Fundraising For Youth Groups
Beyond a Walk and a Bake Sale

So you need to raise some funds? Need a little bit of help with ideas of how to start? Here is the best advice we can offer you from an experienced fundraiser and some of the most unique ideas for raising funds with youth in mind.

Before you Begin….

• Use the Fundraising Equation
  Apply this equation to any proposed event or campaign: E + E + E = F
  Enough people with Enough money and Enough desire = Funds
• Can you attract Enough attendance, considering location, time of season or week, and type of fundraising event? People may travel hundreds, or even thousands of miles to attend certain events, but few would half a block to a rummage sale on a Wednesday afternoon in the middle of January.
• Can you attract people with Enough money to pay what you ask? A $500 a plate celebrity dinner may be an organizational coup, but if yours is a community where only a handful of people can afford to attend, the dinner will be a failure.
• Will people really have Enough desire to help your group by participating?
  If your answer to all three questions is “YES”, then go ahead.
  

Goals

Setting a goal or a target is very important when fundraising; it can also be a way of raising money in itself. Every event should have a monetary goal, although few event organizers actually know how much they really want to raise each time. The usual target is “as much as possible”, but the problem with this method of accounting is that any amount of profit will be considered a success. Volunteers and members of the group need to know what monetary amount is expected of each of them. Otherwise, they will be happy to stop working as soon as they thing they have made a profit.

Set an attainable target for each event. Make it clear to all that until that target is reached, the event will be considered a failure. Do not be tempted to set the target too high, because if nobody thinks it can be achieved, everyone will give up without really trying. Set a realistic target. You will always raise more money this way.

Service Clubs

Most service clubs exist to raise money for charity and not for profit groups and obtaining support from an organization such as the Knights of Columbus, Catholic Women’s League, the Lions or Rotary International can make a significant difference to the fortunes of any charitable group. Fundraising events jointly organized with service clubs can be especially beneficial. Many service club members are business people, or people in management, with access to resources and facilities not normally available to charity groups.

Some clubs remain loyal to a single charitable cause for many years, while others will entertain proposals from new charities on a regular basis. Try to discover the criteria used by each service club for allocation of funds at all levels. Target those that fit the profile of your group. You may be asked to write a letter of request or to come to a meeting a make a presentation. Members of service clubs can also make a significant difference by acting as volunteer workers. Service club members seek to serve their communities and are usually willing to lend and hand at almost any event. Members can also be very useful in providing advice and information to event organizers. Your fundraising may be made easier if you network with service club members whenever possible.

Goody Bag Sales

Goody bags are ongoing fundraising success, particularly during the Christmas season. Youth organizations are well suited for raising much needed money in this way. Sweets, cookies, and small novelty items are made or purchased in bulk and made up into attractive, reasonably priced packages for public sale. Think stocking stuffers, Mother’s Day Gift baskets, etc.

Learn-a-Thon/Sing-a-Thon/Pray-a-Thon

Most any group of young people can become fundraisers by competing to learn while being sponsored for doing so. Hymns, poems, prayers, math tables, popular songs or trivia tidbits can all form the basis of a learn-a-thon (no matter what you want to call it). Each participant should be sponsored by friends and relatives for the total number of prayers, poems, pieces of data, song verses etc., learned within a given period of time. A small prize should be offered to the most successful learner.

Pie Sale

According to Fr. Norbert this is such a good idea that it can not be called “just a bake sale”. Find someone who knows how to make simple apple and pumpkin pies. Ask parents of your group or you yourself if you are so inclined to make the pie shells. Get all fillings and other ingredients needed donated. And then spend a Sat afternoon and evening or all night having a “pie party” cutting the apples and making the fillings. Bake throughout the night and early on Sunday morning, the parishioners of your church will be purchasing hot out of the oven homemade pies. This is a wonderful idea for Easter or Thanksgiving when most people are looking for a pie. To make it even simpler ask parishioners through a bulletin announcement to pre order their pies. Fr. Norbert said the pies could be sold for $10 a pie. Fr. Norbert likes pie.

Babysitting

Before Christmas for last minute shopping, during parent interview time when there is more than one child in the family or midway through the March break week offer parents of your parish and community the opportunity to drop their children off at the parish hall or school gym and your group will babysit them. Have age appropriate activities and many many volunteers to help with organizing this event. There should be no less than one babysitter for each group of 4 children. Charge a nominal fee and enjoy a day watching movies, playing games, making crafts and snacks while you raise funds for your trip. If your youth group is quite young and are new at babysitting make sure that you have some volunteer adult supervision as well.

