I hate asking for money.. However, if you are a member of any sort of church, charity, social organization, etc. chances are you will be called upon at some point to help raise money- especially if you are a regular volunteer. I’ve included some of my experiences with fund-raising with church groups, volunteer organizations and school fund-raisers. Most of these ideas are geared towards youth groups of some sort (Church youth group, sports team, Scouts, etc), but could work for any group. We raised enough money for several international trips using these ideas- and learned a lot in the process!
Fund-raising ideas with inexpensive overhead:
Car wash. Find a gas station or other location that has a water source and will let you use their parking lot for free (Obviously, warm weekend days are the best). Try to pick a location with a large lot so you won’t be blocking their normal customers. Try to get buckets, sponges, soap, poster board for posters etc. donated or at a discount from a store.
Spaghetti dinners (baked potato meals are also cheap, we had one with potatoes, a side salad and all sorts of potato fixin’s, cheese, chili, bacon, salsa, chicken, you name it!) You can often get a local grocery store to donate or deeply discount the foods for these meals. They will often discount for vacation bible schools as well. Pancake dinners, chili dinners, Brunswick stew meals, etc. are also generally inexpensive. It’s a good idea to offer takeout at these meals as well, for members of the community who might not want to stay for the whole event, but who would be willing to support the cause and get a meal. (An even nicer gesture for a youth group is to pack up the leftovers and deliver them, free of charge, to the elderly in the neighborhood or congregation.) For Brunswick stew and chili, you can avoid the sit down portion entirely, and just sell the items in the church parking lot by the pint. Go to a restaurant that does take out and see if they’ll donate the containers, or go to a restaurant supply place (and ask for a discount)
A dance a thon, walk a thon, hit a thon, etc. These involve getting sponsors to either give a flat donation, or offering a price per minute, mile etc. You could have someone sponsor you a nickel (or dollar, or whatever!) For every lap you walk.
A rummage sale. Chances are, there are many members of your group or congregation who have stuff they’d be willing to donate to the sale. Solicit volunteers to help sort and price items as they come in (and offer them their pick of a few items free as a “thank you”) A yard sale can also be combined with Brunswick stew sales, hot dog and hamburger sales, etc. We had a yard sale, car wash, bake sale and hot dog and hamburgers all selling at once. Consider having a “fill a bag for $5” sale towards the end of the day to make sure you don’t end up with too much extra merchandise. Another option will be to have a sign that says “Whatever left at 5 PM is free”. You’d be surprised at the number of customers who return to see what’s left. You can also offer any leftovers to those who donated or helped with the day, or have another charitable group come and pick up the excess. Some large churches, schools, etc. have the space available to just save the leftovers for the next sale. Make sure you have big signs saying what the money is going to. I’ll spend more money at a sale if I know that the profits are helping to fund a mission trip to build houses, instead of knowing that my money will just be extra spending money in someone’s pocket.
You can have the youth group serve breakfast before church, or sell donuts and coffee before a meeting. This usually gets a better turnout than a meal planned on an off day, where the congregation has to make a special trip. Selling something when the crowd is already there will get you more customers. You’re also more likely to get more (and larger) donations from people who know the people soliciting donations and are part of the cause they are raising money for or on behalf of. When we did a car wash, the people we didn’t know gave us an average of $5 to wash their cars, when the church members gave an average of $10.
Some congregations sell Poinsettias at Christmas or Easter Lilies at Easter to decorate the church to remember or honor a loved one. Have a date after the holiday when the items can be picked up if desired to be used in the buyers home, or donate them to a hospital, nursing home, etc, where they can be enjoyed. Many churches donate altar flowers to these places to be enjoyed after Sunday’s services. Sometimes they are offered to the volunteers who help usher the congregation or clean the sanctuary after services.
Another cool idea is to have a mass babysitting night. Have the teens (and some adults) offer to babysit the children in the congregation for a donation so the parents can go out to dinner, a movie, whatever. Make sure to set firm ending times and age limits (its often easier to not accept infants because of the amount of care and baby supplies they require) and that you have enough people to handle all of the kids. Make sure everyone is supervised, and it can be a great way to teach life skills as well as act as a sneaky form of birth control as the 15 year olds realize that a toddler is a lot more work than they would’ve thought!
