Youth Group Fundraisers

One of the churches in our area has always had luck with auctioning off kids to people in the church to do odd jobs. They host a dinner at church, the kids serve the adults and then afterwards the adults bid on the kids to come to their house to do some work.

 

We do one fundraiser. A camp stew sale. The folks in the church provide much of the ingredients. We have access to some large (60 gal) commercial stew pots. We provided 88 kids with $81 each this year...a net profit of $7,200 or so.

I hate fundraisers...so we have very few of them, and go all out and get it done.

 

Here's what we do. We offer "stock" to our congregation. They invest by buying as many $10 stocks as they want. They don't get money back, but all stockholders are invited after our summer (two mission trips and camp) for a big thank-you celebration where we show pictures and video, and our students give testimonies. If people can't give, there is the option to go as a chaperone or be on our prayer list. We've had Sunday School classes buy stock and had young children buy stock. It's the best way I can think of to get the adults involved in the lives of our students. (It helps that our students are very involved in many aspects of our church, so everyone sees them serve - in fact, they're pretty much the leaders in service among all of the groups!) If you'd like our template of what we send out, please e-mail me!

SEC

 

Our teens turn our fellowship hall into a restuarant with candles, a piano player, and full course meal and then sell the dinners to our Church families. Our most popular are lasgana, spaghetti, philippino, and oriental dinners and happen about once a quarter and relieves our Teen Ministry from the Church's budget. Also, the teens use "their money" for work projects such as buying paint to redo or decorate a room. We do monthly youth activities and once a quarter one of these activities is a "work day". (Side note: our Sunday School classes do activities every month or more depending on the teacher and the Church schedule.) We also "hire" out our teens (in 3 man/lady teams) to our Church members for a couple of hours on a Saturday every other month... like a good union we drop them off and pick them up with the Church van and then go have lunch and a Bible Study.

Scott, I'll pm you and get your ideas as well...anything and everything just adds to the knowledge database and the stupid ideas are the ones I throw out

 

PastorSBC's auction idea has worked very well for our group also.
I usually don't like door-to-door fundraisers, but one that has been just fantastic for two years for our group is Joe Corbi's/Mama Corbi's pizza dough/cookie dough/pretzel etc. dough. Has sold like wildfire, especially to second-time customers. Good stuff and good profits. Don't know if they're located all over tho...

 

To not hijack this thread or change the subject but clarify it I would like to add this.

In the sexual purity thread some talk about keeping our young people pure involved not just teaching them about sex or to stay away from it....but to teach them to stay out of any situation that could lead to it. How do I keep myself faithful to my wife? Well one way other than through Prayer and the Scriptures is not never be in a situation that would put me alone with another woman. So all of that to say this...I make it a practice to never auction off my young people or send them anywhere in less than a 3 person team...it is easier to keep them honest and keeps them from being taken advantage of and trains them to always be aware of their situations. Ok I'll get off my hobby horse

 

I'll send you the information on Monday when I get back to the office!