Sell merchandise, spirit wear, and sponsorships, and collect donations during registration and from the website (through your online store). Everything you are selling or collecting money for must be created as "items" in the Merchandise catalog in the admin console (Manage Team > Merchandise).

Covered in this Article:

Fundraising Through Your Team Site

Blog Posts

Our sales and marketing team is hard at work researching and referencing their personal experiences in the sports arena to provide our customers with tips on making the most of their fundraising efforts.

Read more about fundraising in our blogs:

Setting Up a SwimOutlet Store

Swimtopia has partnered with SwimOutlet, the web's most popular swim shop, to streamline the management of your merchandise offerings directly from your team site!

As mentioned in our Merchandise Tips blog post, setting up a SwimOutlet Team Store not only saves your merchandise coordinators a ton of time and headaches, but your team can sell fundraising items and make cash back on every sale.

Our mission is to ensure swim team management doesn't stand in the way of swim team fun! We hope this partnership alleviates this stress on your team volunteers and puts the F.U.N. back in fundraising!

➞ Check out our ▶️ Quick Feature Demo - Adding a SwimOutlet Team Store

➞ See the SwimOutlet Team Store Snippet article to set up your SwimOutlet Team Store

Accepting Donations: Swim-a-thon, Coaches Gift, Scholarships

In addition to marketing your merchandise, you can accept donations for events (i.e., Swim-a-thon), coach gifts, athlete scholarships, etc.

➞ From Your Website

You can add these donation and scholarship options to your website using the Online Store feature and set up donation amounts as merchandise items.

➞ On Your Registration Form

You can also add these options to your registration forms in the Merchandise tab as "Additional Merchandise." Parents can have a one-stop shop experience when they register.

We've provided instructions for implementing either or both options in the Selling Options section below.

Corporate and Family Sponsorships

You can create your sponsor levels and provide an opportunity for corporate and family sponsorship purchases from your website and during registration.

Teams can include these options in the registration form in the Merchandise tab as "Additional Merchandise," so parents can purchase on behalf of their company, or as a family sponsor.

Some teams will set up a specific "Sponsorships" page on their website to provide detailed information about the sponsorship levels, the perks, options to purchase online, and who to contact as needed.

➞ See the Sponsorships Help Center article for how to set up your sponsors.

Heat Sheet Sales

Teams using our meet management system, Meet Maestro, can also fundraise by selling their heat sheets. To entice sponsorship sales, these teams can include the sponsor logos or names using the "heat sheet banner" feature when setting up your sponsors in Swimtopia.

➞ See the Heat Sheet Banner section of our Sponsorships Help Center article for details.

Sporfie Live Stream Fundraising

We have partnered with Sporfie to offer our customers another fundraising option!

Sporfie is an easy-to-use live streaming and fundraising platform that allows users to stream and share practices or meets using nothing but their phone (without having to even log into an account). Sporfie is versatile and can be used by athletes to celebrate exciting races, coaches to analyze swim strokes, or parents to simply peek into a practice.

To sum it up, Sporfie:

Allows you to live stream your meets & practices–anytime, anywhere
Is FREE for families, friends, and fans to watch
Provides picture-in-picture for enhanced viewing
Is cloud-recorded for playback on demand
Allows your team to raise thousands of dollars in one quick fundraiser*

➞ Learn more here: https://www.swimtopia.com/swimtopia-has-partnered-with-sporfie/

Creating and Managing Your Items

Adding Items

To create a new item to be available for purchase, click +Add Merchandise Item.

Enter the details and an image to describe your item, including whether it can be personalized.

➞ Image Formats: PNG, JPG, and GIF are accepted, but PNG is best for websites.

» Note: Gender-specific items such as team suits will automatically display for each athlete during registration according to his or her gender. Swimtopia will not calculate sales tax. If you need to include tax, add it to the item price.

Click Save to save your new item in the Merchandise list.

Adding Options - Sizes, Colors, Pricing, Order Limits

Options such as sizes, colors, etc. can be added to any merchandise item.
Each individual "option" offered can have its own price if it differs from the default you set when you created the item.
You can also set each size/option to have its own order quantity limit*. Once an option is sold out, it can not be ordered until that limit is increased.

» *Note: Order quantity limits can only be set if an item has options (i.e., t-shirt sizes). If you need to limit other items, such as caps, visors, yard signs, etc., you have to create the item as an option also, so you can set a limit that can be enforced. If you do not do this, you must monitor and remove an item when the limit you have to fulfill is reached.

Add options by clicking Edit or by clicking the item title from the catalog items list:

To edit the name, default price, image, or personalization settings for your item, click Edit item.

To add sizes or other options, click +Add Option for each option offered.

» Tip: The order of your options can be changed by clicking and dragging the items up and down.

