, Keep More Donations)
- Gather Contact Info
- Power of Crowdfunding and Social Sharing
- Virtual and Covid Friendly
- Fun!
9 Photo Contest Fundraising Ideas for Sports Teams
Now that you know the benefits of hosting an online photo contest for sports teams, let’s talk about the specific themes you can use to start engaging your community in raising funds:
1. Action Shots
When it comes to fundraising for sports, it’s important to choose ideas that everyone can participate in. Action shots are a fun category that can show off teammates’ skills, but taking the picture itself requires a bit of photography knowledge.
If you want athletes performing to be the focus of your photography fundraising ideas, then you might want to provide a few tips for taking the best picture possible. Include quick photography tips when you send out information with your fundraising campaign.
Action shot photo tips might include ideas like choosing a fast shutter speed, making sure the phone or camera settings are on sports shot, and taking the picture in full daylight rather than at dawn or dusk for the best photo possible.
When you provide helpful photo tips, you’ll set contest participants up for success when they take their sports team or individual action shots. You’ll also encourage a wider pool of photographers to get in on the contest so voters will have a wide array of pictures to vote on.
2. Team Spirit
Choosing team spirit as your photo contest category is a simple sports fundraising idea that everyone can participate in. Photos can involve the team mascot, logo, or sports jerseys in unique ways or places. The sky is the limit for what entrants could come up with, and you’ll see some fun and creative pictures show up with this creative fundraising idea.
One benefit of choosing team spirit as your contest theme is that it works for all teams, whether you have a defined mascot, logo, team colors, or a stand-out uniform that everyone recognizes as your youth sports team. Depending on how you want to run this fun high school fundraiser, you may decide to focus on one element of team spirit, such as the mascot or logo, or decide to make it open to interpretation so every entrant can submit the photo they feel best displays their team spirit.
3. Athlete Portraits
Athlete portraits as a sports fundraiser has the potential to do very well, especially in the beginning or at the end of a sports season. Run this fundraiser around the time of year when professional sports photos are taken by the school photographer. Since team members and their families will already be thinking about getting portraits taken, sports fundraising with this theme will be a natural tie-in.
Since standard school sports portraits might not be particularly inspirational, challenge team members and entrants to get creative with the photo contest. This is an easy fundraising idea that gives them the opportunity to snap any kind of portrait they want to keep forever.
This is one of the best fundraising ideas for high school sports since every team member can take a picture and submit it. This works for all sports—everything from a youth basketball team, soccer team, and football team to cheerleading and little league.
4. Equipment
If you need a fundraising event where supporters and participants are working toward a fundraising goal for new equipment, consider a fundraising idea that features the equipment required for the sport.
In this photo contest, participants are asked to take artistic photos of the equipment they use. The team can then use these photos to raise money for more equipment, place the best photos on social media platforms, and encourage the community to contribute to outfit the team with the new equipment they need to remain competitive.
5. Good Sportsmanship
Good sportsmanship is a trait that every team needs to learn and demonstrate. What better way than a photo contest where teammates are encouraged to demonstrate this quality?
Ask for photos where team members are paying it forward, helping in the community, or treating a rival team with respect. Encourage creativity, so each entrant can take a photograph that communicates their understanding of good sportsmanship.
A photo contest centered around good sportsmanship is a great idea that involves each athlete as well as community members, and encourages all participants to do something beneficial for the local community during the contest.
6. The Win
There are few things as exhilarating and energizing as the moment a team member crosses over home plate, scores the winning touchdown, crosses the finish line inches ahead of a competitor, or kicks the ball into the net just before the buzzer sounds. Think of this moment as “the win.”
The win is the moment that team members and sports teams will talk about for days, months, and even years to come. They’ll describe the epic moment when they realized they won the playoffs or the second when they saw all their hard work and practice pay off. Not only is it a moment to remember forever, but it’s also an opportunity to create a memorable photo contest.
Challenge your sports club, community, and entrants to create or recreate a moment where “the win” occurs. Encourage everyone to join in on this fundraising activity, from the athletic director to the booster club.
7. Team Moms
While sports teams need every team member to function, it’s often a family member that helps power the fundraising effort, solicits donations, and submits football fundraising ideas—or soccer, basketball, baseball, and any other youth sports club their child is on.
When it comes to donors, moms are often the biggest driver of fundraising efforts, and they certainly shouldn’t be overlooked. In fact, you could use this fundraising effort as an opportunity to highlight the team moms that are so active in providing soccer fundraising ideas, booster club fundraising, and helping out the sports teams in your school.
For this contest, ask for photos where moms display their team spirit. They could wear team gear, cheerlead for their child, or be seen out on the town soliciting donations or working on a fundraiser for the team. Show your appreciation for team moms with a photo contest fundraising campaign.
8. Team Dads
Let’s not leave out team dads! Depending on the sport, team dads get involved as fans, sponsors, and cheerleaders of their child’s sports team. From helping coach to driving the team to games or providing assistance with each team fundraising idea, these dads deserve their time in the spotlight.
Use this unique fundraising platform to highlight the team dads in your sports and school community. Take pictures of them cheering on the team, helping at a sporting event, dressed up in team colors or a custom shirt, or any other idea that shows what it means to be a number one team dad.
9. Unique Sports
Do you need fundraising ideas for sports teams that are unique or unusual? Then you can create a unique sports category for your team fundraising ideas and let the judo team, archery team, fencing team, and any other sports team at your school take a shot at the best unique sports picture.
This is sure to bring in more donations and revenue than the tired-out cookie dough fundraiser, shoe drive fundraisers, and dance marathon. You’ll never have to force students and parents to sell tickets, candy bars, gift cards, thanks to this sports fundraising idea that highlights unique sports teams at your school.
Sports Fundraising Ideas That Work
When you want your school fundraiser to be a successful fundraiser, it’s important to utilize new and unique ideas, incorporate concepts that everyone can get excited about, and encourage everyone to participate. This is especially true when it comes to fundraising for sports teams.
Rather than the same old discount card fundraiser, try sports team fundraising online through a photo contest. This campaign is a fundraising option that gives everyone an opportunity to be involved, from the high school peer level to faculty and staff and the surrounding community.
The donation process is simple, and the concept can be used for more than one school fundraising idea because you can tailor the contest for every sports team, club, or need.
If you’re interested in learning more, schedule a demo with 360PhotoContest.com today!