Wine Fundraising Myths: liquor licence and age limit

Whenever a school or club first hears about wine fundraising, two questions almost always come up straight away. Don't we need our own liquor licence for this? And isn't wine only relevant to half our community anyway, since kids obviously can't buy it? Fair questions and worth clearing up properly before you get started.

Do you need a liquor licence to run a Wine Fundraiser?

In most Australian states, no, your school or club doesn't need its own liquor licence to run a wine drive. The key is how the sale actually happens behind the scenes.

When you run a wine fundraiser through a licensed wine merchant like Vinate, all the orders and payments are processed under that merchant's own liquor licence, not yours. Your organisation isn't the one selling alcohol in a legal sense; you're simply promoting the campaign to your community, while the actual licensed sale, payment processing and delivery all sit with the merchant.

That's different from running your own bar at an event, where the venue or organisation typically does need its own licence or permit. A wine drive is closer to pointing your supporters toward an online store than running a liquor sale yourselves.

It's still worth confirming this with whoever you're partnering with, since the exact arrangement can vary depending on how a company operates and licensing rules can differ slightly state to state. A legitimate wine fundraising partner should be able to tell you plainly which licence covers the sale and how compliance works, without you needing to sort out any paperwork on your end.

Is Wine Fundraising only for adults?

This one comes up a lot and it's easy to see why. If only adults can actually buy the product, does that mean half your school community is locked out of supporting the fundraiser?

In practice: no, and here's why it still works well for schools. Most school fundraisers were never really aimed at the kids buying things themselves anyway. Chocolate drives, raffle tickets and pie orders all go home in a school bag, but it's still the parents who end up paying for them and doing the actual buying. A wine drive is no different in that sense; it's simply parents, grandparents and family friends who are the ones purchasing, the same people who were already funding the chocolate box or the raffle ticket book.

What changes is what they're getting in return. Instead of paying for something they didn't really want, they're buying a bottle of wine they'd likely have picked up anyway. The fundraiser doesn't need every single family member to be eligible to buy; it just needs the adults in each household to see it as an easy, worthwhile purchase, which a decent bottle of wine usually is.

Schools that run wine drives well tend to frame it exactly this way in their communication: not as "a fundraiser for adults," but as "an easy way for parents and family to support the school with something they'll actually use." The campaign page and order link go out the same way any other fundraiser communication would, through the newsletter, email, or a note home, it's simply the adults reading it who take action, just as they always have.

The short version

You don't need your own liquor licence if you're running your campaign through a properly licensed wine merchant and the fact that only adults can purchase doesn't actually shrink your fundraising base in any meaningful way, since parents and family were always the ones buying anyway. Both concerns are understandable the first time you hear about wine fundraising, but neither one holds up as a real barrier once you know how it actually works behind the scenes.