For each new option, enter a name and whether that option requires a price override (a specific price for that option only) or an order limit.

Click Save to go back to the item detail.

Items with limits will show as "sold out" during registration when all the options are gone. When purchasing from the online store, an error will display if a quantity is added to the cart that is over the limit:

Updating Merchandise VS Creating New

"Merchandise" items are not tied to seasons, so if you need to make changes after sales have occurred or when setting up for a new season, it’s best to create a new item rather than edit an old one. If you were to simply edit the old item, it would effectively change the description of the item for all past orders, too, and would affect tracking and reporting.

Also, if you have any merchandise items with order limits, last season’s orders will be seen as accumulating toward the overall quantity ordered.

If the changes to an item are minor, it may be easier to make a copy of last season’s item and then make your edits (rather than create a whole new item). Go to Manage Team > Merchandise, then click on the item, and click on “Copy.”

Archived Merchandise

You can “Archive” a merchandise item and have it not show in your catalog. You can also choose to display archived items and restore them to the catalog. Archived items are not deleted; they just don’t appear unless you choose to show them. Archived items won’t be an option when setting up offers in registration or your team store and offers using archived items will be removed from registration and the team store. Offers using restored items will reappear when the item is restored.

Selling Location Options

Selling During Registration

➞ Spirit Wear Sales

➞ See our article on the Registration: Merchandise Section to add your merchandise items for sale during registration.

➞ Donations & Sponsorships

Option 1: Include donation amounts in the Merchandise tab as an "Additional Merchandise" Option - parents can donate when they register to get it done all at once.

➞ See our article on the Registration: Merchandise Section to add your donation/sponsorship options for sale during registration.

Option 2: If you don't want to deal with creating "merchandise" items for donations, you could use an acknowledgment form on the main page of your registration to ask if anyone would like to donate to an athlete scholarship, coach's gift, etc. You would have to determine a specific price for this since you can only list one amount (unless you create more than one acknowledgment form to provide multiple price options), and you would make this optional.

You could also create a Role called "Team Scholarships" or "Coaches Gift" and select to have anyone who chooses to do this assigned to the Role so you have a good list to communicate with if you want.

➞ See the Acknowledgement Section of the registration Help Center article - Registration Form: Main Section

Selling From Your Website (Team Store or any webpage)

PREMIUM

This feature is available to our Premium customers.

Spirit wear helps teams proudly look and feel like a team. Our online store lets you fundraise through your spirit wear sales. By creating a way for teams to easily work with their choice of dealer, sell items, and manage inventory, Swimtopia allows you to stay in charge of both your items and your proceeds.

➞ Online Payment Required

The payment account with Stripe (our vendor) must be set up from within your team site. Standard credit card processing fees apply (3.4% + 30c per transaction), and there is no option to push that fee to the buyer as is possible during registration.

➞ Website Display (online store or any page)

Merchandise, donations, and sponsorship options can be displayed on any web page using our Merchandise Offer Snippet, so it does not have to be on your team store page to be visible, but you do have to enable the online store feature since any purchase outside of registration flows through the store checkout process.

➞ Setup for Guest Checkout

We do not currently support guest checkout. If a non-member wishes to purchase merchandise, donate, or sponsor, they will either need to do this through a member, or you can set up a "Guest" account to allow visitors to donate. Here's how:

To collect online payments from guests (for donations, sponsorships, swim-a-thons, etc), you can create a generic Sponsorship "Parent" account to allow your guests to use. Here are the steps if you would like to consider this solution:

Step 1: Set up an e-mail address in an external email program (for example - swimathondonations@gmail.com)

Step 2: Create a new "Parent" account from your People page and utilize that newly created e-mail address (see example below)

Step 3: Check the newly created email address for the SwimTopia activation e-mail, which prompts you to create a password.

Step 4: Instruct your guest users on how to donate:

Go to your Store page, click on "Edit Page Content" in the upper right-hand corner

Select "+ Add Snippet"

Drag and drop the Text Area Snippet to the grey area above your Swim-a-thon donation merchandise items

When prompted, add instructions for your guest users

Once completed, it will look like this on your online store page

Note: Your Sponsorship Coordinator (or anyone with the login credentials to this sponsorship email) could sign in and take payment from the sponsors over the phone as well.

Step 5: Check the personalization options when creating your sponsor levels as merchandise items in your catalog (Manage Team > Merchandise). This will instruct your guest buyers to input their contact details; otherwise, you won't know who made the purchase.

