50+ Recommended Grassroots Football Fundraising Ideas
We know that running a grassroots football club costs money. Kit, equipment, pitch hire, referee fees, league registrations, it all adds up fast, and for most clubs, the burden falls on a small group of volunteers trying to balance the books while also running sessions, managing parents and developing young players.
The good news? The grassroots football community is incredibly resourceful. We've pulled together over 50 fundraising ideas, all suggested after being tried, tested and recommended by coaches, managers and club volunteers from across the country, to give you a proper toolkit for raising funds throughout the season and beyond.
Whether you're looking for something that ticks along quietly in the background or a big event that brings the whole club and community together, there's something here for you.
Recurring Fundraisers
These are the ideas that experienced club volunteers tend to swear by — low maintenance once they're up and running, and they add up over the course of a season.
Bonus Ball Lottery - Sell each number (1–59) for a set amount — £5 or £10 is typical. The winner is determined by the bonus ball in the Wednesday National Lottery draw. Half the pot goes to the winner, half to the club. Run it via WhatsApp and it pretty much runs itself. Many clubs do this monthly; some run it weekly. A consistent earner.
Last Man Standing - Players, parents and supporters each pick one Premier League team per week — but you can only pick each team once all season. Last one with a surviving team wins half the pot; the club keeps the other half. Run it through a WhatsApp group. Clubs have reported raising over £1,000–£1,600 per competition, especially when rollovers are involved.
Weekly Lotto / Bingo Lottery - Sell numbers and use the National Lottery draw as the decider, bingo-style. One club reports raising £300 per game with this format. Another runs a lotto bingo where 75% goes to the winner and 25% to the club, raising £325 in their first run. You'll likely need to look into licensing requirements for your format.
Football Cards - Buy a pack of football cards and sell spaces to parents. Half goes to the winner, half to the club. Easy to manage, low cost, and there's enough of a prize incentive to get buy-in. Blackout and blind card variations also work well.
Squad Bets App - For over-18s, parents and supporters create a squad and predict Premier League scores each week. £5 entry, and you choose what percentage of the pot goes directly to the club. Essentially admin-free compared to running a Last Man Standing manually.
Football Training Equipment Pack - Size 3, 4 or 5 Footballs
Events & Nights
Quiz Night* - A quiz night with an entry fee, raffle prizes donated by local businesses, and a cake stall or snack table can realistically raise £1,000–£1,800 for a whole-club event. Add a darts competition or talent show to make it a bigger evening.
Race Night* - Buy a race night pack online, they're not expensive, then sell horse, jockey and on-the-night tickets. Consistently described as a great money-maker and a good social event for the club community.
Curry Night / Club Awards Night* - Tie a fundraiser into an event that's already happening. An awards night with a raffle (tickets at £5 a strip) and a scratch card competition (e.g. £10 a team, £200 to the winner, £200 to the club) can raise £850+ in one evening. Combine with a junior disco for younger players earlier in the night.
*If you don't have a clubhouse where you can host your own events, speak with local pubs and venues. Most will be happy to offer free venue hire if there's a guarantee of a decent group of people coming and spending some money with them, especially if on a quieter time for them.
Park / Beach Bash - A community day out where everyone chips into a kitty, brings food, plays games, does a quiz and runs a raffle. More of a community-building event than a big earner, but well worth doing.
Sponsored Challenges
Sponsored Walk - One of the most reliable fundraisers going. A seafront walk, a local trail, or something more ambitious like a stadium walk (Parkhead to Ibrox to Hampden is a popular one in Scotland at around 10 miles) can raise £1,000–£2,000+. A GoFundMe or JustGiving page makes collecting sponsorship much easier.
Mountain / Endurance Challenge - One coach challenged their U9 girls to climb Whernside (the tallest mountain in Yorkshire) and set up a GoFundMe. They raised nearly half of their £2,000 target in a week. Done once a year, this kind of challenge can cover much of a club's running costs.
