Creative Fundraising Ideas

Creative Fundraising

Equal Exchange Coffee:Fundraise for your trip by selling equal exchange products. Equal exchange fundraising will not only help you, it will help the farmers and producers, because equal exchange products are fair trade. Ask your leader for more information.

Auctions: Partner with local business to donate gift cards, free services and merchandise (ex: ipods, watches, dinner with a local celebrity, tickets to theater shows, etc.) If you are a part of a winter trip you can add these items to the GP auction, and receive 50% of the proceeds. The other 50% goes to Global Partnership teams overall. If you are a part of a spring or summer trip, you could hold your own silent auction, raffle, or sell the items on eBay.

Raise Your Own Money: Sacrificial giving is often the most rewarding. In order to get some of the finances you need for your trip, you may want to sacrifice some of the activities that cost you money like weekly trips to Starbucks, movies, eating out, or new clothes. Instead of getting presents for Christmas or your birthday, why not ask for financial support for the mission trip? Also, you can do odd jobs like babysitting, chores, mowing lawns, and more to raise money.

Week of Restaurant Fasting:Designate a week for church or organization members to save the money they would spend eating at sit-down and fast food restaurants and donate it to your international mission project. Promote the "Week of Restaurant Fasting" through church media outlets including bulletin and pulpit announcements. Provide pledge cards in pews for members to fill out and place in offering plates, pledging to participate. At the end of the fasting week, have a church-wide potluck dinner; or, have a popular local restaurant cater a meal into the church. If your church is small enough, you can book a banquet room at a restaurant. At this meal, collect the proceeds from members and announce the accumulated amount.

Parents' Night Out: Offer one night (or several nights) for parents to let you watch their kids. This is a great way for parents to have a date night, do Christmas shopping, or just escape their usual responsibilities for an evening. It would be best to have your team as a whole cover a night for the parents, in order to watch a group of children at once. All proceeds will go toward the cost of the trip.

Take an offering:Take an offering at each Global Partnership meeting to raise money for your team or another team, or for your partner location.

Loose Change:Go door to door in the dorms and ask for people’s loose change.

Car Wash: Sell car wash coupons: Sell car wash coupons ahead of time. Some will buy just to support and not show up and others will show up along with any you happen to draw in from advertising. Doing it this way raised more money for us than just doing a regular car wash.

Host a Dinner: Host a nice dinner and charge people $15-50 to come (depending how fancy the dinner is.) Connect the meal with your partner location, so that people can learn about your trip and where you are going.

Bake Sale/Auction: Host a baked goods silent auction for cakes, pies, brownies etc.

Offer classes: Organize and teach a beginners' computer course (in Photoshop, web design, etc)

Offer fitness: Are you athletic? Become a personal trainer for a season, for a donation of $15-25 a session.

Restaurant sponsorship: Get a restaurant or ice cream shop to sponsor your team for a day. The Thailand team did this in 2008 and received $400 in donations from Cold Stone Creamery, who donated a percentage of each sale to the team.

Corporate Sponsorship: There are a lot of corporations and businesses that set aside money each year for philanthropic use. Try checking with some local companies to see if they will sponsor or contribute to your mission trip. Remember, a person or company does not have to be Christian to give to a Global Partnership trip.

Craft Night: Provide everything they'll need to make something. Charge enough to cover your costs, with a bit of profit. Ask for donations.

Movie Night: Host a big-screen movie at your church or in Java Haus and charge for popcorn, candy, and soda. Connect the movie with your partner location for added educational value. Sometimes professors may be willing to offer extra credit if students go watch the film.

Krispy Kreme offers various methods of fund raising, from selling individual doughnuts to selling "buy one, get one free¨ cards. Contact your local Krispy Kreme for information.

T-Shirt Sales: Create a team t-shirt using a team logo, picture or slogan. Keep the design simple and one or two colors to keep your costs down. Take pre-orders for the shirts up until a set date. The shirts should not cost more than $5-$8 per shirt and if you charge $15-$20 per shirt (a typical price) the potential for profit is great. If a team of 10 people each sell 15 shirts the total profit will be $1200 (at an $8 profit per shirt).

Garage Sale: This is a great way to get particular North Park organizations involved with an area they may not be connected with on a regular basis. Approach the teachers/leaders and ask them to donate items toward a garage sale. Then, organize shifts of people to help set up the garage sale items, run the cash register, and help with carrying the items to the designated location. Advertise this in on campus, at churches, or on Facebook in order for people to not only donate items, but also to purchase things. Local ice cream shops or grocery stores could be approached as well, because they might be willing to donate snacks and refreshments. All of the money will be donated toward the cost of the Global Partnership trip.

Santa's Helpers Child-care Service: You can help eliminate holiday stress and motivate giving by organizing a Santa's Helper program either within your church or in volunteers' homes. Parents may drop off their children at the designated place and go Christmas shopping or attend parties. In larger churches, this may be most effective as an eight-hour-a-day service. Provide a schedule for parents (distributed as a flyer in the church bulletin) of who is offering Santa Helper duty and when and where they're offering it. Provide a contact number for parents to call to sign up and register for a fee. It is up to volunteers to determine how many children they can keep, how long, and how many times. You may wish to provide Christmas videos or other holiday activities to help volunteers entertain children during the time their parents are gone.

Year-End: Use the fundamentals of the above strategy to gain partners in ministry by highlighting the benefits of a year-end donation. The holiday season is a great time to offer friends and family the opportunity to partner in the mission project you are organizing. Letters are a fine way to raise support, but while you are home for the holidays, make presentations to church groups, businesses, and family gatherings. Highlight that all donations are tax deductible and donors will receive a gift receipt for tax purposes.