Fundraising

Hi,

I started the chess club at my high school last year with my friend hayem201 and it has been very successful. We have many talented people and we also have a lot of beginners. One of our problems is our finances. We went to 2 tournaments last year, USATE and our high school state championship in NJ. This was completely paid out of pocket by the participants. The problem is that we want to go to high school nationals in columbus and the national k-12 championship in florida next year but we have no money. These tournaments are very expensive especially for a budding team. I predicted that we would need to raise at least $8000 if we wanted to minimize parental contributions and maximize the amount of competitors. In addition we have basically no equipment. Only 1 clock and the boards are kind of screwed up. The peices are ok. I was thinking about asking people to buy their own equipment otherwise we would have to buy them. How can we fundraise for such a large goal? I am going to ask the school district but I doubt they will provide because they only provided 1k for the FTC robotics team and that is the most expensive club in the school. All fundraising ideas are appreciated. I would like to raise at least half by the end of september because the K-12 championship is in december

Does your high school football team travel out of state? What other teams travel out of the area at your school?  I would guess not many. Travel money is hard to come by.

You went to big two team tournaments last year-- the Amateur Team East and the New Jersey High School State Championship?  How did you do?

NJ state we got 10th and at USATE we tied for top team in our section. these poor performances were mostly due to having 3-4 good players and then a filler. we trained our fillers tho so we r solid now and should get much better placements. Also, our marching band makes several trips and I could imagine that sports teams do as well (probably girls soccer).

You should ask them what they do to raise money for their trips.

Perhaps you could set up chess tables at other events and play people speed chess for $5 a game. (I hope you are good.)

Also, selling candy, car washes, bake sales, etc. are work but add up. 

You could do a art and craft stall or maybe get a few students to form their own band so they can play for everyone and could also get some pizza and put the price as 2 dollars a slice and 5 dollars for one whole pizza.