Church Fundraising: Thou Shalt Not Be Lame

A power of the t-shirt! It’s a mighty power, not to be messed with. You can screen print your church logo for cheap on t-shirts, hoodies, muumuus, loincloths, whatever you like and sell them to the public and congregation. Or let your creative juices flow and put favorite quotes or funny pictures on them, anything you think might resonate with your community and represent the voice and personality of the church. Everybody loves a t-shirt! And don’t think your consumer base is limited to churchgoers – you’ll make a killing on “ironic” sales from the disenchanted, hipster population of your community (every community has one  – check your local Urban Outfitters).

Calendars

First let me say, get your mind out of the gutter. Not “CALENDAR” calendars, unless the 85-year-old organist has lived with a secret desire to be known as “Miss January” (then who are you to deny an old woman her dream?). People love calendars almost as much as they love t-shirts, and since they’re composed of pictures they offer the same freedom for creativity. If you’re catering to churchgoers who have a personal attachment to the church, then fill them with pictures of the congregation, funny photos from past events and so on. If your church fundraising campaign is meant for a wider audience, then the world is your oyster! Fill them with pictures of oysters if you want. (Disclaimer: do not fill them with pictures of oysters as that is weird and nobody will buy them.)

Concerts

You know there’s this whole genre of gospel music and Christian rock with a massive cult following and tons of artists? Oh you did? Yeah I was just sayin’. There’s no doubt a local group with built-in fans in your community that would love to be part of a church fundraising concert. They get a sweet venue, you get a cool band and everyone’s scratching each others’ backs until they need your hands free since they can’t really play guitar without them (you can pick it back up later). If you’re looking to go big or go home (in which case, stay! Go big!) then it’s worth it to try and reach out to bigger acts in your area. It’s for a good cause! They could be willing to help out if you ask.

Cookbooks

This is like the bake sale on steroids (not literally, please). While the bake sale route is nice and yummy and great for finally fitting into those pesky jeans that are just WAY too big for you (thanks cupcakes!) they’re pretty labor intensive and don’t generate a lot of revenue. Instead, you can whip up a cookbook with favorite recipes from churchgoers and sell them for $10 or $15 a pop instead of watching your profit go up in 50 cent increments with each disappearing cookie. There are tons of sites where you can make your own cookbooks, complete with pictures and customized designs. It takes your church fundraising bake sale to the next level – and everyone will just EAT. IT. UP. (So sorry. Couldn’t resist.)

Online Donation Drives

Speaking of taking things to the next level, every ounce of effort you put into your church fundraiser offline can be maximized by incorporating an online campaign. This is the best way to reach your audience and increase your donor base, and the most efficient source of donations. You can sign up for an online fundraising platform that allows you to reach people through email, Facebook and Twitter and lets people donate to your church with the click of a mouse. It’s an incredibly simple way of spreading the word and reaping the biggest rewards for your church fundraising efforts. Maybe we should start a list of the church fundraising commandments: 1) Thou Shalt Not Be Lame, and 2) Get Online!

There are of course tons of ways to raise money for your church fundraiser – car washes, rummage sales, and the always popular and gut-busting pancake breakfast. Just make sure to be a little creative with whatever you choose to stand out from the crowd – and at the very least, use the web! It’s the easiest way to get a lot of bang for your buck. No, wait – a lot of buck for no bang. Bang is effort. You get the drift.

 

Church Fundraising Events To Raise Money For Spiritual Causes

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Churches need funds for construction projects, provide aid forpeople, extend support to conduct various activities, mission trips and much more. So it is required to raise money to fulfil the financial needs. Raising funds require church fundraisers and different fundraising ideas. Organizers can find an array of ideas to raise the required amount of money. However, choosing the appropriate method is highly important. The amount of money that needs to be raised, resources available in the Church, location of church fundraisers and volunteers, etc. all influence the selection of the appropriate method or church fundraising.

Fundraising at the church is one of the easiest fundraising options. The church gets a regular attendance on Sundays and it is common for church-goers to offer their assistance by means of donation and any other possible way.