Toy Sale

Regular collections of secondhand or damaged toys through the year can be beneficial to your group. How to manage them? Street collection, drop boxes in places like the church, the library: school collections where each child is asked to bring in toys of which they have grown tired. (To avoid complications each toy should be accompanied by a written consent from the parent). Ask all the your members to collect old toys from friends and family. Hold workshops where everyone can help to repaint, repair, and refurbish the donations. Then stage a giant toy sale. One charity took over an unoccupied store and opened a Santa’s Grotto selling the “almost new” toys before the holidays.

Contests

Contests can raise money by sponsorship, entrance fees for contestants, audience ticket sales and ancillary events like draws and refreshment sales. Publicity for this type of event is often self-generating because journalists are constantly seeking something new.

Why not arrange a competition to discover the world’s most boring person. There is currently no known record holder in the category, and there are no set rules for choosing one. Define your own rules, set a venue, date and announce details to the press. Some people will go to extraordinary lengths to become world champions, and this idea is novel enough to attract attention.

Other contest ideas are as follows:

• Glamorous grandmothers
• Beautiful babies
• Knobby knees
• Long legs
• Making Faces
• World’s Worst (don’t knock it – remember Eddie the Eagle Edwards, ski jumper of the 1988 Winter Olympics. He didn’t set out to be the worlds worst ski jumper but he certainly became the most prestigious appearing in talk shows and featured daily in every newspaper in North America and Europe.)
  Worst singer, dancer, comedian, magician, sportsmen, musician, orchestra

Cow Pat Toss

Tossing dried discs of cow manure in Frisbee fashion is a popular competition (but I refuse to say where locally). There is even a current world record for the event. A cow pat throwing contest is cheap and easy to arrange, requiring only the use of a farmer’s field, the cooperation of a herd of cows and several (at least 30) days of dry, hot weather to season the pats.

Screaming and Noise-Making Contest

Screaming contests combined well with laughing contests. Alternatively, a screaming contest can also be arranged as a shrillest; most bloodcurdling; most ridiculous or humorous; and so on. Sponsorship in the form of prizes is essential. Any number of related shouting and calling events can also be included; hog calling, duck calling, yodeling, and animal sound imitation.

Hay Bale Rolling

Our fields are littered with huge cylindrical bales of hay and straw in the summer and fall and are usually all lined up somewhere in a field during the winter months. Have you ever wondered what it would take to roll one of those huge bales of hay over a one-kilometre course? In Tasmania Australia, there is an annual hay bale rolling championship over a 164-foot course, but to date there appears to be no history of attempts of a one-kilometre event.

Solicit farmers, weightlifters, firefighters, police officers and others to vie in a wide range of hay bale rolling competitions including an obstacle race, 50-metre sprint, and a 4 x 100 metre relay.

As always, publicity is the key to any activity of this nature and when properly organized, there is no reason why you should not receive considerable media attention before and during the event. Charge an entry fee for each team, an entrance fee for spectators, and make money from a barbecue or pig roast, and rides in a horse drawn hay wagon (or sleigh pending the season). The fundraising potential is enormous and so are the hay bales, which should be borrowed for the day for a local farmer. Make sure you ask him/her to deliver and collect or find a way to get it done prior to the event. And it may be wise to look into insurance. Those round bales of hay weigh several hundred pounds each.

Outrageous Challenges

Another slightly off the wall idea. Imagine the chair of your Youth Group, or your assistant Pastor or your local Member of Parliament sitting in a green jelly bath in the middle of a shopping mall because you raised $5,000 worth of donations in just four hours. How to achieve this? Find someone willing to make an outrageous commitment and enough people who would like to see it enough to donate the big bucks. A man in Courtice raised many many dollars canoeing across Lake Ontario.
Other challenges include the ever-popular living on the roof of a mall or grocery store and not coming down until sponsored dollars are raised.

Egg Race

An egg race is an ingenious fundraising event especially suitable for university, college, and senior high school students and teachers.

Teams of four ach sponsored by friends and relatives, compete to transport an uncooked egg over a given distance without touching it, using materials provided (these, of course, are chosen to test the ingenuity of the entrants and at first sight may seem totally impracticable). It is up to the organizers to decide whether transport materials should be tested beforehand (so as to establish their feasibility). Suitable materials have included rubber bands, paper clips, candles, ballpoint pens, teaspoons and similar small objects.

