What about fundraising?

Hello I just have a few questions about starting the youth group....we can not think of any thing to do for fundraising. Can you give us any suggestions? We are thinking about a car wash and a bake/yard sale, but we also like to think of more to keep our opinions open. Can you please help. May god bless you and your youth.

Tamatha Carlton, "Living Waters"

Editor's Note:

Thank you for your inquiry. This is not the first time I have been asked this question. My response is in two parts:

• What do you need the money for? When I was presenting my book to publishers two years ago, one publisher responded that youth are not interested in interactive activities, Bible discussions and the like, similar to the events presented on this website. They just want to go on canoe trips, amusement parks and other costly activities. I respectfully disagree. We have been doing these interactive type events regularly at our youth programs for years and our youth regularly come, many every Sunday evening for the past six or seven years. The point is - we do not need a lot of money to run a youth program.

• With that said, there are times that extra funds are needed. We have a retreat every other year and... extra funds are needed. We have done car washes and they are fun for the youth (as long as you do them in warm weather) and will bring some funds in. The key is selling tickets for the car wash before hand.

Here are some other ideas:

• We did a pancake breakfast and sold tickets beforehand. We had pictures of youth activities around the breakfast hall. The youth were waiters and were encouraged to discuss the events of the youth group while serving breakfast. It was not only a success financially but it gave the community a chance to meet our young people and learn something about our program.
• We had a "Youth Auction". We identified tasks the youth could do for congregation members and auctioned them off. The most popular tasks were: babysitting, raking leaves and other backyard work, washing and waxing cars and electronics. In regards to electronics, we had older parishioners in our church that had purchased an electronics system such as a DVD player and were confused how to set it up. Others had trouble understanding how to operate remote control devices. Many of our young people were "whizzes" at these type tasks. The one time we did the auction everyone had great fun, the parishioners got to meet our youth in a different way and several needed tasks were accomplished. We even had some people who did not win bids but made a donation to our program to support the young people. I hope these ideas are helpful. I don't know what you need the funds for and we all have expenses for our program. Please review some of the activities on the web site. They will cost you little or nothing to do these events. In addition the book, "Not the Same Old, Done-it-before Youth Meetings", has 360 pages of activities that are quite inexpensive to do. Also please note that almost all of the activities on this web site were developed after the book was written. In other words, the book has activities not reflected on this website.

If you have fundraising ideas or activity ideas for Tamatha, please share them by writing to: TimFerguson@christianyouthgroup.org. Tamatha will be notified of your correspondence and it will be shared with other Christian youth leaders on this website. Thank you.
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