Fundraising ideas for your Church. GoRaise makes it easy for your parish. We have loads of great suggestions for raising money for the things you care about:
| wdt_ID | Fundraising idea | Fundraising type | Potential | Time required |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Snack Shop | Event | High | A bit |
| 2 | Church film night | Event | High | Fair |
| 3 | Expert Night | Corporate | High | A bit |
| 4 | Village Sales | Event | Medium | A bit |
| 5 | Charity Walk | Community | High | A bit |
| 7 | 107 Fundraising ideas | Variety | High | A bit |
| 8 | Seasonal Church Fetes | Seasonal | High | Lots |
| 9 | Sponsored walks | Sporty | Medium | Not much |
| 10 | Supper Club | Epicurist | Medium | a little |
| 11 | Church Bake off | Epicurist | Medium | Not much |
On a sunny Saturday morning every June, the members of the church in Aspull Village can be found on the green jumping frantically up and down, and pounding on the earth. Why? Every year the church hosts a contest. The prize is to be named ‘Champion Worm Charmer of Aspull Village’.
While you may not yet have such a storied history of fundraising events, it is never too late to start, and we hope you find some of the ideas below useful for your church.
More than likely your local parish church has always relied on fundraising to maintain the building and grounds and run the church day to day. Nothing much has changed in this modern era, except it is now easier than ever for you and your local community to do your part in helping raise funds.
Perhaps you need to raise funds to carry out repairs to the roof or some masonry needs replacing, or even mindless vandalism needs that to be taken care of. Maintenance of churches, which are often older buildings require more time and money in their upkeep. Just think next time you are sat in church during Sunday morning service in the middle of winter and you are feeling the cold; summer fundraising could have provided funds to allow the heating to be on longer in the winter months.
Here at GoRaise we believe fundraising should be seen as something fun that brings your local community closer together, helps promote your church and its activities and raises well-needed funds in the process. So what are you waiting for?
Do you need some money-making ideas to inspire you to get out there and raise funds for your community church? Here is a selection of ones we thought you might like.
Why not gather your parish together and create events around the seasons, giving you plenty of opportunities throughout the year for fundraising – think May Day fete, mid-summer bring and buy sale, harvest festival food market.
Bring your church community together, enjoy the surrounding countryside and raise funds in the process. Sponsored walks are a well-recognised route to fundraising and should be relatively easy to organise.
Gather your best cooks together and think of a theme for your night, based around a style of food, a season or a country. Either host the event in the church or at someone’s private home and make it a monthly programme. The dinner should provide excellent quality food for a small number of diners, so keep the price fairly high to add exclusivity and maximise fundraising.
Ask all the parishioners to bake a cake or cakes they can bring along to a coffee morning after church service, where all the cakes are auctioned off to raise funds – the cake (and baker) that raises the most money is the winner!
It is not every day that you open up access to the bell tower or the crypt and give a behind the scenes tour of your church. Perhaps the clergy can host the tour or a local historian could be invited along to provide more background.
Set up a scheme for the local community to join that helps support and maintain the church for future generations through subscriptions, donations for particular appeals and Gift Aid. This scheme can help attract the wider local community in fundraising.
Quite simply hold a church coffee morning and ask for food and drink donations, which are then sold to raise funds. This brings everyone together in an informal environment and could be held a few times each month.
Organise a weekly or monthly quiz in the church, ask for donations for the refreshments and prizes and charge an entry fee. You can set up a café selling refreshments and even ask local businesses to sponsor the event.
Why not organise a fun evening of fine wines and cheeses in your parish and get a guest speaker along to make the evening more informative and fun. The speaker could just be a wine and cheese expert! Charge a ticket price and ask for wine and cheese donations.
Organise for a local historian to do a talk on the parish and surrounding area and organise a coffee morning around the event. Charge for entry and refreshments and ask for donations.
Getting the whole family involved is a great way of introducing new generations to your parish and raising funds at the same time. You could have fun activities like face painting and child and parent races, entertainers, musical acts, tombolas etc. Fun, fun and more fun with plenty of fundraising thrown in for good measure.
Need some repair work doing? Why not ask for members of the parish and community to sponsor a number of bricks, or contribute a set amount to your next maintenance project? You could then put then name in lights (a commemorative plaque) as one of the financial supporters of the church.
The one-minute sponsorship, St George’s, Worcester
The clock at St George’s Church, Worcester is a well-recognised landmark. Yet the clock and chamber bell had stopped working, and a complete overhaul was needed, costing £15,000.
The Friends of St George’s came up with the ‘Just a Minute’ appeal, where people sponsored a minute that was special to them. The idea was beautifully simple, yet it struck a chord with people across Worcester and beyond. And best of all it worked and raised all the required funds.
The appeal led to some very poignant stories. The Bishop of Worcester chose the minute his wife died after losing her battle with cancer, for example, while John Butterworth chose the time when he knelt before The Queen to receive his MBE.
We hope the above has given you some inspiration for raising funds for your local church and community? But why not get a kick-start by letting the GoRaise team help you increase church fundraising even more?
By introducing us to your parish, wider family and friends, every time you or they shop online with one of our registered retailers, you can receive valuable financial contributions through the charitable donations the retailers make, which can be between 0.5% and 6% of the purchase amount. So what are you waiting for, register now and let your cause start benefiting today.
Sell a selection of snacks and drinks at your group meetings and put the profits towards the church. This is a great way to get the church members involved in fundraising as they can be responsible for running the shop.
Once a month, why not organise a regular social where the whole group gets together in the church hall and watches a movie. Sell tickets and refreshments to boost your funds.
Is there an expert among you who could use their knowledge to help raise funds. This could be an amateur historian willing to donate an evening for a lecture, or a well travelled church member with plenty of tales to tell. Whoever your expert is, charge admission for the event and sell refreshments on the evening to raise money.
Organise a cake morning and bring along delicious treats to sell to friends and family. Or perhaps you have a green fingered guru among your parish? It is easy to nurture a few different species of flower, herb or vegetable plants to adulthood and then sell the plants in small pots at a church sale.
Is there a local walk or hill climb which your group can take on for charity. Even a walking trip around the local pubs can be approached as a fundraising challenge!
A great opportunity for the whole group to have a good clear out, a car boot sale is a great way to raise funds. If you have grounds or a church hall, then why not use them to host sales for the local community, with the church keeping the stall fees. Maybe some of your stall holders will even donate their profits to the church.
If you want some more specific ideas for fundraising for your cause then take a look at our articles on raising for sports clubs, community groups, charities, challengers and annual events like Comic Relief or Movember.