Shirts That Sell: 8 Profitable T-Shirt Fundraising Ideas for Any Cause

T-shirt fundraisers are a powerful way to raise money and share your message. Whether you’re fundraising for a nonprofit, school, or a personal cause, every shirt you sell helps raise funds and turns your supporters into walking advocates for your mission.

Let’s explore our favorite t-shirt fundraising ideas and tips that will help you launch a successful fundraising campaign that has a meaningful impact.

Why Launch a T-Shirt Fundraiser?

T-shirt fundraisers give your supporters a meaningful way to give back to your cause while receiving something they’ll be proud to wear. Every shirt sold helps spread your message, turning your design into a walking billboard for your cause.

Some of the key benefits of t-shirt fundraisers include:

• Rewarding supporters: Supporters will receive a tangible “reward” in exchange for their donation. Not only do people enjoy receiving items or gifts, but the shirt will serve as a reminder that they did a good thing by supporting your cause.
• Increased visibility and awareness of your cause: Think of t-shirts as walking advertisements for your cause or organization. This organic form of marketing is a great way to start conversations about your mission and spread awareness through word of mouth, helping you reach new audiences.
• Creative control: When you create your own t-shirt designs, you’ll have full creative control over the message, colors, and other visual elements. This way, you can maintain consistent branding and create designs you know your supporters will like.
• Opportunities for community building: Let’s say you create shirts for a large volunteer event or charity race and encourage supporters to wear them to the event. Wearing matching shirts fosters a sense of unity and strengthens your community’s bonds and network of advocates.
• Low risk, high reward: Print-on-demand platforms don’t require you to estimate how much you’ll sell and order inventory ahead of time. This way, you won’t have to worry about having leftover, unsold shirts at the end of the fundraiser.

How to Start a T-Shirt Fundraiser

When you work with the right fundraising website, launching your t-shirt fundraiser is straightforward. Here are the steps to follow:

1. Choose a t-shirt fundraising platform. To maximize your impact, use a platform that’s designed for t-shirt fundraisers. Bonfire is one of the most trusted and easy-to-use print-on-demand fundraising platforms. Just pick your products, upload your custom design, and launch your campaign. We take care of printing, shipping, and customer service, so you can focus on promotion. Bonfire is free to use, and you keep 100% of the profits from shirt sales.
2. Design your t-shirts. Use our design tool to create your shirt from scratch or start with one of our free design templates. Whether you’re selling shirts, hoodies, or mugs, be sure to incorporate your organization’s /cause’s branding, like your logo and colors, while keeping the design fun and engaging to increase appeal.
3. Set up your store. Prepare to sell merchandise by configuring your online store. With Bonfire, you can launch your online store for free and customize it with your cause’s branding. Plus, getting the store up and running only takes a few minutes.
4. Share the fundraising campaign with your supporters. Promote your t-shirt fundraiser on your website, social media, and any other channels your audience frequents. Include links to your online store to make shopping easy. Motivate more sales by giving your community updates on your progress toward the goal as the fundraiser is happening.
5. Wrap up the campaign and receive your funds. Once your fundraising campaign is over,
   Bonfire will print and ship your orders to your supporters and send you 100% of your profits. If your campaign accepted donations, a small administrative fee applies (3.5% for nonprofits, 8% for others).
6. Thank your supporters! The work isn’t done when you hit your campaign deadline—you still need to thank the supporters who helped you reach your goals! Share thank-you messages to inspire long-term support, and encourage them to post photos wearing their new apparel.

One of the best parts of working with a print-on-demand service? You won’t need to hold any inventory. This completely removes the risk of having unsold stock left over. But if you go another route and do have unsold shirts you need to sell, you can still make some of your investment back. For example, offer them at deep discounts or donate them to the cause or organization you’re fundraising for.

8 T-shirt Fundraising Ideas

1. Themed Awareness Shirts

If your cause has an affinity day or month that works within the timelines of your fundraising needs, this is ALS there an affinity day or month that you’re passionate about? Take advantage of this natural opportunity for a fundraiser and launch your campaign. You’ll raise funds to support the cause and spread awareness for the target issue. 

Some popular affinity days and months you might create merchandise for include:

• Black History Month
• Women’s History Month
• Pride Month
• Disability Pride Month
• Mental Health Awareness Month
• Suicide Prevention Month

There are recognition events and holidays for almost every industry, organization, and individual. Seek out these key dates to strategically time your campaign, whether you want to celebrate teachers with Teach Appreciation Week merchandise or support a sick relative with cancer awareness t-shirts.

2. Charity Race T-Shirts

Charity races like 5Ks, marathons, walk-a-thons, and fun runs are a fun way to raise money for your cause, strengthen community ties, and encourage people to be active. They’re a great option for almost any organization, from nonprofits to schools to community groups. T-shirts drive additional revenue and provide race participants with a fun souvenir. 

When participants register, have them indicate their shirt size and ensure the fees they pay will cover the cost of the shirt. Spectators can order their shirts ahead of time, or they can be sold in person. When creating the t-shirts, you can always start with a design template to help spark your creativity. Include the following elements somewhere on the shirt:

• Your race’s name
• Your organization’s name (if it is not included in the name of the race)
• Logos for the race and your organization, group, or cause
• The date of the race
• Sponsor logos (if applicable)
• Consistent brand colors and graphics

Remember to consider the weather when selecting the items you plan to sell. A classic t-shirt is always a safe bet, but participants might appreciate having a tank top option if the race is set during summer. You can also sell branded water bottles and hats if it’s sunny and hot!