A trophy, or prize sponsored by your group should be provided to the winning team.

Great Escape

How far do you think you could travel in 24 hours, without money or identification, while dressed in an ape suit? Would you be able to travel further if you were a pink Cinderella or an escaped convict?

Teams of two, three or four persons, dressed in outrageous costumes, are released from a specific location at the same time. Collectively, they have no money, credit cards, or identification. They can use any means whatsoever to travel as far as possible within 24 hours with two exceptions: they must not accept credit, nor can they use their own motor vehicles or those belonging to relatives and friends. Teams may, however, make travel plans in advance, providing they have not paid for the travel.

Every team arranges sponsors for each mile successfully traveled. Great Escape have garnered much publicity and some, involving hundreds of teams, have participants who managed to travel more than 10,000 miles in the 24 hour period. A Great Escape can raise $10,000 - $50,000 or more. Start small, but think big. Arranging a Great Escape costs nothing, and your group can begin with only a few participants. You may all be surprised at how this adventure can develop into a major annual fundraiser.

Office Christmas Gifts

Most offices and groups of workers operate some kind of holiday gift exchange, and almost everyone ends up with something he or she does not want, would never use, or would not want to be seen dead wearing. Instead of giving gifts to one another, wouldn’t it be nicer if the entire office gave a donation to your organization. Or course it would. All that is required is for someone to suggest that fact. So go on, suggest. You cannot lose. You may want to go that extra step and supply a card that reads along the lines of “To celebrate the Christmas season I have donated $_____ in your name to the ________(organization) Merry Christmas.”

Challenge Money

Fundraising for a new group is usually much more difficult than raising additional funds for one already established. The reason is clear: few want to support an organization that may never raise sufficient funds to be viable. When seeking funds for a new group from a heavyweight sponsor, asks the projected donor to make a pledge of financial support on condition that a specified amount of funding will be forthcoming simultaneously form other sources. You then are under pressure to raise the other funds first, BUT you also have a selling tool because you will say to potential donors, “(Donor) has agreed to be a major sponsor, but only with your support.”

Charity Performance

Any already established entertainment could be turned into a fundraiser by addition of the magic words, “Charity Performance in aid of…” Contact theatres, stadiums, ice rinks, concert halls, opera and ballet companies, and any other public entertainment venues you can think of. Ask if a charity performance for your group is possible in return for the publicity and good will that such an event would engender. Holding a performance in aid of a specific organization should guarantee a full house and considerable media attention. Once the vent has been arranged, it is in your interest to sell all of the tickets. You may be fortunate enough to receive all revenues from such an event but it is more realistic to expect only a percentage.

Desperation

An appeal to an individual, group, or the general public, based on the premise that unless donations are received IMMEDIATELY your group may be forced to not participate in WYD, can work to rally immediate support. Certain people, however, will be turned off by such an appeal, thinking your group is already doomed and further donation a waste of money. “Desperate” appeals are judgment calls and probably should only be used if your group really is desperate.

Raffles

Raffles can raise quite a bit of money. However if you decide to raffle off a quilt, a cake or even something smaller in value you still have to apply for a raffle license. In most municipalities the clerk’s office is a good place to start for the application form and the list of rules and regs. There is Provincial Lottery rules and regulations that must be followed to the letter. If this is your first time organizing a raffle please consult someone in your parish who is experienced. Perhaps that would be whoever held the last CWL bizarre? If in doubt call the church secretary. They will be your best bet for getting those contact names.

Dances

Holding a dance for students younger than your group is easier than for the general public or adults. There are no liquor licenses to worry about and the most under age students are looking for something to do that is cool. A dance held by older cooler youth in the church will attract. Make sure it is well chaperoned. Make sure you have great music, lots of pop to drink and good sound system and charge $3 to $5 at the door. Charge for refreshments too. With the cooperation of the local school principal and/or school board try to send home an announcement advertising the dance to each student in the grades you are inviting. And don’t forget to mention it in the bulletin too!

Dinners and/or Dances for the Parish

Dinners need planning time. And sometimes they are not easy and require a lot of work.

Sometimes the money raised is not worth all the work involved. If you are having a dinner make it simple and give people value for their dollar. You will never go wrong with that. If you have a local chef honour him by asking him to be involved and give him due publicity. You do not have to have a guest speaker. Guest speakers can be outrageously expensive and sometimes people have more fun just getting acquainted with those at their table.

You can have a theme dinner and incorporate costumes. Alternatively you could have singing/dancing waiters and waitresses. Perhaps your local theatre group could perform.