Sponsored Litter Pick - A great one for connecting the club with the local community. Councils often provide equipment for free, and local businesses are generous sponsors. One club raised over £1,000. It also teaches the players something valuable about looking after their environment.
Colour Fun Run / Fun Run - A sponsored fun run, especially a colour run, works brilliantly for younger age groups. Great for photos, great for community engagement, and a solid earner.
Sponsored Keepy Uppies - Simple, football-specific and easy to organise. Get parents to count individual totals and set up basic sponsor forms for friends and family to pledge per 100 keepy uppies or against a target. One club raised enough to pay for the following season's kit.
Other Sponsored Activities - Sponsored bike rides, sponsored silences, penalty shootout competitions, crossbar challenges and sponsored 5Ks all work well, especially with younger players and their extended family networks.
Community Events
Tournament - A well-organised weekend tournament is one of the biggest potential earners on this list, £10,000–£15,000 is achievable. It takes planning, but if your club has the space and the volunteers, it's worth serious consideration.
Bag Packing at a Supermarket - Approach your local supermarket and ask to run a bag-packing fundraiser. Get the players involved. Clubs regularly report raising £700+ each time. Supermarkets will often also donate to youth sport causes directly — worth asking.
Car Wash - A classic. Low cost to organise, gets the players involved, and works well on a weekend morning alongside training.
Beat the Goalie - Charge people to take a penalty against a designated goalkeeper. Works well at club events, open days and community fairs.
Coaches vs Parents Match - Charge a small entry fee for spectators and get the coaches to play a match against the parents. Easy to organise, great fun and goes down well with the whole club.
Market Stall / Table Top Sale - Hire a table at a local market or community hall. Tombola, lucky dip and donated items all sell well. One volunteer has been doing this for over ten years, reporting consistent profit, especially when you're transparent that it's for kids' football.
Car Boot Sale - Collect donated items and run a club car boot table. Low cost, reasonably good return and easy to organise.
Community Fair / Bouncy Castle Event - Hosting a small community fair with a bouncy castle, food and games is a good way to bring in families from outside the club while raising funds.
Football Team Water Bottles Bundles
Matchday Income
Catering Trailer - If you have the space, invite a catering trader to set up on matchdays and charge them a pitch fee or percentage. Zero effort once it's arranged, the trader does all the work.
Coffee Stand / Hot Drinks - A couple of parents running a coffee and hot drinks stand on the touchline can realistically bring in £30–£40 per home game. Add cans, crisps and biscuits, and you'll do better than that. Which leads us on to....
Tuck Shop - A simple tuck shop can be a useful income stream. Worth considering who's buying, though some clubs prefer to focus on healthier options in line with their values around sport and wellbeing.
Raffles, Draws & Competitions
Raffle - Ask local businesses for prize donations, most are happy to support grassroots youth sport. Sell tickets at £2 each or 3 for £5. Hampers in club colours (ask everyone to donate one item in the team's colours) are a popular and easy prize to put together.
Tombola - Works well at fairs and community events. Ask parents and extended family to donate unwanted items. Almost pure profit.
Spot the Ball - Digital versions of the classic spot the ball competition feature, a simple, digital-first fundraiser that's easy to run and generates healthy engagement.
Queen of Hearts Draw - Run weekly via Facebook Live or similar. Numbers are drawn, and if the Queen of Hearts is turned over, the jackpot is won; otherwise, it rolls over. One club said it currently has a jackpot sitting at £25,000! It takes commitment and sellers from across your teams, but the rollover mechanic makes it compelling.
World Cup / Euros / Premier League Sweepstake - Sell numbers or teams at a set price, winner takes half, and your club or team keeps half. Works brilliantly around major tournaments.
Number Grid - Sell spaces on a grid at £10 per number — split 60/40 in the club's favour.
Company Sponsorship Draw - Invite 30 local companies to pay £20 each for the chance to win the team sponsorship slot for the season. One club filled this in no time by targeting local businesses and parents' employers, and easier for smaller businesses to get involved, which might not have bigger budgets available to pay for full sponsorship.
