Here’s Why YOU Should Plan a Tournament for Your Next Fundraiser!

Whether you’re a fundraising pro or completely new to the process, choosing the activity you center your fundraiser around can be a real challenge. What kind of activity makes sense for your organization? What would your attendees be most interested in? How can you keep your events fresh year over year so repeated attendees don’t get bored? It’s a lot to think about!

Here at Auctria and Get Fully Funded, we’ve been inspired by tournaments as a fundraiser activity lately! There’s a lot of ways to customize tournaments to your needs, physical restrictions, and attendee preferences. Plus, they can be pretty easy to organize. We’ve seen a lot of success with golf and pickleball tournaments in particular – which we’ll dive deeper into later on!

In this article, we’ll look at:

1. Types of tournaments
2. How to plan, run, and organize a tournament fundraiser
3. Examples of unique tournament events

Let’s jump in!

There are tons of tournaments you can organize for your fundraiser event. Organizations have put on successful golf, pickleball, and cornhole tournaments. Golf lends itself well to single person teams, while pickleball and cornhole can be small teams of several people. Golf can require some skill but is a popular sport; pickleball and cornhole require less skill and are very inclusive options to get attendees involved! However, golf and pickleball are both very flexible and can be set up to work for any organization, resulting in a highly successful fundraiser!

Golf tournaments engage a whole NEW group of people

Golfing and fundraising are perfect partners. The audience is ideal, the setting is fitting and the logistics are optimal. Golfers inherently have some pocket money to spend, especially for a great cause. In a relaxed and comfortable setting, amongst friends and peers golfers easily become donors. With a tournament there are synergies in communications and logistics that go well together.

Pickleball is fundraising gold for your organization.

Pickleball is no longer just a pastime for retirees; people of all ages are picking up paddles. This rapid growth presents a unique opportunity for charitable organizations to capitalize on the sport’s popularity. We’ll help you figure out how to tap into that potential!

Sports like soccer and kickball can also make for easy tournament sports because you can field large teams, allowing people to put together teams with their friends or co-workers. Bigger teams can also level the playing field athleticism-wise, instead of single person teams or small 2-3 person teams needing to compete. Think your attendees might be less athletically inclined? Try a trivia tournament instead!

Tournament Set-up and structure

Once you choose an activity, you’ll have to choose the structure of the tournament. Here’s a few ideas:
Single Elimination: Also known as “sudden death”. Teams who lose are immediately eliminated.
Double Elimination: Similar to Single Elimination but players must lose twice to be eliminated.
Multilevel: Similar to Single Elimination but losing players move down the rankings and play in consolation matches.
Round Robin: Every player gets to play the other players. The winner is the player with the most wins at the end.
Game Guarantee: Teams are guaranteed a certain number of games to ensure enough play time. Losers move to a loser bracket to play out any remaining games to meet the guarantee.

There are many more structures to choose from, and some sports have specific tournament structures that are more popular than others. Once you choose your activity, it will be easier for you to determine the most useful structure for your event.

Make sure to consider:

• How many players/teams do you expect to participate?
• Do you expect highly skilled players/teams to participate, perhaps necessitating a higher and lower bracket system to even the playing field?
• If your activity is short, will players want to play extra consolation rounds so they can get more playtime?
• Are people traveling to participate, meaning they’ll want more playtime to make the trip worth it?

Here at Auctria, our partner organizations have had demonstrable success with golf and pickleball tournaments in particular. Want to know why? These tournaments are known to drive high revenue because people are familiar with the sports and they’re relatively accessible for people to participate in. These tournaments also make it easy for attendees to socialize with their teammates and other participants, making for a more enjoyable event for everyone. Read more here on why golf and fundraisers go together like peanut butter and jelly!

Want some insider tips on making your golf tournament a force for good? We chatted with Phil Immordino, President of the Golf Tournament Association of America, and he gave us his tips for everything from marketing to sponsors and the award ceremony at the end.

Proper planning will help maximize your event’s profits!

Define your audience. Will families, seniors, or competitive players be participating? Who will be attending just to cheer on the teams? What will each of these groups expect to see: food and drink available for an all-day tournament, themed t-shirts for participating teams, significant cash prizes or fun sponsor baskets?

Post frequently on social media. Make sure to advertise your event! You’ll want to attract the attention of both potential participants as well as attendees who will come to socialize and support the cause. Using Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok to build excitement will help encourage ticket sales so you raise more money.

Find your sponsors. Whether you want sponsors to donate money for team shirts or items for winner’s baskets, you’ll want to build strong connections with local businesses in your community that care about your cause. These businesses will also be key advertising opportunities, as many local businesses have pin boards for posters that can help promote your event.

Increase your profits. Consider adding silent auctions, raffles, and merchandise sales to further boost your fundraising efforts! Merch can be a particularly useful area to invest in. If teams and attendees can get shirts with your organization on them, then they’re advertising you and your cause every time they wear them out in public! A little investment upfront in merch can pay dividends down the line in awareness for you and your cause.

Set up your event website. Use Auctria to create your own customizable website. With your customized website, you can easily share event details, sell tickets, collect donations, and map the event location. Embed images and videos to tell your charity’s story and inspire visitors to support your cause. Check out this article to see how you can use Auctria for your Golf tournament planning and more!

We’ve even built a Pickleball-specific event template! Take a peek at it here to see what Auctria can do for you and your event.

We love seeing the unique events Auctria helps organizations bring to life! With our robust platform, we handle the details so that you can focus on creating the most fun event possible.

We helped Boss of the Toss put on a cornhole tournament! They sold full team and individual tickets as well as sponsorships, all through Auctria. They even sold fan tickets so that attendees who just wanted to watch and socialize could come while still generating profits for the organization. Tournament winners received large cash prizes based upon the amount of money raised, incentivizing participants to encourage further donations from friends, family, and the community!

If you like the competitive energy of a tournament but don’t think an athletic activity is the right fit for your organization, consider a trivia tournament. Competitors can enter as teams or individuals. Trivia nights have been growing in popularity at local restaurants and breweries over the past few years – why not tap into that energy and turn it into donations for your organization?

If you’ve come to the conclusion that a tournament isn’t the right fit for your event but you’d still like to do some kind of outdoor activity, consider a walkathon! It will get your attendees up and moving, and they can still compete as teams. You can have them walk, jog, run, or even bike!

Check out our Unique Events page to see more ideas for how to give your event its own special spin!

There’s so many options out there for fun, unique events to engage your attendees and fundraise for your organization at the same time. Tournaments are a great way to tap into people’s natural competitive spirit and with a little planning, you can lean into that spirit to maximize the profits for your cause!

If you’re struggling to come up with the right tournament for your organization, our friends at Get Fully Funded are here to help. They know that your organization has a unique story to tell, and they’re here to increase your revenue with proven tactics that work! Once you’ve gotten the ball rolling, reach out to Auctria to begin building your website and more.

Special thanks to Laurie Hochman from Auctria for the expert advice.

Auctria is a powerful engine to organize and run your event and auction fundraiser. From in person events to online and from the first donation to the final collection, Auctria helps you stay on top of the details so you can focus on maximizing your fundraising. Over 45,000 event fundraisers have used Auctria to raise over $500M.