The math behind any fundraiser shirt campaign comes down to three numbers: how many pieces sell, what retail price supporters pay, and what the base cost per piece is. Multiply the difference between retail and base by units sold, and that is what the campaign actually raises. A campaign with a countdown window caps that number at whatever sells during the open period. A shop that stays open keeps that number growing indefinitely. Here is the math laid out with real base prices.
Retail price minus base cost, multiplied by units sold, equals what a campaign or shop raises. That is true whether the platform is a countdown campaign or an always open shop, the formula does not change. What changes is how many units realistically sell and over what time period, which is where the two models diverge sharply.
| Product | VIP base | Typical retail | Profit per piece |
|---|---|---|---|
| Airlume Cotton Tee | $19.88 | $25-30 | $5-10 |
| Triblend Crew Tee | $23.88 | $28-33 | $4-9 |
| Comfort Soft Hoodie | $36.88 | $45-55 | $8-18 |
| Champion Performance Hoodie | $45.88 | $58-68 | $12-22 |
| Printed or embroidered hat | $25.86-$29.86 | $32-38 | $6-12 |
A group selling 100 tees at $10 margin and 40 hoodies at $15 margin in one push clears $1,600 before counting hats or any repeat sales.
Bear Grips Pro Shops: Custom Apparel for Your Team. No Minimums. Free Shipping.A campaign that runs for a few weeks only counts sales during that window. Once it closes, the design stops earning until a new campaign is built and shared again, which takes time and re-spends the same social media attention the first campaign used. A group running one campaign per year effectively resets its earning potential to zero between pushes.
A Bear Grips Pro Shop at shops.beargrips.com/for/nonprofit keeps the same design live between pushes, so a supporter who missed the initial announcement can still find and buy it three months later. Over a full year, that compounding effect commonly outraises a single time boxed campaign of the same design, even at a similar per piece margin, simply because the selling window never closes. See the full fundraiser shirt profit margins guide for margin benchmarks across more product categories.
Whichever model a group runs, three moves lift the total raised: pricing the hoodie tier at a real premium rather than a token markup, adding a second product (a hat or crewneck) so supporters who already own the tee have something new to buy, and re-announcing the shop or campaign at least once mid window instead of only at launch. See how the campaign model works for the countdown side of that comparison.
Free to start, no inventory, no minimum. Set your retail price and see the margin on every piece sold.
Start FreeAt a $19.88 VIP base and a $25-30 retail price, a group commonly clears $5 to $10 per tee sold.
Not necessarily. Total raised depends on units sold times margin per piece, so a smaller campaign with a higher margin per piece can outperform a larger one priced too close to base cost.
Yes. Because there is no countdown window, the shop keeps selling to anyone who finds it later, which is the main structural advantage over a one time campaign.
Move some sales to a higher margin product, hoodies and hats generally carry more profit per piece than a base tee at a similar retail markup percentage.
Bear Grips Pro Shops