AFL Club Fundraising Ideas That Actually Work

Running an AFL club is expensive. Ground hire, umpire fees, new footballs, goal post maintenance, insurance, team jumpers, away game travel. Every season the list gets longer and the budget gets tighter. About 18% of community sports clubs in Australia are now at risk of collapse because of rising costs, and the people running these clubs are burning out trying to keep them afloat.

The common complaint is that committees spend hundreds of hours to raise a thousand dollars. That ratio doesn't work, especially when your volunteers are the same parents and players who are already giving up their weekends.

Here are fundraising ideas that actually bring in decent money for AFL clubs without grinding your volunteers into the ground.

Product Fundraisers

Selling products is the most reliable way for an AFL club to raise money. People would rather buy something they can use than just hand over a donation, and the margins are solid.

Products that work well for footy clubs:

• Cadbury chocolate boxes - A proven seller with roughly 50% margin. Give every player a box to sell through their network. Most families will buy at least one.
• Cookie dough - Billy G's cookie dough tubs return about $4 profit per tub. Families love them because they're a treat that actually gets used.
• Pies and sausage rolls - The perfect fit for a footy club. Sell frozen packs to members and keep stock for match-day canteen sales too.
• Cheese and butter - Higher price point means better margins. Works well as an end-of-season fundraiser when people are stocking up.

The trick with product fundraisers is making them easy to run. Paper order forms and cash collection are what kill volunteer motivation. When you run a product fundraiser through Raised, each seller gets their own link to share, orders come in online, and products get delivered. No spreadsheets, no chasing payments, no lost order forms.

Check out the full list of products on our wholesalers page.

The Bunnings Sausage Sizzle

Every footy club has done one of these. The average profit from a Bunnings sausage sizzle sits around $900 per day, though well-organised clubs can push towards $2,000-4,000.

Tips to get the most out of yours:

• Book early. Popular Bunnings locations fill up months ahead. Get your dates locked in at the start of the year.
• Buy smart. Sausages, bread, and onions in bulk from a wholesaler. Don't buy retail.
• Add drinks. Cans at $2-3 each are almost pure profit when bought in bulk.
• Roster properly. Two-hour shifts keep people fresh and willing to come back next time.

A sausage sizzle is great for a one-off cash injection, but it's labour-intensive. Four to six people standing in the sun all day for $900 is decent, though it's worth comparing that against the return from an online product fundraiser that runs for weeks with minimal effort.

Game-Day Canteen and Bar

Your home games are a captive audience. A well-run canteen and bar can bring in consistent revenue across the whole season from March to September.

Stock the basics: pies, sausage rolls, drinks, lollies, coffee. If your club has a liquor licence, beer sales on a Saturday afternoon are a strong earner. Pre-selling food orders online before game day helps you plan stock and reduces waste.

Keep it simple and keep the prices fair. People are happy to spend at the club when they know the money stays in the club.

Footy Tipping Competitions

This one is underrated. A footy tipping competition costs almost nothing to run, requires minimal volunteer time, and generates income across the entire AFL season.

Charge $20-50 per entry, offer a prize pool (keep 40-60% as fundraising profit), and let it run from Round 1 to the Grand Final. If you get 50-100 entries at $30 each, that's $1,500-3,000 with almost zero ongoing work. There are free and cheap tipping platforms available, so your only cost is the prize.

It also keeps people connected to the club all season, which helps when you ask them to support your next fundraiser.

Trivia Nights and Footy Dinners

Club events work because you're selling an experience, not just asking for money. A good trivia night can raise $1,500-3,000 in a single evening.

How to make it work:

• Charge $15-20 per head or $150-200 per table of 8-10.
• Run a bar and keep the margin on drinks.
• Get local businesses to donate prizes. Most will say yes if you mention their name on the night.
• Keep overheads low. Use your own clubrooms. Get volunteers to set up and run the bar.

End-of-season dinners and best-and-fairest nights can double as fundraisers too. Add an auction of donated items or signed memorabilia to boost the take.

Local Business Sponsorship

Sponsorship is less exciting than a big event, but it's reliable income that comes back year after year.

Put together a simple sponsorship pack with clear tiers. Offer signage at the ground, logo on the club website, social media mentions, and naming rights for specific teams or events. Even small sponsorships at $200-500 each add up fast when you've got ten or fifteen local businesses on board.

Approach businesses directly rather than waiting for them to come to you. A cafe, physio clinic, pub, or tradie within a few kilometres of your ground is your target. They want local customers, and your club can put them in front of those people.

Club Merchandise

Custom scarves, beanies, hoodies, and stubby holders in club colours sell well because supporters genuinely want them. The key is to avoid over-ordering. Use pre-orders to gauge demand before you commit to a bulk run.

You can run a merch pre-sale through Raised alongside your other fundraisers. Supporters order and pay online, you place the bulk order once you know the numbers, and there's no risk of leftover stock gathering dust in the clubrooms.

Online Crowdfunding for Big Projects

When your club needs something bigger, like new lights, a scoreboard upgrade, or resurfacing the oval, a crowdfunding campaign is the way to go. These projects are hard to fund with sausage sizzles alone.

Online fundraising reaches beyond your immediate club community. Friends, family, alumni, and local businesses can all chip in through a shared link. You're not limited to the people who show up on Saturday.

Clubs using online fundraising platforms raise significantly more than those relying on traditional methods alone. The ASF reports that clubs on their platform raise an average of $13,250 each. Digital fundraising also cuts the volunteer load dramatically. You set up a page, share the link, and track progress from your phone.

On Raised, donations have a small 5% fee that's covered by the supporter, so your club keeps 100% of what's raised. No hidden platform fees eating into your total.

Timing Your Fundraising

AFL clubs have a natural rhythm that helps with planning:

• Pre-season (January to March) - Run a product fundraiser while families are fresh and keen. Lock in sponsorships for the year.
• During the season (April to September) - Game-day sales, tipping competitions, and a mid-season event or trivia night.
• End of season (September to October) - Best-and-fairest dinner fundraiser. Launch a crowdfunding campaign for any off-season facility upgrades.

Spread your fundraising across the year rather than dumping everything into one month. People are more willing to support when they're not being asked every week.

Cut the Volunteer Hours, Not the Revenue

The real enemy of club fundraising isn't a lack of ideas. It's volunteer burnout. Cost-of-living pressures mean your members have less spare cash and less spare time. Every fundraiser you run needs to respect that.

That's where moving things online makes the biggest difference. A product fundraiser on Raised takes minutes to set up, runs itself once the links are shared, and doesn't need someone sitting behind a table all weekend. Your committee can track sales in real time without a single phone call.

If your AFL club needs to raise money this season, start a fundraiser on Raised and see how much easier it can be when you're not doing everything by hand.