3. Commemorative Event T-Shirts

Custom t-shirts can work for almost any special fundraising event, not just races. Attendees will walk away with a tangible object to remember the event. For example, commemorative shirts are a great way to raise additional funding at:

• Charity sporting events like softball or volleyball games at corporate events—you can even create a design for each team, sell them ahead of time, and have players and spectators wear their team’s shirt to the game!
• Annual picnics, BBQs, or potlucks held by associations or professional societies, serving as both a keepsake and a promotional tool for next year’s gathering.
• Community service events organized by churches or community groups where volunteers gather to clean up shared spaces, tend the community garden, etc. Encourage them to purchase a shirt to remember the day and further their support for your cause.
• Graduation parties celebrating a recent high school graduate and college acceptance. Raise money to support their education by creating t-shirts themed around graduation or the college they’ll attend.

Similar to charity race t-shirts, include the name of the event, your cause, relevant logos, and the event date. If you organize annual events, change up the design each year so supporters will want to collect each shirt.

4. Collaborations with Local Artists

More than likely, your community is brimming with talented creatives. Consider collaborating with local artists to create and sell one-of-a-kind t-shirt designs. Depending on your cause, you might share the funds raised with the artist or simply present this as an opportunity for them to gain exposure (e.g., an influencer could expose them to new audiences).

Here’s how to collect and choose designs:

1. Issue a call for design submissions on your website, across social media, or by reaching out to specific members of your community. Explain that the winning design will be added to a t-shirt and sold to benefit your cause or showcase the artist’s talent.
2. Review the submissions, setting the best designs aside. Try to narrow this subgroup to only 10 to 20 designs.
3. Select the winner from the small group you set aside. If you run a nonprofit or other organization, you can hold a vote. Either do a single vote and select the most popular design, or create a March Madness-style bracket to boost engagement.
4. Recognize the winner online and share mockups of the design on a t-shirt and any other items you plan to sell!

To ensure you get great submissions, create a set of submission guidelines for the artists. Lay out any technical design specifications (e.g., resolution or file type), outline the submission process, and clearly convey usage rights for submissions. 

5. Annual School Spirit Shirts

While this idea is best for school PTOs and PTAs, it can also work well for youth sports teams or adult sports leagues! In addition to the kids themselves, schools and sports teams have built-in audiences of supporters: students’ or players’ friends and families. Take advantage of this dedicated audience and satisfy their desire to show their support by offering custom school spirit t-shirts. 

Here are some tips to consider to make sure you create spiritwear that sells:

• Incorporate your colors and mascot. Create merchandise that resonates with your students or fans by using your colors and featuring your mascot front and center.
• Opt for a clean design. Clearly show that the shirt is intended to represent your school or team by prominently featuring your name and logo. Use bold type and large graphics on the front of the shirt.
• Make it memorable and unique. Clean doesn’t mean boring. Put a unique twist on your designs or use fun fonts and graphics to make the design stand out. Just avoid overloading the design with too many elements.
• Promote online. Highlight the new shirt design on the channels your fans and supporters already use, and share links to your online store or order form.

You can also organize a fun event for your school or team, encouraging attendees to buy the shirts. For example, the beginning of the school year is a great time to sell new shirts. Host a back-to-school mixer where students can meet new friends, parents can mingle and get to know the students’ teachers, and you can sell your t-shirts.

6. Corporate Partnership Shirts

During corporate partnerships, mission-driven organizations form mutually beneficial collaborations with businesses. These partnerships can take many different forms, from cause marketing campaigns to launching co-branded fundraising products.

For example, let’s say a mental health advocacy nonprofit forms a partnership with a tech company known for its dedication to corporate social responsibility (CSR). Together, they design a co-branded t-shirt for their “Wear Your Mind on Your Sleeve” campaign, which encourages people to talk about mental health. The proceeds will benefit the nonprofit, funding a new program targeted at youth experiencing mental health struggles.

7. Celebrate Key Milestones

If you have any major milestones on the horizon, consider selling t-shirts to celebrate the occasion. Here are some examples of milestones that can easily be translated into t-shirt fundraisers:

• A nonprofit might commemorate major anniversaries like 10 serving the community, the launch of a new program, or the end of a long-term capital campaign.
• Individual fundraisers might create shirts celebrating matching with a child on their adoption journey or completing treatment for an illness.
• A small business that launched a fundraiser to secure the money it needed to open could sell branded t-shirts commemorating its grand opening.
• A club or community organization might celebrate an impressive win or an impact milestone. For example, perhaps a robotics club won a state championship or a community group reached 1000 volunteer hours.

These campaigns help you raise money to support your work or personal journey, but they also show off and honor your achievements to your supporters.

8. Challenge Shirts

If you or your organization is embarking on physical or creative challenges, consider selling T-shirts to support your efforts. For example, perhaps you’ll be taking a six-month sabbatical to hike the Appalachian Trail. To purchase equipment and secure some additional financial support, sell shirts celebrating your upcoming journey.

Mission-driven organizations working toward an ambitious goal can also frame these efforts as a challenge and sell custom merchandise to support their work. For instance, an environmental protection organization might have a goal to plant 10,000 trees and sell t-shirts to help purchase the necessary supplies. Additionally, these organizations can use the t-shirt fundraising campaign to inspire their supporters to join the challenge, too.

Start Fundraising for Your Cause with Custom Shirts

Bonfire is an all-in-one t-shirt fundraising platform that enables anyone—individuals, nonprofits, teams, musicians, communities, and businesses—to design, sell, and fundraise with custom apparel. With no upfront costs or inventory required, you can easily create and launch an online t-shirt campaign or store in just a few minutes!

Our intuitive design tools and seamless campaign setup make it simple to bring your vision to life. Make a lasting impact with your custom apparel by launching a t-shirt fundraiser on Bonfire today!