Fundraising - Dartes Style!

Some of our Fund Raising Initiatives

Why Fund Raising is Critical for the Future

Did you know: Dartes employs a full-time paid Head Coach and a part-time paid Assistant Coach? Since they've been in post, Dartes has moved from the bottom half of clubs at Yorkshire Championships to number 2 on the age-group rankings in 2011, and has twice won the Most Improved Club award! Furthermore, the size of our National Squad has more than doubled. Without them, Doncaster's place at the forefront of Yorkshire swimming would, without a doubt, be in jeopardy.

We receive no external funding.
Therefore we need to raise at least £35,000 over and above training fees (which just about cover pool hire) in the next 12 months to retain our coaching staff and for the club to remain in its existing, successful format. In future years we will need to raise more to take account of pay increases and increasing pool hire costs.

Any shortfall in the amount of money we raise will either mean an increase in the fees to cover the deficit, or the loss of one or both of our paid coaches, and with it less water time. We therefore need more parents to become active in fund raising initiatives.

Those figures may sound impossible, but it is actually achievable if enough parents volunteer and actively get involved. To make the task appear less daunting we have devised a number of areas with a target to raise and we ask parents to volunteer to help with one or more of these areas.

Be under no illusion - Dartes will not continue in its current format beyond this season unless YOU get involved! Consider this your last warning.

Sponsorship and Grants

We require people who can write to or visit companies to seek sponsorship, and to find organizations that offer grants and put together applications for those grants.

Open Meets

We currently run four meets every year: The Minster Meet, Dartes B, The September Sprints, and Swim-along-a Santa. We need a team to organize these events and make sure they run smoothly. This task includes finding sponsors for each day, ordering the medals, being prepared to help set up the venue the night before, and being present on the day to help ensure everything runs smoothly.

Supermarket Bag Packing

Target: £5,000: We want to arrange at least four a year, and require people to help set these up and swimmers and parents to support them on the day. We want to raise £5,000 per year.

Old Clothes

We take clothing, bedding, curtains, soft toys, shoes, belts, and handbags. We have already had one collection and this has raised over £400 for the club.

Spare Change Collection

Target: £1,000: Let's see how much we can raise. Put a collecting box in your workplace, tap your colleagues for any loose change, collect loose change in a jar at home. Let's be ambitious and try and raise £1,000 by the end of August 2012! That's less than £84 per month (or just £1 from everyone at Dartes!) Hand any money already collected to Sue Clarke to have it added to the total.

If you need more inspiration or ideas for making penny collecting enormous fun, let's see if you can get enough to build something like this. Take a photo of your creation before handing your stack of pennies to Sue, and we'll post the pics here.

Easy Fundraising

Raise funds for Dartes every time you go shopping online and maybe catch yourself a great bargain along the way.

Here are just some of the big names you can shop with:

• Premier Inn
• Amazon
• Argos
• Adidas

Practically everything you might order online could contribute 2% to Dartes and often with savings for you. There are also monthly competitions to win iPads, holidays, or many more desirable prizes.

So what are you waiting for, sign up today and help your swim team the fun way.

Miscellaneous

There are other activities that we can do to raise funds. Sponsored walks or other sponsored events. For 2011 we produced a Dartes calendar. Parents who cannot help with fundraising, but would like to contribute to our efforts could instead choose to donate a regular amount each month.

To make our fund raising efforts successful and raise the money require to keep the club running in its present format we need more parents to help. If we cannot raise enough money we will loose our coaches and the fees will have to rise considerably.