Kit Sponsorship Scratch Cards Sell sections of the kit (sleeves, collar, back, etc.) as scratch cards at £20+ each. Gives businesses advertising and gives the club multiple sponsorship income streams on a single kit.
Football Pontoon - A variation on the card game format, sell spaces and run it through a WhatsApp group.
Bingo / Blackout Cards - Blackout cards (where players need all numbers to be called to win) and blind cards are easy to run and popular with parents.
National Lottery Bingo - Each player pays £10, chooses five numbers, and marks them off as the National Lottery numbers are drawn — bingo style. Half to club, half to winner (percentages flexible).
Merchandise & Products
Club Branded Merchandise - Bags, bottles, hats, scarves, keyrings, etc, all branded with your club badge can sell consistently well. (We can help with this!). They can be sold as end-of-season gifts, used as fundraisers, or offered to local businesses as a sponsorship product too.
Digital Football Cards Sell digital cards featuring your squad. A modern take on the classic football card format.
Framed Club Shirts - Try to get hold of professional player or other signed shirts, frame them and bonus ball them. A premium item that generates real excitement.
Grants & External Support
National Lottery Grants - Many grassroots clubs are eligible for National Lottery funding. Worth researching what's available in your area, kit, equipment and facility costs can all potentially be covered.
Football Foundation / Scottish Football Facilities Fund / Cymru Football Foundation / Northern Ireland Football Fund - If your club is accredited with your respective FA, these organisations all provide funding, grants, and support to grassroots football clubs to improve facilities, including 3G pitches, grass pitch maintenance, pavilions, portable floodlights, goals, etc, so it's well worth exploring what is available.
Police / Local Authority Funding - In some areas, particularly where there are community regeneration priorities or high youth crime rates, local police and councils have funding available for grassroots youth sport.
Local Supermarket Donations - Approach supermarkets directly as you'll find many have community donation budgets, and even if they can't donate money, they can often provide a space in their foyer for bag packing or a collection.
Employers CSR Funding - Many medium to larger businesses will have a budget allocated to fulfil the CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) commitments, and supporting grassroots sports organisations, especially youth or minority focused ones, is something they love to do. Ask your parents to ask their employer.
JustGiving / GoFundMe - Digital fundraising pages work brilliantly when tied to a specific sponsored challenge (a walk, a run, a mountain). They make it easy for extended family and friends to sponsor players, no matter where they are in the country.
One More Thing: Our ChildrensFootball.com Partner Programme
We know how much pressure grassroots clubs are under when it comes to funding, which is why we've created something specifically designed to help, without asking anyone to spend money they weren't already going to spend.
When your team or club becomes a ChildrensFootball.com Partner, we give every one of your players, and their family and friends, a discount on their first order with us. That means parents who were already going to buy a football training gift set, a new garden goal, or some training equipment for their child can get it at an even better price simply by using your club's partner link or code.
And here's where it works for the club too: every time that discount is redeemed, we add points to your club's funding pot. Those points build up over time and can be used when your club next needs to restock, whether that's new footballs, training equipment, agility gear or end-of-season player gifts or trophies.
It's not a sponsored event. It doesn't need a WhatsApp group or a raffle book. It's just your club community shopping in a way that quietly funds your next order in the background.
If you'd like to find out more or get your club set up as a partner, visit our Partner Page here, we'd love to have you on board.
A Few Final Thoughts
The clubs that raise the most tend to do a few things well: they tie fundraisers into events that are already happening (so they're not asking parents to show up to yet another thing), they run at least one consistent background earner like bonus ball or Last Man Standing throughout the season, and they get the players involved wherever possible — because nothing opens wallets quite like a child asking for support.
You don't need to do all of these. Pick two or three that feel right for your team or club, do them well, and build from there.
Good luck — and if your team or club has a fundraising idea that's worked brilliantly and isn't on this list, let us know in the comments. We'd love to add it. And let us know if you try any out and how you get on too.
