Former Major Leaguer Starts Fundraising Site
Need a uniform? Need funds to travel to a tournament? How about money for college? Try asking your Twitter followers or
Facebook friends. A new fundraising website,
SimpleWayToFundraise, launched this week in beta mode. The site was created by
former professional baseball player Jason Romano,
who says money for sports tournaments was often
difficult to come by when he was a youth sports
player.
"We didn't grow up with much money and you have to travel to
tournaments across the country," he said.
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These days, if teens want a shot at making the major leagues or playing
college baseball, they have to play travel baseball and complete in pricy
tournaments to get noticed by recruiters.
"The low income families can't afford to play travel baseball,"
Romano said.
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Having car washes and selling door-to-door can be dangerous and time
consuming, Romano says. Online
fundraising is
where the money's at.
The online fundraising websites space is a crowded one. There's DonorsChoose,
Causes, Crowdrise, Kickstarter
and many, many others.
Romano says what sets his website apart is the fact it is simple to use and
has a sports bent. He said he wants it to be the go-to site when parents, kids
or teams think about avenues to raise money for sports. Technically, anyone who
needs to raise money can use the site, Romano says, but his passion is helping
youth sports players.
SimpleWayToFundraise officially launches next week.
Here's how it works: Create a page and link it to your PayPal account. Write
a little blip about yourself (or your child), why you're fundraising and how
much money you'll need. You can add sponsors to the page, too. Then you'll get
a custom link you can email out to friends and family, tweet and post on your Facebook
Timeline.
Donations can be made in any amount -- there is no minimum and no maximum --
but the site does feature buttons for donations in the amounts of $25, $50 and
$100. Donors can also be anonymous if they'd like.
Travel sports usually include showcases and tournaments where college
recruiters look for top talent. These events cost about $300-$400 each. That's
in addition to unforms (about $150), bats and equipment, and paying just to be
on a traveling youth sports team (about $800-$1,200).
"The typical family, they probably spend about $4,000-$6,000 for one
child for one summer" of
travel baseball,
according to Romano.
Romano played for the Dodgers, Rockies,
Rays, Reds and Rangers during his 12-year career. With travel baseball being as
expensive as it is these day, Romano says if he were a youth now, he wouldn't
have been discovered.
"I had a chance to play
professional baseball
and live my dream," he said.
Romano's been collecting research and talking with numerous sports players
for the past two years to figure out how to best develop the site. He's funding
the project himself.
Currently, there are about 100 fundraising pages. Romano says he hopes to
reach 5,000 fundraising pages by late summer and eventually wants to have
100,000 pages. Right now, the average donation is around $50, and the average
fundraising campaign earns about $1,200-$1,300, he said.
What do you think about SimpleWayToFundraise? Would you use it? Tell us in
the comments.
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