A club sells $2,000 worth of candy bars, cookie dough, or gift wrap through a fundraising company. Everyone's thrilled — that's real money, right? Then the invoice from the company arrives, and after their cut, the club nets somewhere between $800 and $1,000. Nobody did anything wrong. Nobody miscounted. That's just how the math on that kind of fundraiser has always worked — it's just rarely explained up front, so it feels like the club came up short instead of the fundraiser simply not being what it looked like.

This is the most common fundraiser small clubs try first, usually because it requires almost no planning — a company mails you a catalog and a box of product, members sell, you send back a check. Easy to start is not the same as good economics.

Gross Sales Isn't the Same as Money You Can Spend

Before comparing fundraiser types, it helps to separate two numbers that get treated as one:

  • Gross revenue — the total dollar amount that changed hands.
  • Net revenue — what's actually left for your club after the real cost of running it.

A vendor-run product sale (candy, cookie dough, wrapping paper, popcorn tins) typically nets 40–55% of gross — the company's manufacturing and distribution cost eats the rest before your club ever sees a check. A club that "sold $2,000" often nets under $1,000. That's not a scam or a bad vendor — it's the built-in economics of paying a company to produce, package, and ship a physical product on your behalf.

None of this means product fundraisers are always the wrong call — for a group of kids selling door-to-door, the sales activity itself sometimes matters as much as the money. But if the actual goal is raising the most dollars for the least club effort, it's worth knowing upfront that roughly half the gross number is gone before it reaches you.

Three Fundraiser Types That Actually Keep Most of What They Raise

1. A ticketed event, priced with the margin built in. A fish fry, spaghetti dinner, or pancake breakfast can net well over half of gross — if the ticket price is set with real margin in mind, not just "what feels fair." If a $15 ticket costs you $5 in food per person, that's $10 net per seat before you've sold a single raffle ticket at the same event. The labor is real (cooking, serving, cleanup), but it's volunteer time, not a line item that eats your revenue the way a vendor's cut does.

2. A raffle or 50/50 drawing. This is close to the best margin available to a small club. The "product" is a ticket that costs almost nothing to produce, and even a straight 50/50 split — half to the winner, half to the club — nets your organization 50% of every dollar with essentially no overhead. If the prize is a donated basket or gift certificate instead of cash, the club's share climbs even higher.

3. Sponsorships. Already covered in depth elsewhere — but worth naming here for the margin comparison specifically. A sponsorship has no cost of goods at all. The only real "cost" is the time spent asking and following up. A $250 sponsorship check is $250 net, full stop — the best margin of anything on this list, which is exactly why it's worth building into every event alongside whatever else you're running.

How to Actually Decide

You don't have to pick just one — most clubs' best events combine two or three of these (a dinner with a 50/50 raffle running the whole night, for instance). The real question for each option is simple:

  • Who's doing the work? A vendor product sale needs the least planning but keeps the least money. A ticketed dinner needs the most labor but keeps the most.
  • What can your members actually pull off? A raffle takes almost no lead time. A full dinner needs a kitchen crew and a few weeks of planning.
  • Does this event have a second purpose? A dinner brings the community into your space and builds visibility a product sale never will — sometimes that's worth the extra labor even before counting the dollars.

The honest version of "which fundraiser should we run" isn't "which one raises the most gross dollars" — it's "which one keeps the most of what it raises, for the effort our club can actually give it this year."

The Short Version

  • Gross sales and net revenue are different numbers. A vendor-run product fundraiser often nets 40–55% of what it appears to raise — the company's cut comes out before your club sees anything.
  • A ticketed event nets well, if priced right. Set the price to cover real food cost plus a real margin, not just "what feels fair."
  • A raffle or 50/50 is close to the best margin available — minimal cost to run, and the club keeps roughly half of everything collected, more if the prize is donated.
  • Sponsorships have no cost of goods at all — the best margin of any fundraiser type, worth building into any event you run.
  • Pick based on labor and capacity, not just the sales pitch. The lowest-effort option is rarely the highest-net option.

Every fundraiser type on this list can work. The only mistake is assuming the dollar amount on the sign-up sheet is the dollar amount that ends up in your account.

Tracking what each event actually nets — not just what it grossed — gets a lot easier with real numbers in one place. Potluck's donation and event tools keep that math visible, free to start →

If your fundraising strategy leans on business sponsorships, see How to Get Local Business Sponsors for Your Fundraiser and Why Sponsors Don't Renew (and What to Do About It) for the two best-margin pieces of this puzzle.