Church Fundraising Ideas

Church fundraising is a great way to earn extra money for your church while also building member relationships. Church fundraising provides a great way to reach out to the community for support as well as to spread the word about your Church. There are a lot of different ideas for fundraising and choosing the right one for your Church can be a daunting task. In this article we will suggest some great fundraising ideas. We will also talk about how you can make fundraising easy by receiving credit card contributions.

Now we will talk about some of the more common Church fundraising options and how they can help your church.

Bake Sale – Bake sales are a great way to get the community together and strengthen the bond with your church. Just have members bring the food and let people know about your fundraiser.

Yard Sale – Doing a big yard sale in the church parking lot on Saturday morning is a great way to raise funds. You can get people to give their items for a general sale, setup tables like a flea market does, or even let people sell things from their cars.

Highway Cleanup – Basically, your members get contributions of so much per pound of trash collected and hauled away. This works especially well when the area being cleaned up is a visible location such as a main road or park.

Car Wash – A car wash fundraiser is a summer staple and great for having some fun in the sun. Church groups can always rely on it to raise money for the church.

Easter Flowers – Have these beautiful flowers available for sale a few weeks before Easter. You can plant them a few months before Easter and grow them or just buy them already grown. With a cost of only a few dollars apiece, it’s a great way to make money.

Wristband Fundraiser – These low-cost silicone bracelets can be ordered in bulk with your slogan of choice for well under a $1. The right color combination and message can create a huge demand. Consider phrases such as Got Faith?, WWJD, What Would Jesus Do, Trust Your Faith, Believe, etc.

Pancake Breakfast – A pancake breakfast is a great turnout when there is a good cause behind it. A pancake breakfast fundraiser is easy to do and very low cost. Charge enough to make profit. You can also place a big jar labeled ‘contributions’ right next to the cash register.

Accepting Credit Card and Debit Card contributions

To really speed up the process you could offer your contributors the ability to donate to the church fundraiser using their credit card. This would allow them to easily make a contribution without the issues of dealing with cash. A lot of people don’t carry cash or check anymore because it isn’t convenient. Instead they carry credit and debit cards.

To accept credit and debit card donations you would need a way to process credit cards. There are lots of options including point of sale terminals, and online payment gateways.

In this article we talked about some great church fundraising ideas and also how to make it easy for people to contribute with their credit card and debit card.

This article was written by Todd Nelson, Marketing Director for Capital Merchant Solutions, Inc (www.holyprocessing.com). CMS has been in the merchant account business for nearly 10 years, and offers free merchant accounts to both online and retail businesses. This article may be republished as long as absolutely no changes are made, and the resource box is included. Copyright 2007 – Capital merchant Solutions, Inc. – All rights reserved.

- Todd Nelson