Another idea is to host a dinner theatre – perhaps a murder mystery during the meal. Or a small play or musical group could be asked to perform for your dinner crowd.

Almost any anniversary can be celebrated with a fundraising dinner. Think about all the traditional celebrations – New Year’s Eve, St. Valentine’s Day, Halloween, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day – and then there are Feast Days of our Saints. If your parish is named after a Saint find the date and celebrate!

Take special care in making sure the ticket price is raised with the more entertainment you add. And be very careful to not charge more than your guests can really afford. For your youth group a spaghetti dinner in the church hall with simple entertainment that suitable for the whole family is like the best kind of dinner to offer. Tickets should be sold well in advance so you can prepare food etc.

Dinnerless Dinners

The Dinnerless Dinner idea is a means of soliciting funds by inviting donors to buy a ticket and stay at home. Printed invitations, designed to look like the genuine article with the recipient’s own home address as venue, are dispatched to friends and supporters with wording like this:

• The (parish name here) World Youth Day Pilgrimage Group takes pleasure in inviting Mr. & Mrs. Joe Wrench to its 1st Annual Dinner.
• This year the event will be held at (Recipient’s address)
• Guest of Honour – Mr. Joe Wrench
• Guest Speaker – Mrs. Joes Wrench
• Dress Informal
  Note – Due to the high cost of hiring a hall, the exorbitant food expense, and the substantial entertainment fees required, the World Youth Day Pilgrimage Group requests that you attend our annual fundraising dinner and dance by remaining in your own home, eating your favourite meal, and dancing to any music that you like. The World Youth Day Pilgrimage Group Fundraising Dinner will take place on Monday the 6th of April, or any other date suitable to you, and we are thrilled to be able to tell you that the Pope will not be attending.
  Please note that because of cutbacks in costs outlined above, tickets for the World Youth Day Pilgrimage Group Fundraising Dinner have been reduced from $150 to $20 per couple. We welcome your participation.

Taste and Tell Parties

Invite people to make a dish, which they believe to be unusual or unique. In a multicultural parish this party is especially fun as people from different ethnic origins should be encouraged to bring something reflecting their culture (or recipes handed down year after year, generation after generation).

Each party guest introduces his/her dish, explaining its origins and creation method. As an extra bonus, guest should provide a written copy of each recipe. Everyone wishing to take the dish makes a small donation prior to doing so. Those wishing to purchase copies of the recipe should make an additional donation; one dollar a taste and another for the recipe are probably reasonable charges for most taste-and-tell parties.

Auctions

In less than 8 hours I once raised over $700 in planning an auction by calling the right people who I knew would come to support the cause in a pinch. The same people I invited to the auction were also asked if they had an item at home that they would like to donate to the auction. Not only did 50 people show up, half of them brought auction items in lieu of an entry fee. Some people donated food items and I was able to even get the room donated. We received great support from the media that night, which lead to further donations. This event should not have worked. It was not well planned out but for some reason it worked. I got lucky. If you are thinking of organizing an auction in this way give yourself a month of planning time. Just think how much more fun it will be for you if you are not frantically trying to pull it together at the last minute.

There are many types of auctions such as antiques; art, services or a combination of all can be offered. My favourite auction idea is old but I still like the idea – that is to have picnic baskets of lunches auctioned off. So everyone participating donates a picnic lunch (the more decorative the container the better), and everyone also bids on the lunch they want to eat. After the auction everyone has a big picnic together enjoying each other’s donation of food. It sounds like a real winning idea. I have never had the opportunity to use it. Hope you can.

A Few Final Thoughts and Ideas on Fundraising:

In a World of Copycats – Be an Individual
Always organize your event in ways that others have not. Separate yourself form the pack and show people that you are making an effort and deserve to be supported. Individualism attracts attention and this fact is very important in fundraising.

Use Common Sense:
Always draw the line on a crazy idea if it is going to reflect negatively on the parish or the Pastor. No one wins if money is raised at the expense of someone else.

And last but by no means least:
ALWAYS give people more than they expect.
ALWAYS go the extra mile.
Whatever the event, whatever the goal, when everything has been arranged and finalized, ask yourself and your group: “Is there one little thing that we can do which will make people say ‘WOW’, and dig a little deeper into their pockets?” You want to make sure supporters return for your next event with friends and the event after that with more friends. Fundraising is rather like an art form and you’ve got to give it everything you’ve got. And then some.

GOOD LUCK!

Mary Helen