It’s important to assemble a team of volunteers who will spearhead the fundraiser. Some of the fundraising events that interest you may involve selling a range of products for a specific period of time, or it may happen on any specific day. Some of the ideas require detailed planning and might be hard to organise, while some fundraising ideas can be implemented very easily.

The very simplest church fundraising idea to raise funds is by placing fundraising collection boxes in the Church. Churches can find few companies that offer religious products to sell through the church fundraisers. From the overall profits earned by the fundraisers, a specific percentage of amounts will be offered to the fundraisers. Selling candles with great quotes and inspirational messages, t-shirts, religious books and magazines, etc contributes great towards earning funds. Regular worshippers of Church, their family members and friends will buy the products sold through fundraising events.

Church fundraising ideas can include several events. For instance, it can include an auction, car wash fundraiser, race/walkathon, dinner, or even a game. In addition events can also include selling baked goods, hot food, crafts, etc. Silent auctions in churches have proven to be successful in collectingdonations for a spiritual cause. However, planning is required to make any kind of event successful.

Another option as church fundraising idea is publishing a cookbook. It is a time consuming fundraising event which requires more effort and hard work. Fortunately, its results are great and worth the effort and hard work. You can ask the church members contribute their favourite recipes and compile all the recipes to publish a cookbook. This type of church fundraiser is ideal during festive seasons such as Christmas and Easter and often will attract a lot of people who will want to buy a copy of the cookbook as a sign of support to the church or out of their own culinary interest.

Similarly, you can choose to host a dinner as your church fundraising event. You need to sell the tickets in advance to collect money as well as to know the quantity of food that needs to be cooked. Often, the congregation donates the food for the church fundraiser and allows church to utilize the entire amount collected on ticket sales.

Fundraising requires a lot of planning ahead but church fundraisers can be a successful way to attract more donors and to raise funds for causes that are supported by the church.

Church Fundraising Ideas – Boost Your Churches Donations Online

Church fundrasing activities are noble and worth supporting. The fundraiser must be equipped with what we call church fundraising ideas that would ensure support and donations. Church Fundraising ideas must be feasible and not overly dramatic. They must be convenient, easy, accessible and not painstaking.

Piryx, has revolutionized church fundraising ideas by the use of the internet. The company now provides a solution to the prolonged agony of waiting responses from benefactors to just a few clicks away. Piryx’s answer to the new age is the creation of an online account for church fundraising that would benefit a chosen church or one that the fundraiser is associated with. Setting up the account is in the same manner as creating a Facebook account or signing up for a webmail account. This way, a web page is developed and designed for a certain church fundraising activity or several pages for different set of goals.

Piryx encourages the use of Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Multiply, StumbleUpon and the like as sharing hubs for the dissemination of the cause that a church seeks to support. Sharing on these social networks has become a hobby for most users. Current events, social updates, weblogs, celebrity fallouts and the like have been shared one too many times in all of these social sites. People with common goals can easily share one link to others and so it eliminates the hassle of going around and informing other people one by one, door to door. The process allows for a contact to share the link on her wall, and others who become interested can share it too, hence a rapid widespread approach. Link sharing is one of the best church fundraising ideas because it not only utilizes the social network to affect a worthy cause, but it also builds a useful connection to the outside world. Long before the advent of computers, church fundraising has been shown to be very rampant and tiring. Now, with Piryx, fundraising has never been fun.

It does not stop there, the account created is amped with social network features that are set to reinvent and reintegrate your account when necessary. It has personalization features that would allow you to design your page and make it look better. It gives you the freedom to update the status of your cause just like the social networks. It also safeguards the information and progress of your cause. It has an analytical tool that helps you determine which approach is best to further gain recognition and perk up your supporters. Amplify your web page by knowing what needs adjusting, conversion rates, useful gadgets that indicate growth and overwhelming support. What more can you ask from Piryx?

Last but not the least, the establishment of character in social networks can also be applied here. The maintenance of the webpage, the success of the cause and the growth in the number of supporters will reflect on the wellness of the campaign. One way of ensuring growth is to persuade your supporters with the updates, to share the link of the cause to their other networks. This is in a way reaching out to the community without wasting words. Rather, just by accessing your page from the shared links, prospective supporters and benefactors will surely appear right at your doorstep.