Fundraising Mistakes That Cost UK Grassroots Clubs Money (And How to Fix Them)

Most grassroots clubs don't have a fundraising problem — they have a fundraising habits problem. The money is usually there in the community; it just leaks away through one-off events, cash buckets, forgotten paperwork and effort that lands on a single exhausted volunteer. The quickest fix for most clubs is to put one simple, repeatable, digital fundraiser at the centre of the season — a 50/50 draw, raffle or club lottery run through a compliant platform like Play Fund Win, which needs nothing up front, takes about ten minutes, and lets the club keep its share of every ticket sold. Here are the mistakes we see most often, and what to do instead.

1. Betting the whole year on one big event

The annual dinner or summer fun day is brilliant for the club's soul, but it's a terrible financial strategy on its own. If the weather turns, a key volunteer drops out or the venue costs creep up, an entire year's fundraising target goes with it.

The fix: keep the event, but underneath it run something continuous — a monthly draw or lottery that ticks over whether or not anyone shows up on the day. Predictable income is what lets a committee actually plan.

2. Selling tickets in cash, in person, only

Cash sales limit you to people standing in front of you on a Saturday morning. They're also slow to count, easy to lose track of, and awkward to reconcile at the end of the season.

The fix: sell online. A shareable link travels through the WhatsApp groups, the club Facebook page and the parents who live two counties away. Digital sales also give you a clean, auditable record — which your treasurer will thank you for.

3. Getting the rules wrong

This is the one that worries committees most, and rightly so. In Great Britain, prize draws where people pay to enter and winners are chosen by chance are lotteries under the Gambling Act 2005, and different formats have different rules:

• A raffle sold and drawn entirely at a single event can usually run as an incidental lottery, with no registration needed — but the tickets must be sold at the event itself.
• A draw sold over days or weeks, or sold to the wider public, is normally a small society lottery, which must be registered with your local licensing authority (your council) before tickets go on sale.
• Larger schemes above the small society thresholds need a licence from the Gambling Commission.
• Minimum age rules apply to lottery-style draws, and most clubs sensibly set theirs at 18+.

The fix: check the current thresholds and requirements with the Gambling Commission and your council before you start, and run the draw on a platform built for UK compliance so the ticketing, age checks and record-keeping are handled properly. A free prize draw with no purchase necessary is a different beast again — useful, but it raises no money on its own.

4. Not knowing what it actually costs

Plenty of clubs raise an impressive-sounding headline figure and then discover that printing, venue hire, prizes and card charges have eaten most of it. Gross is not net.

The fix: before you commit, write down every cost and work out what the club realistically keeps. Prefer models where the cost is a clear percentage of what's raised rather than a fee you pay whether or not the fundraiser works. With a 50/50 draw, the prize scales with sales, so the club can never be out of pocket on the prize itself.

5. Never explaining what the money is for

"Please support the club" raises far less than "we need new goalposts for the under-12s". Vague asks get vague responses.

The fix: pick one concrete, visible thing — kit, a defibrillator, a minibus contribution, subsidised subs for families who are struggling — and tell people what it will change. Then close the loop afterwards with a photo and a thank you. That's what makes people give again next time.

6. Leaving it all to one person

Every club has that one volunteer who quietly does everything. It works right up until the moment they move house, their child leaves the age group, or they simply burn out — and then the fundraising stops dead.

The fix: split the job into small, obvious roles — someone on promotion, someone on prizes, someone on the numbers — and choose tools that don't rely on one person's spreadsheet or personal bank account. Anything that lives only in one head is a risk to the club.

7. Not keeping in touch with supporters

The biggest waste in grassroots fundraising is treating every campaign as a cold start. The people who bought tickets last year are the people most likely to buy them again — but only if you know who they are.

The fix: collect names and contact details properly (with consent, and in line with UK GDPR), keep them in one place, and tell that group first when the next draw opens. While you're at it, check whether you're claiming everything you're already entitled to — Gift Aid on eligible donations, and any grant funding your national governing body or council offers.

Small changes, compounding results

None of these fixes require a fundraising expert or a big budget. They require a decision to make fundraising regular, digital, compliant and shared out — rather than heroic, occasional and fragile.

If you'd like to put a simple, compliant 50/50 draw or raffle at the heart of your club's fundraising, you can set one up in around ten minutes, with nothing up front, at playfundwin.com. Your club keeps its share of every ticket sold — and your volunteers get their Saturdays back.