The Hidden Cost of Traditional Fundraising And a Simpler Alternative

The Hidden Cost of Traditional Fundraising And a Simpler Alternative

If you’re involved in running a grassroots sports club, you know the drill. Bake sales. Car washes. Quiz nights. Race nights. Sponsored walks. It’s what clubs do. It’s what they’ve always done. And when you need money for a new kit or equipment, you roll up your sleeves and organise another event.

On paper, it makes sense. A bake sale costs you some ingredients and a few hours on Saturday morning. A quiz night needs a venue and some donated prizes. Seems cheap, right?

But there’s a cost that never appears in your accounts. A cost measured in volunteer time, energy, and the dozens of other things your committee could be doing instead. When you add it all up, traditional fundraising is far more expensive than it looks.

The Real Cost Isn’t Just Money

Traditional fundraising events seem inexpensive. Flour and eggs for cakes. Buckets and sponges for a car wash. A few quid for quiz prizes. The direct costs are minimal, which is why clubs continue to do it.

But what about the hidden costs? The hours spent planning the event, creating posters, posting on social media, and chasing volunteers to help on the day. The time spent setting up, running the event, and clearing up afterwards. The follow-up work: banking cash, thanking helpers, and calculating what you actually raised.

Try this exercise: estimate how many volunteer hours went into your last fundraising event. Then divide what you raised by those hours. What’s your “earnings per hour”? Often, it’s shockingly low—sometimes less than minimum wage.

And here’s the kicker: it’s usually the same small group of volunteers doing all this work. The same committee members are already juggling fixtures, communications, coaching, and a hundred other club tasks. Every hour spent organising a bake sale is an hour not spent on something else.

Traditional fundraising isn’t cheap. It’s just that the true cost is hidden.

The Unpredictability Problem

Even when you put in all that effort, there’s no guarantee it’ll pay off. Event-based fundraising is a gamble every single time.

Your summer car wash gets rained off. Your quiz night clashes with a big football match on telly, and half your expected attendees don’t show. Your race night seems like a great idea until you realise three other local organisations are doing one in the same month, and people are tapped out.

You can plan meticulously, promote brilliantly, and still end up disappointed. And that’s crushing for volunteers who’ve invested their time and energy.

This unpredictability creates another problem: you can’t budget properly. How do you plan for a new kit when you don’t know if your next fundraiser will make £200 or £800? Clubs end up in reactive mode, constantly firefighting. “We desperately need new equipment—quick, can we organise something?”

Financial instability makes it almost impossible to think strategically about your club’s future. You’re always scrambling, never building. That’s exhausting, and it limits what you can achieve.

What You’re Not Doing While You’re Fundraising

Here’s a question that doesn’t get asked enough: What’s the opportunity cost of traditional fundraising?

Every hour your volunteers spend organising events is an hour they’re not spending on something else. Your brilliant coach could be developing training sessions, but instead, they’re selling raffle tickets. Your treasurer could be sorting out your club’s finances properly, but they’re making sandwiches for the quiz night.

Think about what makes a great grassroots club. It’s not the fundraising events. It’s the quality of coaching, the welcoming atmosphere, the strong sense of community, and the smooth organisation that make families feel looked after.

All of that requires time and energy from your volunteers. When fundraising dominates their lives, everything else suffers. Member experience declines. Growth opportunities are missed. The club stagnates because nobody has the capacity to do anything except for the next fundraiser.

You have to ask: Is this the best use of our volunteers’ limited time? Could they create more value for the club by doing something else?

The Participation Ceiling

Traditional events have another limitation: they require people to show up at a specific time and place.

Not everyone can make a Saturday morning car wash. Families have other commitments. Not everyone wants to attend a Friday night quiz—some people work evenings, others have young children, others just aren’t into that sort of thing.

So, you end up engaging the same 20 or 30 families every time. That’s brilliant, but it means you’re missing everyone else.

There are probably dozens of families connected to your club who’d happily support you financially but can’t or won’t come to events. Parents who work weekends. Grandparents who’d love to help but can’t manage a physical car wash. Former members who’ve moved away but still feel connected.

Traditional fundraising has a participation ceiling. You can only raise money from people who can physically show up. That’s a significant limitation in today’s busy world.

There’s a Simpler Way: Recurring, Hands-Off Fundraising

So if traditional fundraising is expensive, unpredictable, and limiting, what’s the alternative?

Imagine this: fundraising that doesn’t require organising events. That runs automatically in the background, bringing in consistent income every month without any volunteer effort. That lets your committee focus on running a brilliant club instead of constantly planning the next bake sale.
This isn’t fantasy. It’s how community lottery models work.

Members sign up to contribute a small amount monthly— £10. A portion of that (£6) goes directly to your club. The rest funds prize draws, so supporters get something back. It feels rewarding rather than like charity. And crucially, it happens automatically via direct debit.

Set it up once, and it runs itself. No planning meetings. No poster designing. No standing in the rain selling cakes. Just a reliable, predictable income landing in your account every month.

Your volunteers get their evenings and weekends back. Your club gets financial stability. Your supporters get an easy way to contribute regularly without having to attend events. Everyone wins.

What Sustainable Fundraising Looks Like

Let’s do some simple maths. Say you get 50 members of your club community signed up to a £10 monthly lottery, with £6 from each contribution going to your club.

That’s £300 coming in every single month. £3,600 per year. Without organising a single event.

Compare that to the effort of running six or seven fundraisers throughout the year—each requiring weeks of planning and volunteer time—to raise a similar amount. The contrast is stark.

But it’s not just about the money. Predictable income transforms how your club operates. You can budget properly. You can plan investments in equipment or facilities with confidence. You can say yes to opportunities instead of constantly worrying about cash flow.

Your volunteers can focus on what actually makes your club great: coaching young players, building community, creating positive experiences, and growing your membership. The stuff that matters. The stuff they actually volunteered to do.

And here’s the beautiful part: traditional fundraising events don’t have to disappear entirely. If someone loves organising the annual quiz night, brilliant—keep doing it. But it becomes an extra, not a necessity. A fun community event rather than a financial lifeline. That changes everything.
When clubs move to sustainable fundraising models, they stop lurching from crisis to crisis. They stop exhausting their volunteers. They start building something stable and lasting.

Rethinking How Fundraising Works

Traditional fundraising works. But when you count the real costs—volunteer time, unpredictability, opportunity cost, limited participation—it’s far more expensive than it appears.

Sustainable, recurring fundraising models flip the equation. They provide a stable income without the constant effort, freeing your volunteers to focus on making your club brilliant rather than constantly chasing money.
This isn’t about abandoning community spirit or taking shortcuts. It’s about working smarter. About respecting your volunteers’ time. About building financial stability so your club can grow and thrive rather than just survive.

The clubs that embrace this approach don’t just raise more money—they become better clubs. Because their people have time and energy to invest in what really matters.

Ready to explore how community lottery fundraising could work for your club? Learn more about The Fundraising Club and discover sustainable fundraising made simple.