Stained Glass Windows to Celebrate the Millennium

During the millennium years we raised funds for our church which is still a very special experience for me! For the millennium we were planning to do something special for our church. We all started having discussions and wanted to acknowledge what we wanted the money to do before actually starting planning (as otherwise you may not be able to raise enough money).

Many people came with different proposals, from creating a beautiful landscaped garden, to fitting a new stained glass window in the church. It took a lot of time to decide what was the best for church but then we all decided to install a brand new stained glass window.

First we listed out the plan of action for our project and did some research to find out where we could get a stained glass window from, as they are something special and it was the first time our church was buying. Then we started selecting the artist, it was the more difficult than we imagined. Many people wanted to have a traditional window, but other people didn't like that idea because there were already windows like that.

We had so much feedback and many used to comment that the millennium should be celebrated using modern designs, rather than simply putting a normal stained glass window in the church.

But we the team decided to get this done differently and special. So with all the confused opinions we found the artist and some of us went to check his work out. We were impressed!

To our surprise the stained glass window would end up costing us around �20,000 ($35,000) which is a lot of money for anyone, especially our small church! Some people felt like giving up; but we were persistent in accomplishing the project.

We worked out exactly how much we would need to raise each month. Asked some of the people to become “Golden Angels” who would promise to meet the monthly targets if we couldn't meet them. For example if we said that we would earn �1,000 in January but only earned �500 then they would promise to pay the remaining �500.

We elected someone to keep records of the donations, and the profits from any fundraising activities we did. We also teamed up with the local school to hold events to raise money.

We planned a cool idea of making money - we hired a van over to France, filled up with cheap alcohol then sold it to everyone in the village! Though it is not technically legal, but the police knew about it and even brought some crates off us!

Our church looks fantastic with our new stained glass window, though raising the money was a challenge, however we managed it and now it looks fantastic!