Silent Auctions. We had one of these on the same night as the baked potato dinner. We went to many different area merchants, and asked for goods and services to be auctioned off that night. We got a really wide variety of stuff, from a 50 lb bag of rice, free oil changes, an entertainment center, a baby gift basket, a camping set, lots of gift certificates, and a fair amount of other stuff. One family in the church even offered a free weekend stay at their waterfront vacation cottage to the winner (I believe they stayed in the home that weekend too- acting as hosts, and pretending as if they were running a bed and breakfast, catering to the winners. This is a good way to make sure no one trashes the house during their visit)
I learned a lot by requesting donations for the silent auction. We made up a flier, explaining what we planned to do (and inviting anyone interested to come!). We gave contact numbers at the church, and outlined our fund raising goals for the mission trip, and the goal of the trip itself (in this case, to build a home in Mexico for a deserving family). Some people turned us down flat (and rudely). Some were nice, but said that the company didn’t allow for donations. A couple of very kind managers were not allowed to make donations through the business, but offered a personal donation, or bought an item with their own money for us to auction (which I found very touching). Often we were referred to a corporate number to call. Sometimes contacting corporate and going up the chain of command took several phone calls and months.. So start early if you plan to do something like this. Don’t turn down anything. You may end up with a weird mish mash off goods and services to auction, but that’s OK- its part of the fun. The 50 pound bag of rice was bought in a live auction by a member of our congregation whose husband was bidding against her (in the hopes of donating the rice to the food bank that the church runs) so he wouldn’t have to eat rice for months! It was one of the funniest moments of the evening, and ended with a high ending price and lots of laughs, and unfortunately, lots of meals containing rice for the losing bidder husband!
If you’re lucky enough to find a merchant that is willing to donate a valuable item (a car, cruise, weekend getaway, nice piece of furniture, a new bike, etc.) you might want to consider having a raffle. A raffle is even feasible if you have to purchase the item, as long as you sell enough tickets to more than cover the cost. Your best bet is a combination of these ideas if you have enough volunteers to handle the work. A combination draws the most excitement. For instance.. If you sell donuts and raffle tickets to win a nice prize and advertise your event a few weeks in advance, you’ll let people know about the event, raising money, and getting them involved and invested by buying a raffle ticket all at the same time. On the night of the event, sell food, have an auction, and also offer take out. The more ways to donate and the more excitement you create, the more likely you are to have a successful fund-raiser.
At the silent auction, we put a bid sheet with each item. The sheet had a starting bid, as well as an acknowledgment (if desired by the donor) of who donated the item or service. We set a pre set ending time and made sure to make it not too lengthy of an event. We allowed for time for people to walk around both before and after dinner, but not too long, as we wanted to keep it fun and exciting. Each bidder can see the bids made previously, and if they want to win the item, they must write down a higher bid. We also had a live auction of some of the more exciting items to provide some entertainment. We ended up doing very well, raising quite a bit of money though both the dinner and auction.
I really think donations like these pay of for a business in the long run. When I was in kindergarten, my mom won several free oil changes at a local repair shop at a fund-raiser. She liked the shop, and my parents have taken their cars there for more than 20 years now because of that one donation. We finally stopped going because they changed hands and the service quality suffered, but they got all of our car repair money for over 20 years off of a donation that maybe cost them $20?
A good fall fund-raiser is to “rent” out the youth group to rake leaves for a donation. Lawn mowing or weeding are other options. They can also be “borrowed” to help run kid’s activities for younger children at events (weddings, parties, etc.) or for jobs like painting, weeding, etc. Our youth group even went and picked fruit once as a group and got paid for it. Not only does this raise money for the group, it can teach kids valuable life skills. We ushered at events, we hauled junk out of an old garage, we even cleaned a house top to bottom before it was sold. If your pastor puts the word out that your group is available for hire, you might be surprised at the offers you get! In fact, I need to find out if the youth group will be available in the fall.. I’d like to hire them for an afternoon to help me get my leaves up!
