March Madness Fundraising

Yeah, we know “gambling” is illegal and definitely not allowed in school… but there are no rules against a March Madness bracket tournament for charity, right?

So what’s a March Madness bracket tourney? A traditional bracket lets people pay $5 (or more) to submit a bracket with the winners of every selected match up. In other words, they guess who will win the game or games. Each person will choose a charity that they’d like the pool of $ to go to. In the end, the winner is the person with the highest number of correct choices, and their selected charity gets the dough. Sounds easy enough, right? Here are a few steps that may help you get it done.

1. Talk to the right teachers to make sure they know it’s for charity!
2. Decide on whether you’re going to use a print out bracket (keep in mind this may require more work because you have to score it manually) like this one on ESPN: http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/tournament/bracket or an online system like this one on ESPN: http://games.espn.go.com/tcmen/frontpage  or this one on facebook -  http://apps.facebook.com/thebracketchallenge/?_fb_fromhash=6eb1720961c02893a17ed8916f4a81ff.
3. Announce to students and definitely the sports teams that they can participate in the March Madness Charity Bracket Challenge. You can do this during an assembly or by handing out and posting flyers around school. Get people excited about participating by telling them it’s for charity.
4. Before the game starts, be sure to collect all entries with the charity info. You may also want to allow people to join in during the tourney, after all, the more people participate, the more $ goes to a good cause.
5. Announce or publicly post who’s in the lead and also add information on their charity.
6. When it comes time for the last game, try to do a screening at school or another large capacity location. And if you want to take it further, charge a “suggested donation” to go to the second place charity.
7. When all’s said and done, share what you’ve done with Do Something!