You will want to change the item price amount to match what the sponsor plans to donate before sending the information for the sponsor to check out (or, set up incremental amounts as discussed in the donation section below)

Website View:

Step 6: Forward the purchase confirmation e-mail to you and your respective buyer for their records. (And your Treasurer if necessary)

Go to Manage Team > Website > Online Store and scroll to the bottom to "send a copy to" and enter your e-mail address:

This will send you a copy of all of the Sponsorships (Items) purchased. For the ones that were purchased by guest users, you will need to forward the receipt to the e-mail noted in the personalization section.

➞ Donations & Sponsorship Setup

You can accept these donations through the Online Store by setting up donation amounts as merchandise items.

Summary of Steps (includes links to specific instructions):

Enable the Online Store feature (under Manage Team > Website)
Create donation amounts as "merchandise items" (detailed steps below)
Display these donation "items" on your store or any webpage using the Merchandise Offer Snippet (access snippets from your Welcome menu > Edit Page or Template Content).
Orders will show up under Merchandise > Orders. ➞ See Managing Online Store Orders

Details starting with Step 2: Create donation amounts as "merchandise items"

To get started, create an item called "Swim-A-Thon" in your team store (Manage Team > Merchandise > Add Merchandise Item)

We recommend naming the item the ACTIVE season year and then the item name (this allows for better reporting each season) and also checking the box to allow for personalization so that parents can donate for multiple athletes:

Next, you will add multiple "options" in different dollar amounts so they can purchase up to the total that they wish to donate and then drag the arrows on the left to put them in the desired order.

➞ Donation Amounts: The online store does not allow for manual entry of any dollar amount by the purchaser, but you can set up one donation item with multiple pricing options. If you don’t want to provide specific amount options (like $25, $50, $75, $100...), you could offer a donation amount that is small enough that people can “order“ multiple amounts. For example, you could set the donation amount to be $5, and if they wanted to donate $25, they could order 5 of them.

Once you have created the merchandise item, you will want to add it to your online store. Navigate to your website and select your online store page. Hover over your name and select Edit Page Content and then Add Snippet.

Drag the Merchandise Snippet onto your page (into the grey edit area) and choose your item from the dropdown menu:

Now parents can add these amounts to their cart until they total up to their donation amount. Parents can use the "Personalization" field to write in the name of the swimmer that is to be credited with the donation amount.

And check out with their total:

Team Admins can run the Online Store Orders report to see how much each swimmer has raised:

Check the box next to the order numbers and then choose Order Pick-Up Checklist from the dropdown menu to run the report for each order:

Select Download CSV:

This report will list all of the donations made, along with the amount and the swimmer. You will need to manually total the amounts (or use a spreadsheet formula to help you).

➞ Additional Swim-A-Thon Options

If our option will not work for your "Swim-a-thon" fundraiser, you may find an option like https://www.dojiggy.com/athon-software/ useful, but donations are managed outside of the team website.

» Note: Swim-a-Thon is a registered trademark owned by the USA Swimming Foundation. Any pledge-for-length event branding that resembles a Swim-a-Thon, including lap-a-thons, aqua-thons, pool-a-thons, or other similarly branded programs involving lap swimming, is a violation of this trademark.

➞ Meet Entry Fees

Meet Entry Fees can be tracked but not collected online during meet signup. You can add this fee as a merchandise item to collect during registration or through the online store. For more information on Meet Entry Fees, ➞ See the Meet Templates article.

Linking to Another Vendor Site

If you have items for sale through a swim shop other than SwimOutlet, there are a few options depending on how you want to link to your vendor:

➞ Option #1: Text area snippet with link to vendor site

You can include a link on any page using a Text Area snippet - If you just have a link, you can put that in a text area anywhere on your site. You can also include it in your registration confirmation message.

➞ Option #2: Create a new page with an alias to the vendor site

Add an Alias on a merchandise page you create to lead to the vendor's online store - See the Alias section of our online help article Managing Menus and Navigation and ▶️ Training Videos: Your Site's Content and Appearance)

➞ Option #3: Use "embed code" or "widget" to link to the vendor site

If they provide “embed code” or “widget” ➞ See Embed a Widget—custom code from other sites

Let us know if you need help setting it up. Submit a support ticket with the information.

Reports

Merchandise Reports

Regardless of how you utilize the "Merchandise" feature, the reporting options you will reference will depend on where you are selling these items.

Registration Orders: Viewable from the Registrations > Registrants# page, or from the Reports page
Online Store Orders: Viewable from Merchandise > Orders (link to the page provided from the Reports page)
SwimOutlet Team Store Orders: Viewable from SwimOutlet only

» Note: If selling via registration and the store, you'll need to run two different sets of reports to capture orders. (Integrated reporting is not available at this time, but has been requested. Separate reports are beneficial when teams sell via the store after registration or sell completely separate items in each location.)

See ➞ our Merchandise Reports - Registration and Online Store Orders article for details.

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