Any easy fundraising ideas for Church Youth Group?

[4MCMICKEY]

OUr youth just sold vegetables, annuals and perennial flowers. We worked with a local greenhouse and our profits were 50%. The kids took the orders for 3 weeks and the flowers will be delivered to us. We made over $2500. We only had 13 kids selling flowers. It was a huge hit and very little work or time involved. Best part it raised over 50% of the money needed to send all the kids to church camp.


Kelley

 

[Kahana-ri]

Our church does a "flocking," you can buy insurance for like $40 or take your chances of having a "flock" of flamingos (or any bird) land on your yard and you have to pay to have them removed! They stay a few days and then are moved on no matter if you pay or not! Our youth chior has done it the last few years and it has done well, last year we had flamingos in our yard when it snowed!

We've done flocking too and it's so much fun and makes good money.
1. Spaghetti feed at a local hall or school gym. We are selling 200 tickets, $10pp. Kids under 8 are free and so far it's been huge! Everyone has to eat and why not eat for a great cause.
2. Costco sells chocolate bars in bulk, you can sell them for $1 a piece. I think there are 35 in a box for $15?
3. Check out PTOtoday, yes it's mainly for school fundraisers, but there are some great ideas.
4. Also, Uno's, Applebee's, and Friday's restaurants give a portion of an evening to groups/charity.
Good luck!

 

[MrsPete]

A couple things that our Youth does to earn money:

1. Yard work -- it's something that people are very willing to pay for, and it's much better for their work ethic than the selling-candy-bars-type fundraisers. This is an especially good fundraiser in the spring (when people need to plant spring flowers or clean up downed limbs from winter storms) or fall (when people need help with leaves).

2. Similarly, you can offer services cleaning out basements, attics, or garages. The extra plus here is that you can ask permission to KEEP things that'd be good for yard sales, which are pure profit.

3. Serve meals after church on Sunday. Many people go out to eat on Sunday, so our Youth asks that families instead eat in our fellowship hall and drop into the box whatever they'd pay for their lunch at a restaurant. By the time they're done, the box is stuffed with twenties (and even hundreds).

4. This is a little off-topic, but a friend of mine who was moving approached her church youth group about helping her move. She's single and didn't have large things like appliances, but the furniture was a little beyond her own ability -- and she didn't own a truck. The youth group got her moved in a day, and she made a generous donation to their upcoming mission trip. Everyone won.

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

We are at a big church (not a mega church though)---

Some of the things I have seen them do that may or may not convey to an off site fundraiser:

Candy bouquets--sold for $6 at our Church musical for Valentine's day--it was skinny dowel rods wrapped in a cellophane wrapper like a bouquet with candy being the "flowers"--you might be able to do this at a Walmart type place Mother's day weekend. ANYTHING you do at walmart, please make sure the kids are actually selling something and not simply begging.

I distributed Mardi Gras beads in red/silver/blue over 4th of July weekend as a fundraiser for the LLS/Team in Training....always think out of the box and if you can theme it, it works a little better.

Cookie dough sales are coming up...for our youth group. No idea who they are doing this through.

Some type of Parents night out---hosted at the church and the teens watch the kids from like 6-10 while parents get a date night.


At another church, I saw that they were offering "rent a teen" to do odds and ends work at people's homes--to include washing their car, mowing the lawn, housework or whatever. It was set up for a 2 hour period. Not to be confused with "renting a slave"--you would want to be clear about the service being offered and the way they did it was the person doing the renting would disclose what was needed.

Additional things--that work if you can get items donated....

bake sale (homemade, not store bought )
"dinners"
"breakfasts"--like a pancake breakfast after services.

Around here, they have to have a "to code" kitchen to legally do these things. We kind of got away with it iin the past--but when we got the new building and updated commercial kitchen, these events always have to be o nthe up and up. So if that is the case at your church, just be aware of that.


Some more creative ideas....

Flamingo flocking--people pay you to flock people's homes with those tacky lawn ornaments and then you can offer a removal service (but include something that also indicates that the donation is voluntary). Works well by referral only...and disclosing who had their yard infested.

Be creative, have fun--and for life experience, begging is not the answer. Much more effective if the teens are working for it.

 

[hugabearjo]

We have done well with discount cards. The idea is local business agree to accept a printed coupon on the back of like a credit card size card. You get around fifteen business to agree. Anything from 10% off a purchase of fifty dollars or more from a local gift type shop. To $1 off a value meal at a fast food restaurant. To $10 off an oil change. Pizza and coffee places are great to allow discounts too. The kids then go out and sell these discount cards that can be used repeatatively over the next year.

We also have a pie auction that usually does well.

I recently heard about this idea and I think it is great, I can't wait to suggest it to our youth pastor. KLove the radio station was telling about a youth group that calls themselves the pink potty bandits. The idea is a pink decorated potty shows up in your yard. It is $10 to remove it, $10 to insure it doesn't come back and another $10 to request where it goes next. This idea is clearly not a one time saturday event. But sounds like great fun. Can't wait to see if they will run with it.

Good luck and have fun.

 

[dapookie09]

This would take 18+ volunteers (ie parents) only....


but Mongolian Grill Restaurant does their Guest Griller program...I've happened to be there on an event night and they were getting killer tips!

http://www.gomongo.com/community/guestGriller.php

 

[kaytieeldr]

My DD's very expensive gymnastics team does coin drops at Wal-Mart. We have the girls wear their competition uniforms and stand in front of the doors at Wally World and ask for donations from the people going in and out. We generally raise between 1500-2000 dollars in a weekend. We do 3 two hour shifts per day with 2 girls at each door. People are usually very generous! Just be prepared to have parents present and tons of coin wrappers ready!