Some newspapers and TV news programs offer free announcements for fund-raising events. Take advantage of any free advertising you can get. Make sure it is announced in the group’s newsletter and put a sign outside your location. Have kids carry poster board signs and direct traffic in from the street. (Make sure they don’t go alone, and stay out of the road!)
Have the youth group make crafts to sell. One group, who was going to Africa to help build a school, made beaded necklaces and bracelets to sell to their congregation. They became a trendy item in the congregation, and were a very successful fund raiser. You can also sell tee shirts, craft items, etc.
If you post a “meter” in the church detailing how much money you need to raise, the congregation will have a better idea of how much is needed, and how soon. For instance, if you want to raise $10,000 to send the kids to Mexico, why not have a posterboard drawing of a map of Mexico? Mark the map off into 10 vertical sections, and color in each section as you raise $1000. Be sure to post a big “thank you” in the bulletin or newsletter to thank everyone for all of their help. Have photos available of the trip in the church office after you come back, or have a youth group member or two give a short speech during Sunday services about all they have learned.
One congregation started a “Babysitting referral service”. The youth would let the coordinator know what days and times they were available to babysit, and then when a parent needed a sitter, they’d call the church. The church would supply them with the phone numbers of a couple of youth who said they would be available during that time. The babysitter gets to keep all of their earnings (unless they wanted to donate them too), and the parents pay a $2 fee to the youth group for the referral. (They sent out bills every three months) It’s a good deal for the parents, since they don’t have to call all around to try to find a sitter, and can get a sitter who they (and their child) likely already know and trust.
I go to a small-ish church with about 400 members. Larger churches will have larger youth groups, and larger congregations from which to raise money, but smaller churches are generally closer knit, where everyone knows everyone else, (and everyone else’s business.) There are advantages to both smaller and larger churches. Smaller churches have a great sense of community, and larger churches generally have more opportunities and resources. In larger churches, it may be possible to find members of the congregation to “sponsor” mission trips and the like, reducing the need for fund raising. If members of the congregation have businesses they would like to promote, sponsoring events is a great way to get their business name out in the public in a positive way.
One fund-raising activity I’m not very fond of are the school fund-raiser catalogs. A few times a year, it seems like my neighborhood swarms with kids selling overpriced stuff, wrapping paper, cookie dough, etc. Usually the prices are very high, and the school only gets a teeny bit of the profit (compared to fund-raisers mentioned above.) In general, I’d rather make a donation directly to the school or organization than have them get a small percentage of the profit off a price inflated item. A major issue I have with these types of fund-raisers is that the kids are offered prizes for selling different levels of merchandise. (Some adult fund-raisers have incentives like this as well). I remember when I was in middle school, we got to spin a prize wheel for every three items we sold. I rode my bike around my neighborhood selling my little heart out. Its kinda a cheating tactic to send kids door to door, as its hard to resist their cute little faces. I prefer to participate in fund-raisers where 100 % of profits go to the group raising money, not to pay for prizes for top sellers and for the wrapping paper company to profit. I’ve gotten much better at saying “no” to the roving bands of kiddos with catalogs. Some large churches are now employing the same method. Don’t pay someone 50% of your profit to run your fund raiser- do it yourself!
Whatever sort of fund-raiser you hold, make sure the money is in the hands of someone trustworthy and that the cash box, etc is never left unattended. Make sure proper health and cleanliness standards are followed for any food prepared (esp if kids are involved.)and make sure you have adequate volunteers to man whatever function you plan. Make sure anyone going door to door does not go alone. Banks will often waive minimum balance requirements and offer free accounts to charitable groups.
No matter which fund raising method you choose- Keep good accounting records and a close eye on cash. A group of people who are dedicated to a goal can usually reach it together. Work together, have fun, use your imagination – and Good Luck!
