Club Fundraising Ideas

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NJnike

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So the South Jersey Area Rocketry Society has been on the hunt, for a couple years now, for an affordable trailer to keep and tote around all of our launch equipment but everything we keep finding is beyond our limit because if we purchased what we found it would completely empty the club account...SO, I'm looking for any fundraiser ideas, especially stuff that you and your club have used successfully. And just as useful, anything that is an absolute failure that should be avoided at all costs. Any and all help will be appreciated!
 
We just simply picked a trailer and badgered the membership for donations. No muss no fuss. Most of us donated between $100 and $200 (This was about four years ago and times were much better).

We raised the money for a brandy new 6 x8 box trailer in about a month.
 
Our club just faced exactly the same thing - needing a trailer.

The officers simply asked if the members would be willing to pay next year's membership fee in advance, and most of us said "heck yeah", we did, and now we have our trailer. :)
 
CMASS has funded most of its equipment purchases selling hot dogs at our launches. It's not a good short term solution but the few bucks we make every launch adds up.
 
CMASS has funded most of its equipment purchases selling hot dogs at our launches. It's not a good short term solution but the few bucks we make every launch adds up.

Aw, come on, Bill. The "Hot Dog Fundraising" is a better story than that. Tell 'em about the original pop up camper conversion that started it all. :)
 
Aw, come on, Bill. The "Hot Dog Fundraising" is a better story than that. Tell 'em about the original pop up camper conversion that started it all. :)

I try to forget about the camper. The club got it just before I joined. I think I'd been to one launch before Tavares had me welding part of it back together. The best part was the mice. We were never able to get it tight enough so they couldn't get it. Every spring we'd chase them out. The gleeful look on Chris's face when he sucked one up with the vacuum cleaner was disturbing. Then there was the oven that the mice used to live it. I seem to recall something about moth balls to keep them out and what happens when you turn the oven on when you forget to take them out. And there was the brownies that Jack Kane cooked in it that were like bricks. The roof leaked so I came up with this rubber coating to fix it. It worked but it made the top so heavy I was sure someone was going to lose a finger or two when we closed it. When we got the new trailer we gave it to a club member on the condition that he never bring it back.

I was interviewed by a reporter for the Boston Globe. Out of all the stuff I talked about, the bold print at the top of the article was about the club running on hot dogs.
 
I don't know if your club wants to "go into the business" but you can build your own custom trailer for a lot less than the fancy pre-made ones.

You can get a plain flatbed trailer for about 1/4 the cost of a finished-out, enclosed trailer. You can make a frame either from lumber or metal studs, and you can often find trailer covering materials locally (at your local trailer-building company---we have over a half dozen within 20 miles of Ft Worth). I would guess that at one of these trailer-builders you could occasionally find a blemished roof section that they won't use but that they would be happy to get a few $$ for.

Anyway, if you build your own you can customize it to your heart's content....OK, to the limits of your wallet.
 
Just make sure you don't exceed the trailer's capacity with the enclosure. The local CAF chapter had spend an additional $850 to upgrade the axles and suspension of their merchandise sales trailer after they got it reinforced and all the stuff loaded in it. It was way overloaded, the axles had sagged and they kept blowing tires or rolling them off the rims...

Plywood is heavy. :eyepop:
 
In my town the two biggest grocery stores have a brat/hot dog wagon they make available for organizations so this is where we raise funds. So you sell your brats right there in the parking lot near the entrance. the store only takes a cut of the pop sold, they provide the grill so this is very convenient. This year we put out the 'Tips' jar and that boosted funds noticeably. Folks really liked our goal to see the Atlantis fly next May.

We were supposed to have a car wash fundraiser today but the rain nixed that. it rained twice in two months and today was the third time. nice!! set up for this was cheaper than setting up the brat wagon.

We are a very small club and fly low power mostly so funds from these events are almost enough for the year.
 
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