As we all know COVID19 has put a halt to most offline fundraising activities that sports club depend on: dinner dances, awards nights and golf classics for example. Now clubs have had to re-think their fundraising strategy and move online to ensure funds continue to grow as bills continue to stack up during pandemic restrictions.
One of the many clubs to adapt their approach to fundraising to cope with the new environment is Meath GAA club Dunshaughlin & Royal Gaels – who have enjoyed massive growth in funds raised through online lotto – we spoke to them to see what approach they have taken and what changes they have made to cause their online revenue to grow tremendously in the last few months. Andrew Smith, D&R Gaels PRO was happy to come online and speak to us – Andrew’s father Jim is a long term servant of the club and that is how he got involved in helping the club out with their lotto.
After initially pausing the lotto back in March, the club committee met up via Zoom and agreed on a date to re-launch the online lotto which was the 8th of June. For this re-launch they asked around if there was anyone in the club that would be good at video editing/cutting etc, which to their joy, there was, so they created a promotion video. The video was launched on the 8th of June and the feedback from it was great, people around the town were talking about it and it gave the community something to look forward to in these uncertain times.
They also decided that the best option would be to stream each live draw, not only for the locals but for the ex-pats and members in Canada, Australia and all over the world to tune into also, the videos generate 400-500 views weekly.
What is involved in streaming the draw live?
Andrew tells us “there is not much involved, we arrive 10 mins prior to draw time, over the weekend we organise who is the special guest, on Sunday evening or Monday morning then we announce the special guests and ask everyone to join us @ 8.30pm for live draw. During the live draw we go through some news within the club for that week and thank all the sponsors etc. We then announce the winners (if any), publish the draw directly to social media from the Clubforce admin panel and the lotto results email goes out automatically once we update the draw. We finish up by directing people to follow our social media channels and thank everyone for their support”.
Andrew talks about using the bulk import function before the draw also which saves them a huge amount of time, it gives the club the ability to upload all the offline tickets, which saves them having to manually check all the tickets on the night.
The club used to hear comments from people like “do ye ever do the draw at all?” and this is proof to people that the draw is actually taking place and being done properly also it gives it more of a professional look.
In the video you will see that the auto renewal function consists of 47% of their online tickets sales, Andrew tells us how crucial it is, “its back bone of the lotto, it’s great that you don’t have to keep harping on to people”, Andrew makes sure to remind members if you want to be guaranteed to be in the draw every week, make sure you tick auto renewal. Also everyone that opts in for Auto renewal Andrew sends them a personal email to thank them for their support.
Another revenue generator that clubs often forget to use is the contact expired players functionality. Andrew also contacts all expired players, by sending them an email before the draw Monday to let them know their ticket has expired and encourage them to enter the draw again.
If you want to see what else the club are doing to promote their lotto you can watch the webinar recording in your own time by clicking here.
As always, Clubforce strives to reduce the workload for volunteers, If your club is looking to maximise fundraising during the social distancing restrictions, fill out the form below and a member of our team will be in touch.
