Fundraising Through Poker Tournaments

Friday, January 22, 2010

Fundraising Through Poker Tournaments

Last article I covered fundraising through poker in 3 specific ways. All through facebook and connecting with poker players.

1. Selling your photos on owned -through basically playing games and having your poker friends bid for you

2. Inviting poker players to causes and having them invite their friends.

3. Making a birthday wish with donations going to your cause and no presents for you.

This article I will cover setting up online tournaments and live tournaments and advise you of the pros and cons of fundraising through poker tournaments. I will also cover another poker fundraising method associated directly with tournaments which is donations of winnings and the most obvious – direct advertising of the charity or appeal.

Usually when tragedy erupts in the poker scene people think immediately of poker tournaments as a great way of fundraising through poker. Setting up online poker tournaments can be a difficult and somewhat frustrating task as a means to fundraise. Let’s look at the steps involved and the issues that arise.

Firstly, you need to find a poker room that is willing to host the tournament for you. This usually isn’t so hard but does take some time to have processed. You must remember that the poker room hosting the tournament is going to make absolutely no money from this charity venture. They usually host the tourney in hope that they will gain players they didn’t have before. In saying this, many players are reluctant to join as they simply don’t have money to spread across many sites or are branded to a particular site. There are also other things to consider when fundraising through poker tournaments. You must advertise it! Advertising costs money and time. Also; you must find the perfect tournament buy in. Do you go for quantity or quality as such? $100+$10 buy in with fewer people or $5+50c buy in with more people but most likely less funds?

I have found online poker tournaments as a method of fundraising through poker to date a waste of time. But others may have been successful. I think advertising on how to deposit directly to a charity is much more efficient and has a better outcome, let’s face it poker players will donate $10, the bigger players more. It takes less effort then playing a tournament online for 4-5hours for a limited prize. What’s easier for all involved? – Organise online tournament, advertise online tournament, deposit for online tournament, play online tournament and then forward money to charity OR advertise to poker players to donate direct to charity?

Live poker tournaments are a little different. Most people are going to go out and play them anyway. If you can ring a load of poker venues or contact them through the internet and ask them to collect, this works very well for fundraising through poker. You can also advertise the need for them to do it and they can advertise that they are . This gives double promoting of your charity event and takes minimal effort. I am not saying set up an entire charity event but rather ask for donations from players while they arrive as part of your fundraising through poker. This money can then be deposited directly to the charity the next day by each venue. Simplicity!

Let’s use APL Australia as an example. You could send an email to head office and to all the groups over facebook asking them to assist your fundraising through poker. They in turn send a mass mail to all venues, have a collection tin for players to deposit to on arrival and the tournament director deposits this cash the next day. If each registered APL player is playing that particular night that’s more than 500,000 players. All of them donate $1 each that’s a whopping $500,000 needed dollars, and the tournament directors can make a simple deposit to the fund of choice the next day. Advertisements can be done prior through various media sources.

As with organizing an online poker tournament specifically for charity fundraising through poker; organizing a live tournament has the same issues. You must arrange, have the venues / casinos agree to forfeiting their rake and making nothing and follow with advertising and getting players there for a minimum prize pool. At least with live tourneys people don’t have to take that extra step and deposit online; they do need to find the time to transit and also play though. It’s always best to stick with the normal. Contact your local venues and casinos and enquire about collecting during a set tournament schedule.

Lastly on the line of tournaments and fundraising through poker using these methods is the direct cash win donation. Many poker players globally donate percentages of their winnings directly to charities of choice. This is a great way if you have the contacts of getting that desperately needed money. Jerry Yang donated 10% of his winnings to children’s charities upon winning the WSOP main event. Barry Greenstein donates all of his winnings and then there are players such as Vanessa Rousso setting up organizations such as nolimitnoprofit.org. This is only to name a few players who are into fundraising through poker; there are heaps out there! In recent times the very much blog mentioned Erik Aude’ vowed to donate 10% of his Aussie Millions winnings to charity, seriously the list is endless! If you can find a player about to play a big event that is willing to help your chosen charity fund when they cash this is easy and simple way for fundraising through poker. It is a great way to advertise your charity to get extra funds to it as more people will want to donate and also a way that the poker players themselves can advertise their brand or play.

Finally, there is straight out advertising your fundraising through poker! Most poker magazines, newspapers, radio stations, online gaming companies, bloggers, forums etc; etc; etc will advertise free of charge and; hopefully people will donate through links, internet banking and directly through the charity or organizational sites.

Please remember; whatever method you choose fundraising through poker you must have a not for profit organization setup or appeal fund or; be donating directly to one. If you don’t you are unfortunately committing a crime! Check with your government’s regulations before making any steps to setup such fundraising ideas.

Happy fundraising through poker!