How Australian clubs can raise $5,000+ a year with merch — the honest guide

Most community clubs in Australia are still fundraising the way they did twenty years ago — chocolate drives, sausage sizzles, raffle books passed between families who already gave last time. It works, but it burns out your volunteers and caps out fast. Merch is different. Done properly, it turns your existing supporters into a steady, low-effort income stream that runs year-round.

This guide walks through what a realistic merch fundraiser looks like for an Australian club with 100–500 members, the numbers behind it, and the things nobody tells you until you've already ordered 200 unsold hoodies.

Why merch works better than most fundraisers

A good fundraiser has three properties: people actually want the thing you're selling, it takes almost no effort to run once set up, and the money keeps coming without you asking the same families again and again. Merch quietly ticks all three.

• Your members already want club-branded gear — hoodies, caps, water bottles, stickers. You're not convincing anyone to buy something they don't need.
• Print-on-demand means no stock, no upfront cash, no leftovers gathering dust in the clubhouse.
• Every parent, grandparent, sponsor and former member is a potential buyer — not just the ones at training on Tuesday.

The numbers — what a realistic year looks like

Here's a rough model for a club with 250 members running a store with a 50/50 profit split (the default). Assumes a $45 average sale price and a modest one-item-per-member-per-year purchase rate — most active clubs beat this once the store is properly promoted.

These numbers scale with two things: how often your supporters see the store, and how good the design is. Clubs that put the store link in every email footer and pin it to their social bios consistently do 3–5× better than clubs that share it once and forget.

What actually sells (and what doesn't)

After looking at thousands of orders across community stores, the pattern is boringly consistent. A few products do most of the work.

1. Hoodies. Always hoodies. Especially in the lead-up to winter and finals.
2. Caps and beanies — cheap, giftable, and easy to wear casually.
3. T-shirts with a subtle design (not a giant chest logo). Members wear these more, which sells more.
4. Water bottles and drink bottles — good for junior sport clubs.
5. Stickers and small accessories as add-ons at checkout.

Things that consistently underperform: mugs (shipping is expensive relative to price), phone cases (models change too fast), and anything with a design that looks like it came out of a template.

Setting your price split

Every merch sale has four slices — print cost, shipping, payment processing (Stripe), and the remaining profit. That profit is what gets split between you and the platform. There are three sensible modes to think in:

• Fundraise mode — you take the larger share of profit. Best when your goal is raising money and your supporters aren't especially price-sensitive.
• Balanced (default 50/50) — a fair middle ground. Good for most clubs.
• Member benefit mode — you take less so members pay less. Best when you want members to feel the club is giving them something back.

"The best fundraisers are the ones your supporters don't feel like they're being asked to fund. Merch sells itself because people actually want it."

— Every treasurer, eventually

The three things clubs get wrong

The clubs that don't raise much from merch almost always make one of these mistakes:

1. They launch once, post it in Facebook once, and never mention it again. The store link belongs everywhere — email footers, social bios, event signage.
2. They overthink the products. Start with 3–4 items. Add more later based on what sells.
3. They forget grandparents. Grandparents are your best merch customers. Make sure your announcement reaches parents, not just players.

Getting started

The whole point of print-on-demand merch is that you can test the idea in an afternoon. Upload your logo, pick a few products, share the link with a small group, and see what happens over the next 30 days. If nothing sells, you've lost nothing. If people buy, you've just found a new income stream your club can run for years.