Respectfully, this isn't really "doing" anything. It's easy, sure - but simply standing in front of a store with cans isn't providing a service to earn the money.

 

[SunnieRN]

Our Youth made well over a thousand last summer with an auction night. Church members and local businesses donated items for a silent auction - nights at their condos, nanny services, mini-golf passes, movie passes, etc. Then, the ladies of the church provided baked goods and we had a big auction of all the cakes, pies and treats. There were like 50 things and some went for as much as $70! I think everything went for at least $10. It was a big success!

I have found that most business members of your church, or local businesses will donate items. The trick is to have a letterhead from your non-profit organization (church, school) ready with a line to fill in the donation and amount of $$ it is worth. When I was the cheerleading coach for my daughters squad, we had in & out burgers come to the school, we presold tickets, they came, cooked burgers, gave out chips and a soda for $5. The squad got to keep $3 for each ticket sold. We combined it with the auction. We made enough to go to competition, but missed Nationals by 3 points.

Our youth groups have spagetti dinners followed by a bake sale, catch being that the kids get together and bake the goodies, before they make dinner. We often got products donated for that also.

One other thing that was easy, fun and financially rewarding were our birthday parties. We made up kits for the parties that included hats, plates, napkins etc and the parents would order a type of party. The teens (about 2 to 3) would go to the families house, set up the party, decorate, have games with prizes and the Mom just had to provide the cake, etc. The kids would stay to help supervise, run the games and the best part, provide clean up!! We discussed the cost of materials and suggested donations based on a per child rate, when the party was booked. Average profit from the service was about $75 to $100 for about three hours work. The younger kids liked having the "big kids" at their party also. It was not only popular with our church families, but with the neighborhood families as word got around and more children attended the parties.

My daughter went to a private catholic kindergarten and they had the most incredible fundraiser, once a month on Sunday. They had a pancake breakfast and served mimosas. The breakfast was only about $3, but the mimosas were about $3 also. It was so popular that they had to set up several cots in the nursery on those Sundays, until it was safe for the ladies to drive home.

Most of all, make it fun and do a great job!

 

[soccerchick]

Car wash hands down. Little expense as most people working it will have and will bring supplies.

Get a local business to donate water connection. Chik-Fila (sp?) is good about that here.

 

[cydswipe]

In one community we lived in, a church had a bakeless bake sale. The letter stated instead of baking items, donate cash...

It was straight forward. We need to fundraise.

I'm not sure of the response, but it would be easy to post in your church bulletin.. if they let you do that.

 

[mom0299]

Our Youth group does a dinner and dessert auction every year. This year they made ham, mashed potatoes, green beans, and bread. The dinner was prepared and served by the youth group/ leaders and people gave a donation to eat. After dinner there was a dessert auction. People in the church donated desserts to be auctioned off. They made $1700 the last time they did it.

 

[Caitsmama]

Great ideas!!

We also did a church "talent" night (and i use talent loosely!! LOL) and included a live auction - it was a great night and we made lots of money! There were several groups that did skits/songs ( we dressed as nuns and did songs from "Sister Act" & we also were dressed as the Village People and did YMCA) -- after the talent, we had dinner and a "live" auction.. with items from businesses or people in the congregation.
The youth group did the dinner and served/cleaned up.

Also, i agree with the "begging" - not the way to go!!!

 

[summersalt]

Hi Audra,
I just wanted to suggest that you do not put a fixed dollar amount on the car wash... My youth group at church has two car washes each year. We found that people will give more if you don't set a flat rate. Also, another suggestion I have is to sales hot dogs and baked goodies at your car wash. People can buy a hot dog, a brownie and a soda while they wait for their car to be washed. Our church is very small (around 80 members) and we average a thousand bucks doing these car washes. Good luck and God bless!

 

[audracooper]

Thanks so much for all of your responses! You all are so creative!

 

[kaytieeldr]

Car wash hands down. Little expense as most people working it will have and will bring supplies.

Get a local business to donate water connection. Chik-Fila (sp?) is good about that here.

The service station right at the base of the entrance to our high school is great about this on Saturday mornings - and my experience is, the students do a MUCH better job than a commercial car wash. One year, they got baked-on egg off my car!

 

[danneva]

Some churches host carnivals and water park days to attract people with children and rake in the donations. Some churches hold a take-out–meal fundraising programs, provide a lunch or some sort of small reward for people who sell a lot of tickets or put in a lot of time.

 

[dougsmom98]

Our church does a pie sale several times each year and it is a big hit. Sometimes we ask people in the church to volunteer to bake a pie and then we sell them out in front of a store. The other option is to get the group to spend 3-4 hours baking apple pies in an assembly line and then sell the pies for a profit above what you spent.

 

[annsteere]

Halloween insurance.

For a set fee the youth group will come and clean up your yard if you get pranked.

With a big smile, and tongue planted firmly in cheek, we also insure that if you don't buy insurance you WILL get tpd.

 

[brymolmom]

Not sure where you are - but around here right now raking would be ideal for a group of kids. It is not easy in terms of physical labor, but it is easy in that just have all the kids show up with rakes and buy a couple things of bags and you're ready. Just go door to door (especially in neighborhoods with a lot of older couples) and charge $20 or so (depending on amount of leaves).

INteresting ideas and customs here...I'm not a huge fan of these 'insurance' ones. Not quite sure the best idea to teach a church group is to threaten people into giving you money. I mean, I guess if they sign up to be included on the 'fun' that's fine, but to go up to people and just say 'you gotta pay or your house/lawn is going to be messed up' - can't say I would be happy to help out with that cause.

 

[Patti_C]

I'm a scentsy dealer and if you have anyone in your area that sells it they do fundraisers. They will give you a % of the profit, It works out very well because not only are they donating money but they are also get a great product!