Whether you’re starting an AAU travel basketball team or running a seasoned organization, fundraising to help your parents and players offset expenses for the upcoming season is a need to address. Luckily, you’re in the right place: we’re covering more than 100 fundraising ideas to help your AAU travel team to achieve its monetary goals!

This article will address how to use a volunteer-led car wash to help your AAU organization raise funds. A one-day car wash can help your organization raise between $200 – $1,000 with a little elbow grease, water and soap. Read on to see how to get started, what to expect, and how you can you use a car wash to benefit your travel basketball team.

How to Set Up Your Car Wash

The first thing you and your organization should cover is when and where you can put on a car wash. Streets with plenty of traffic will help you increase the number of drive-up customers to your car wash. Additionally, setting the date for a weekend gives your customers a more-leisurely opportunity to take advantage of the car wash.

One place to start is contacting automobile part retailers. Advance Auto Parts and AutoZone, for instance, are big supporters of community events and will provide volunteers with soap, buckets, sponges and water to use for the car wash. All these businesses have required from organizations in the past is to contact the store manager and get onto their calendar of events.

If your team includes elementary, middle or high school students, car washes are an excellent fundraisers to use these student athletes. Your team can build relationships with one another while earning money for their cause. You still need appropriate levels of adult supervision, however, to have a successful event.

How to Prepare for the Car Wash

Once you’ve set your date and location, start recruiting volunteers for the event. You’ll want to have at least 10 individuals participating for every 2-4 hours of the event. If you’re planning to have an all-day car wash, solicit as many as 16-20 individuals to help your travel basketball team put on the fundraising event.

If you are setting up at a business or area that does not supply you with cleaning materials, you’ll need buy at a discount store or solicit from team parents multiple buckets, sponges, and at least one gallon – or more – of soap that is safe to use on cars. And of course, you will also need a water hose and water source.

Next, there are two ways to set pricing for the your car wash. First, your travel organization can choose to leave it up to the customers and ask strictly for donations. Most customers will recognize that the car wash is a fund-raising opportunity and give amounts between $10-$25 for a single vehicle to help your cause.

The second way to set a price for your AAU travel team car wash is to for one set amount per vehicle. Your volunteers should say this price is the “suggested minimum donation amount,” a phrase to use in hopes of soliciting additional funds from the customer. Odd amounts such as $15 are good as customers who have $20 bills will often allow your travel team to keep the change.

Finally, will your organization sell any additional items at the car wash? For example, adding a bake sale with homemade goodies or team merchandise for followers is another money-making opportunity at your car wash. Price these items in advance for your volunteers and have a price sheet readily available

Hot to Promote the Car Wash

In advance, you should promote all of your fundraising event on social media. Ask a parent to put together an image to share among your followers, detailing what, where, and when on the image. You should post this multiple times throughout the week: at least once seven days before the car wash and once again 24 hours before the travel basketball team’s fundraiser.

You will also need some old-fashion resources to promote the car wash, too. Create cardboard signs or posters that your volunteers can hold up to alert passers-by to the car wash. As well, you can create yard signs – placed several blocks away from the location of the car wash – that alert individuals to your AAU travel basketball team’s fundraiser.

What to Expect the Day of the Car Wash

In terms of setting up, you’ll like need a small table, pop-up canopy and folding lawn chairs for the day. This gives your volunteers a spot where they can get out of the sun in between cleaning vehicles to rest. Providing a cooler with drinks for your volunteers is another way to show these individuals your appreciation.

An important last-minute item some individuals forget is a container to hold the cash once it’s collected from customers. You can either use a cash apron, money bag or canister to hold the monetary donations you collect for your AAU travel basketball team. Having one team member in charge of collecting the donations reduces the risk of misplaced cash.

Beyond the volunteers who are washing cars, you’ll also want to put individuals somewhere safe near the road with your signs. Another suggestion is to have a bucket to collect donations from passers-by. While these individuals may not need their car wash, some will gladly pull up beside your volunteers and donate cash for a worthy cause.

Wrapping Up Your Car Wash

When your event finishes, you’ll need to clean up any messes that your travel basketball team volunteers made during the car wash. This is an important step as you may want to revisit this fundraiser – and perhaps location – again for the next AAU season. You’ll also need to return any borrowed or rented items used for this event.

A step that will help build your organization’s credibility in the community is to send thank you notes to any businesses or individuals that made your event successful. A nice touch is to have all of your travel team players to sign these notes as well as sending a photograph of the team that their contributions benefited.

Finally, ensure that a full count of the final event proceeds is made with at least one member of your team’s administrator present. If your organization is an incorporated entity, the requirement is to report any proceeds (net any expenses you’ve incurred) for tax purposes. Once this count is made, make provisions to deposit the money into your travel organization’s bank account.

Do you have any photographs, videos or success stories you can share with our audience? Leave them in the comment section below or email those to travelbasketballusa@gmail.com, and we’ll reach out to you. Make sure you join our email list below to stay informed about future articles in our fundraising series.

This is one article in our “Fundraising 101” series. Click here to see 100 more ideas on how you can raise money to fund your AAU travel basketball team.