This Free Tool Helped a Soccer Dad Raise $2,100 for His Daughter’s Team

Remember Sally Foster wrapping paper? Or Boy Scout popcorn? How about World’s Finest Chocolate?

You’d walk door to door and put on your sweetest smile. Can you help me raise money for my school by buying this overpriced item?

Or, if you were shy like me, you’d make your dad take the catalog and order forms into work, so he could guilt his co-workers into helping his (adorable) daughter win that handheld TV. Or those super cool moon boots.

Times are changing, though. Now, you can raise money for yourself, your family, a team or an organization by doing your normal shopping online through Flipgive, a cash-back portal.

What Is Flipgive?

Flipgive is the latest and greatest way to fundraise — without selling wrapping paper, popcorn and chocolates.

It’s not a crowdfunding site, either.

You don’t have to walk door-to-door, bug your coworkers or random extended family, or post about it all over social media.

Instead, Flipgive allows you to create a fundraising “team.” This team could be for a number of causes — think sports teams, a school fundraisers or an upcoming mission trip.

By sharing your team’s fundraiser link, folks can join and shop through Flipgive to earn cash back for your team.

That means they’re going about their normal consuming behavior — with no pleading or begging on your end — while raising money for your (or your kid’s) team.

How This Dad Raised $2,100 for His Daughter’s Soccer Team

Dave Minogue is a 43-year-old dad of three — a son who’s 8 and two daughters who are 10 and 11.

Last year, his oldest daughter Marissa’s soccer team was doing really well. So well that the coach wanted to travel to Sweden’s Gothia Cup, the largest youth soccer tournament in the world. More than 1,700 teams from 80 countries attend.

But before the Toronto youth team could get there, each team member was tasked with hosting a fundraiser. Minogue remembers the coach doing a waffle fundraiser. A few had garage sales.

But Minogue came across Flipgive.

“Being a computer guy, [I thought] it seemed like something that’d be easy to try, and there was really no downside,” says Minogue, the vice president of a tech startup.

No fees, no percentage of sales taken, no door-to-door hassle. (And the sweet smile is optional.)

He created a team on Flipgive and shared it with Marissa’s teammates and their parents. About 25 people joined the team. And started shopping.

Whenever members of Minogue’s Flipgive team needed to make an online purchase, they could shop through the platform and earn money for the team.

Some popular brands offering cash back on Flipgive include:

• Warby Parker — for a 15% cash-back donation
• Under Armour — for 15%
• Anthropologie — for 10%
• Walmart — for 7%
• Sephora — for 3%
• Hotels.com — for 3%
• Apple — for 2%

In a year, Minogue’s Flipgive team had earned $2,100, which contributed to the overall soccer team’s goal and helped land them a flight to Sweden.

How to Make More Money With Flipgive

About $1,000 of the team’s Flipgive earnings came from Minogue’s shopping, so he shared a few insider tips with us.

The secret to raising the most money? Be mindful.

“With Flipgive, if you make an effort and make it part of your daily routine, it’ll pay off,” Minogue explains.

Here are a few of his pro tips:

• After you create a fundraising team — which takes about one minute — download Flipgive’s cash-back reminder. It’s a browser extension that’ll alert you when you’re perusing a participating website, so you don’t miss a chance to earn money back on your purchases.

• Share your Flipgive team to your Facebook page, and ask friends and family members to join. That way, when they go to purchase something online, it can help your team out! (This is a lot better than making them buy, say, a dozen bins of frozen cookie dough.)

• Buy gift cards through Flipgive. Minogue would host company dinners. Before venturing to the restaurant, he’d buy a gift card for it through Flipgive. Gift-card options range from 3% cash back for a Starbucks card to 4% for a Landry’s Restaurants card.

• Capitalize on big spending times — like back-to-school or the holidays. Minogue did the majority of his kids’ back-to-school shopping online, though he’d have them try on items at the store first.

• Don’t forget about booking travel. You can book everything from hotels to flights through Flipgive partners. For example, you can get $5 when you use Booking.com, or 3% back at Hotels.com. You can even bank up to 2% back for Disney vacations.

• Remember, you don’t have to stick to shopping. If someone would rather donate money to your Flipgive team, that’s fine, too. Just know there’s a 6% processing fee for PayPal donations.

And again, just be mindful! Learn to integrate Flipgive into your everyday shopping.

Since the Gothia Cup, Minogue has joined another Flipgive fundraiser for his daughter’s soccer team. Their goal is to raise $1,000, and in about a week, they’d already banked $61. Not everyone had even joined yet, so he has high hopes.

If you want to forget about hosting fundraisers or walking door-to-door, register a Flipgive team for free.

Carson Kohler (@CarsonKohler) is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder.