5 Simple Youth Group Fundraising Ideas
Cake and coffee sale
Ask all your youth ministry members to assemble and bake cakes, cookies, pies, bread, and other baked goodies, take permission from your church to arrange for booths and tables outside your church and sell them after the service. Research how your community wants to buy and accordingly sell the cakes and pies and makes more money. Arrange to sell bake cakes and some combinations like coke, juice, coffee to serve your community members during a festival or fair.
Balloon Pop
A Simple fun game, arrange a booth in a fair or festival, display a poster and announce prior to the event about this and ask people to buy a balloon and pop it in front of everybody and win some prizes. By doing they will help the noble cause and also have fun.
You can check with some local retailers for sponsoring the event and request them to donate some prizes. Ask your vendors to advertise with a tag line and explain your cause for the event and offer them free advertising.
A simple game but fun filled game needs some balloons, helium tank, string, and strips of paper to write down the prizes. Slip a piece of paper to the balloon before inflating it, fill the balloon with helium, and tie them with a string, ensure that all balloons have slips of paper, even if it is a simple Thanks ask people to decide when to pop you can give choice to them, either allow the participants to pop the balloon as soon as they buy it or ask them to hold the balloon and wait for the big announcement.
Penny Drive
Check out with your local business owners to keep a can which displays about your organization and the cause of fundraising and place them near the cash counter so people can donate the money.
Plan to arrange some discarded coffee cans, beer cans, soda cans, or any type of containers. Punch holes on top can and label them with some information about your organization and the cause of your fundraising activity.
Also check if you can form a group and ask them to distribute the cans to the businesses and stores, and another group that will collect the cans when they get filled up or after the fundraising campaign.
Cake Raffle
Prepare the venue and arrange the sound system for the announcement, Schedule the date and time when you are going to hold the raffle and print out raffle tickets and sell them for a dollar or two each.
Bake the cakes before the day you raffle, and make sure to communicate to your members, local community officials, and church ministers to raffle off the winners.
Depending on weather you are baking or asking someone to bake plan your raffle timings, You can also ask for a discounted price from the bakeshop to support your cause and advertise the bakeshop during the raffle. You can club bake sale and cake raffle so that people will be in win situation and they can as well take the cake when they go home.
Host a party
Plan and host a party to fund your next activity and support the cause, Arrange the venue and decorate the place, arrange a DJ if you know one and if he is going to do it free of cost to support your cause else a nice music system with choice of your music is great. Check if you can use church hall, school halls, Try selling tickets to as many friends, classmates, and other kids on the neighborhood. Check your budget and if you want to raise more funds arrange to sell snacks, drinks.
By working together any activity will succeed and this will be a live example for your youngsters and these ideas will help to develop teamwork and discipline among the youth and also help in building the event management skills.
Now that you have got the ideas on fundraising, thinking how you can succeed and want to start something right now take a look at our tips and enjoy the fun filled activity !
The first step in youth fundraising is “PLAN else FAIL” so if you fail to plan, you are sure to fail.
It’s time to plan and form a group of young people and set a few goals and vision which can help your youth ministry and also helps you in teaching useful skills which will help in your life.
Tips to boost your fundraising activity -
Plan
Have a plan in place and success follows you. Always figure out exactly how much money that you have to raise. Once you have that target, you can then turn your attention towards how you're going to achieve that target. Always have different strategies for raising money for your youth group. Get to know what you want achieve and write down project workflow, have deadlines to achieve the target and implement.
Involve everyone
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Seek the help of the kids in your youth group and their parents, if need be. You've got a small army that you can use to help you achieve your goal. It may sound pretty obvious, but some people that try to raise money for their youth group, don't utilize this asset fully.
Selling products is effective.
Kids are perfect soldiers for your cause they are energetic and people love then, just imagine when kids go door to door and sell products for a good cause, people love the act and is a very effective way to raise money for your youth group.
An Extra mile for kids
Give the kids a special incentive to excite them for raising money and they will love the fact about going out and raising money for their youth group. You can reward the top sellers with special incentives. Go crazy and creative with this idea. Depending on your group specifications you decide what will motivate the members of your youth group.
Keep track of your progress
Always make sure to keep a track of your progress and prepare a chart which will help you visually to assess your project, this is the most important reasons to keep track on your progress. By this you can alter your strategies and make sure that if you're running a fundraising event to make sure that the event doesn't interfere with other events in the community.
Spread the cause
If you communicate well to your community what you are doing and for sure people will help and donate the funds, People like to contribute to good causes, so always be pushing that and promoting that fact.
Make it fun
Never look at the fundraising activity as task or a job, get creative and think of ways to reward the kids and members of your group to make sure that they have a good time. Always manage to create a fun environment, talk about the rewards for raising this money it manifests the whole situation, it will also make the whole process a lot more efficient and effective.
Grants for Youth Ministries
Are you interested in applying for grants and want some basic knowledge:
- Want to teach young people social or practical skills.
- Interested to enable them to study.
- Want to support them at school.
- Keen to build relationships with parents.
- Supporting the cause of helping reduce crime by getting them involved in their community.
Be professional and document all these pieces of information and work can really help and succeed your goal in raising funds and getting grants.
Suggestions of places to look for grants -
Government Funding - This is aimed at the non-profit and charity sector. Grants announced for positive youth activities and to improve community relations. For more info check this link to get details.
United Methodists recognizing that young people have vision and dreams for the world, In this site they offer funding for creative, innovative approaches to ministries for, with, and by young people.
In Our community there are many ways to get grants some of the major church or religious organizations may offer some program by which groups of students or youth ministry applies grants and also local council, city or state may have grant programs specifically for your area Check on the website for your denomination.
Recommended Resources
Fundraising StoriesA pool of successful fundraiser’s experiences which tell the true stories of how they achieved their targets and the lessons they learned.
Fundraising Stories - This is a knowledgebase on raising funds for resources, activities & mission trips.
