The Quizbowl Resource Center

We're not a new team, but I thought this would be the best place for this thread to go, since it's advice. My team (Lexington) is looking for ways to raise funds to cover most of our desired national competition, which consists of an A and a B team for NHBB and HSNCT and an A team for NSC. We are hosting one tournament this year. We don't get any funding, either. Besides hosting a tournament, does anyone have any suggestions on how to fundraise for nationals?

Some ideas:
-Hold a tournament for the community. Run it pub quiz style. This can be history-focused if you're looking to do it for NHBB, or just general knowledge. Do this at a restaurant in town (like a bar and grill). They'll probably be happy to help if they can earn money off of food and drinks and people pay $20 or so to compete.
-Write for NHBB (or NAQT, etc.)! We/they always need questions written, and the more questions you write, the more you can offset tournament costs.
-Book flights early. If you know you're going, book flights months in advance - they're cheaper then.
-Talk to local historical societies for NHBB funding. Some teams have gotten their entire nationals registration fees covered that way.
-Approach your school administration. Stating the obvious here, but try talking to multiple people - sometimes different people have access to different accounts.

Based on my experiences fundraising for the Arcadia team (which tends to send 2-3 teams every year to multiple nationals), running tournaments is really the most effective way to get money in general. We've also done stuff like selling fruit snacks in school, but honestly doing that kind of fundraising really sucks for everyone involved, and you actually don't make much either.

Another method that I don't think gets mentioned enough is writing for NAQT. This isn't really a "team" fundraising strategy, but for individual players who are half-decent writers, it's a workable strategy: make money for quiz bowl, from quiz bowl! Most good high school players can usually write 4-5 acceptable middle school questions per hour, which is like $15/hour at NAQT rates. You only get paid once every 3 months, so it's not exactly fast cash, but it'd probably work in the long term.

I am a NAQT writer and so is my teammate Devin Shang.

quadrisecant wrote:I am a NAQT writer and so is my teammate Devin Shang.

Neato! Attending both HSNCT and NHBB will probably cost a little around $1000 per person total, so each you of guys needs to write around 300 tossups for this to work. At 4 tossups an hour, that's 75 hours of work. There are about 25 weeks left until HSNCT (sooner until NHBB), but that basically means you guys only need to write 3 hours of tossups every week to make enough money to cover your nats fees entirely.

Of course, the actual tournament payments are due earlier, and NAQT doesn't pay you immediately, but you get the idea. Obviously you don't have to do it this way, but I'm just pointing out that it's wholly feasible.

Corry wrote:Another method that I don't think gets mentioned enough is writing for NAQT. This isn't really a "team" fundraising strategy, but for individual players who are half-decent writers, it's a workable strategy: make money for quiz bowl, from quiz bowl! Most good high school players can usually write 4-5 acceptable middle school questions per hour, which is like $15/hour at NAQT rates. You only get paid once every 3 months, so it's not exactly fast cash, but it'd probably work in the long term.

Writing questions for different people in general helps with affording Nats trips. I paid for my hotel, my entry fee and my flight for ACF Nationals this past April by taking on a few different writing assignments. It all depends on how much you can write and how good your questions are, but writing quizbowl questions can be an effective way of "fundraising" for yourself for a Nats entry fee.

Great Bustard wrote:Some ideas:
-Talk to local historical societies for NHBB funding. Some teams have gotten their entire nationals registration fees covered that way.
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Thanks for the suggestion, seeing as we live in Lexington I'm sure that our historical society would be more than happy to learn that History Bowl exists. Hopefully they can give us some funding as well!

Lisgar does open community "trivia nights" pub quiz style. We charge $10-$20 (depending on the "extras" we provide) for 10-15 rounds of trivia, and hold it two to three times a year on Friday evenings, and they last usually around from 7pm to 10pm.

For these events, we also do other forms of fundraising; we try and get donations from local companies and hold a silent auctions. Sometimes, we charge some more, do it in conjunction with a charity group at school, and provide guests with food. These events usually bring in more money because of the extra publicity, even when profits are split between the Quizbowl club and the charity group. In November, one of these "trivia nights" gave the Quizbowl club $1000 of money everything was settled.

These events target the general public as well as the student body; ads are placed in community newspapers, the radio, etc in order for more people to come and to get more money.

Hosting tournaments is another big cash grab. A small 10 team event can lead to a relatively effortless $300 in profit.

I know a school that hosts a Teacher vs. Students tournament within their school, which is both a fundraiser and a good way to show the community how fun Quizbowl is. I think they set it up during lunch times or after school so they didn't have to plan a whole tournament. Seems to be simple and a quick way to earn some money, depending on how much you charge for registration fees.