Swim-a-thon Fundraisers and Fundraising Ideas

Hosting a swim-a-thon and exploring unique swim team fundraising ideas can be a great way to bring in extra funding for your swim team or swim club. Like many other sports and team organizations, swim teams often need additional funds to help cover equipment, training tools, and travel expenses for competitions. Swim team fundraisers can also be great for updating the pool, bleachers, and other swim facilities. Of course, not only swim teams can host swimming fundraisers. Schools and other charity organizations can also host swim-a-thons. Keep your audience in mind, and always have a lifeguard on duty.

Below we’ve outlined the basic guidelines for hosting a swim-a-thon fundraiser and included more interesting swim team fundraising ideas.

How Do Swim-a-thon Fundraisers Work?

Collecting Swimathon Donations

An online p2p crowdfunding campaign is essential to raising money with a swim-a-thon fundraiser. Crowdfunding websites allow your swimmers and coaches to share their fundraising page and get donations from friends and family. Some key features of our peer to peer software for swim clubs are below.

Encourage healthy competition to motivate participants to raise more donations by providing incentives and prizes (think swim gear, gift cards, electronics) for the top fundraisers. Read more on how our software helps you encourage your peer-to-peer participants to fundraise.

Unique Swim-a-thon Fundraising Ideas and Variations

You can plan many variations as part of your swim team fundraising event to encourage teamwork and add an extra element of excitement. The creative options are endless – just have fun!

• Arrange participants into teams and offer awards for the team that swims the most laps during the event.
• Add a twist to your swim-a-thon and host a swim-a-thon relay. A relay removes the pressure from one individual as team members alternate laps, giving them a short break to catch their breath between turns and encouraging teamwork.
• Coaches can participate in the fundraising event and the coach can even swim for a team or relay.
• Swimathons are popular high school fundraisers but don’t forget that a swim-a-thon can be created for any level or age group of swimmers. If you are raising funds to help support the development of a children’s learn-to-swim program, your swim-a-thon event can be based around laps swam by kids on kick-boards or the amount of time spent treading water.
• Dive teams could create dive-a-thon events in which divers are challenged to execute several different dives in a specified amount of time.

Hosting a Swimathon After Party

Swim-a-thons are great fundraisers because not only are they bringing money in to support the swim team or club, but they also provide an opportunity for sports teams to interact in a fun, social environment while increasing community awareness. Some organizations make an entire day out of their swim team fundraiser, which allows you to raise even more money. Following the actual swimming event, attendees and participants are invited to a community picnic or BBQ. Food and drinks are donated by local businesses, and tickets are sold. Perhaps a local band or D.J. is interested in performing in support of your cause.

Several additional activities can be included as part of a Swimathon campaign, such as a fundraising raffle or charity auction where local businesses donate gift certificates, goods, and services to auction off as prizes at the event. Raffle tickets can be sold during the swim-a-thon, and the winners announced at the social gathering, along with awards for the top-performing swimmers.

Read more on planning great nonprofit events.

Recruiting Swimathon Sponsors

Another great way to bring in funds for your swim group is to look for local business or corporate sponsorships. Businesses often seek ways to engage with the local community by supporting a noble cause. Use your networks to reach out to businesses and encourage their participation by becoming an official sponsor of the swim team or swim-a-thon through a tax-deductible donation. Offer benefits such as recognition in event programs, on the club website, and on signs around the pool. In addition, a company can choose to sponsor a student by matching the donations a student will raise. Ask sponsors to help spread the word about your fundraising event by posting announcements on bulletin boards, special mentions on websites, and encouraging employees to get involved.

Always be sure to thank your sponsors for their contributions! If they feel appreciated, there’s a good chance they could come on board as a sponsor again in future years.

Other Crowdfunding Resources for Swim-a-thons

For additional information about hosting a swim-a-thon or other peer-to-peer fundraising event, visit our Walk-a-thon resources. There are a number of guidelines and templates to assist you in your planning efforts, including sample flyers, pledge forms, and tips to help you recruit event sponsors and create a sample press release to promote your fundraising event.

See our blog on Charity Swimming Events Create a Splash.