10 Successful Church Fundraising Ideas to Try Today

Some people love it, some people dread it, but either way, the same thing is true: fundraising of some type is necessary for parishes. Aside from the usual fundraising a church does through weekly offerings and contributions to capital campaigns for the local diocese, most churches must also fundraise on a smaller level to fund their ministries and community initiatives.

We’ve collected several successful, tried-and-true parish fundraisers to give you some fresh ideas and help you put the “fun” back into fundraising.

1. Parents’ Night Out Movie Nights

Plan a double-feature movie night for children at the church to give parents a night off. This is a fantastic opportunity to also include high schoolers to help watch kids by offering them service hours. Show two movies back-to-back, charge per child, and include pizza, juice boxes, and popcorn. Other fun options: Encourage kids to wear their pajamas, bring a blanket and a stuffed animal, or even invite a friend!

This event will be even more popular if you run it before Christmas, so parents have time to do some Christmas shopping; Valentine’s Day, so parents can have a date night; or even right before back-to-school season when parents are scrambling to get organized. Another idea is to charge $20 per child, or $50 total for 3 or more children in the same family. This means that anyone with 4 or 5 kids in the right age range could send the whole squad for only $50 bucks.

To maximize the number of kids who want to participate, consider having two different rooms that show different movies. One for the older youth and “tweens” and one for younger children.

2. Church Merch

One of the most successful ways to do a continuous fundraiser at your parish is to create church merch that anybody can purchase at any time. Always having T-shirts, hats, mugs, and the like available for purchase at your parish office or even through your parish website creates an opportunity for ongoing support from your community. The added bonus is that every time someone buys church merch and uses/wears it, they’re providing free advertising for your church and for your church merch fundraising! If parishioners start seeing other members wearing a T-shirt with your parish logo, chances are they’ll want one, too!

Some ideas to keep things fresh and fun: Hold a T-shirt design contest every few years, and run a pre-sale of the shirt to cover the initial printing costs. Then, offer past year’s designs for sale to keep the fundraiser going! We collected 40 ideas for the best church merch items to give you some inspiration!

3. Parking Spot Sponsors

This fundraiser can be redone year after year. Simply pick out a few good parking spots in your lot and auction them off to the highest bidder or charge a single price to use the spot all year long. Once a parking spot is purchased, erect a sign with the person/family’s name on it, for example, “This spot reserved for the Smith Family.”

If you have never done a parking spot sponsor fundraiser before, start with an auction-style event. This will give you an idea of how much your members might be willing to pay for the spot. Once you know what families are willing to pay for the spots, you can set a fixed price for future parking-spot fundraisers. Your community might surprise you with what they’re willing to pay for a good parking spot.

When you advertise this fundraiser to your parish, encourage people to purchase a parking spot as a gift. A parish parking spot makes a fun and unique gift for families who have recently had a baby, grandparents, and parents with multiple children!

4. “Sponsor a Need” Wall

Hang a bulletin board where parish staff and ministry leaders can pin notes all year long with specific ministry needs on them. This unique fundraising idea has the benefit of reaching those who might not often give weekly to a parish, but whose interest is piqued when they see a ministry seeking a specific object or service. For example, if middle-aged parishioner Joe is especially interested in cars and working on his own vehicles and sees on the “Sponsor a Need” wall that the parish van is in need of some routine maintenance, he may be more likely to contribute to the church in this way!

List items needed, services needed, and even dollar amounts needed to buy specific programs and materials. If you ask for money on the bulletin board, be sure to specify exactly what it’s going toward!

Make sure you:

• Commit to keeping the wall updated monthly, so there are always opportunities.
• Have specific envelopes for the wall right near it, so people can drop donations or follow QR codes appropriately.
• Offer a variety of giving levels so everyone can participate, even on smaller incomes. For example, painting the church hall might cost $1,000, while purchasing snacks for the youth group is $25, flowers for the church planters are $100, snacks for the First Communion retreat are $200, and drinks for the First Communion retreat are $30. You get the idea!
• Make sure to post a follow-up on the board, as well! You can have a template with a photo and a quick explanation of the donation (e.g., "Thanks to YOU, our 8th Grade Catechism class took 20 new pairs of socks to our local nursing home.").

5. Online Crowdfunding

Using online crowdfunding tools like GoFundMe.com is often an overlooked fundraising option for parishes. The key to using a crowdfunding tool is to tie it to a specific project to appeal broadly to your community.

Great ideas for crowdfunding at a church include fundraising for:

• Mission/Service trips
• Summer camps/VBS
• Specific parish campus/building projects, such as needing a new window or bathroom repair
• Commissioning a new statue or art piece

6. Event Parking

A no-brainer for parishes whose parking lots are close to places where large events happen. If your parish is near a stadium, special theater, music hall, farmers market, or something else that people frequently need a secure place to park for, this one’s for you!

All you need are a few A-Frame signs to put out on the street advertising your parking rates and a few volunteers to collect money and keep an eye on the cars parked for the event. For some churches, this type of fundraiser is a weekly happening and can bring in a significant amount of money! Don’t forget to set up a way for people to pay with a credit card if they don’t have cash.

7. Local Business Partnerships

If your parish isn’t already partnering with local businesses to cover the costs of your weekly bulletin and the costs of your parish website, you’re missing out! LPi has successfully set up thousands of churches across the country with local sponsors who support their parish. This means that churches who partner with LPi don’t have to pay for their print and digital bulletins or even for their websites, thanks to local sponsors who are delighted to invest in their parish.

Truly, if your church isn’t already doing this, LPi can get you started right away!

8. Parish Yard Sale

This fundraiser is known by many names: a parish yard sale, rummage sale, community market, garage sale, second-hand sale, and even a parish flea market! Regardless of what your community decides to call it, a parish yard sale can be a great money-maker for your community. It does take a bit of effort to pull off, but if you commit to doing it every year, you will find that your community begins to look forward to it, and many even plan all year by gathering donations for it!

The most successful parish yard sales have these themes in common:

• They are held around the same time every year (so people can plan).
• They clearly state what people are and are not allowed to donate (furniture, exercise equipment, clothes, etc.).
• They often run for more than one day and sometimes even for two weekends in a row.
• They have a dedicated ministry team that plans and executes them every year.
  
  

To raise a little extra money at your parish yard sale, consider also offering a bake sale at the same time or offering something unique to give it a family-friendly festival type of vibe, such as balloons, face painting, or even setting up a little coffee stand to offer lattes and smoothies for a donation.

9. Micro-Donation Day

Never underestimate the power of a themed fundraising day! If your parish needs a bit of a financial boost and you want something easy that can also capture the attention and donations of people who might not normally donate regularly, hold a “micro-donation day.”

The most important part of this is to advertise it ahead of time and hype it up to everyone through as many communication channels as you can. Put it in the bulletin, Mass announcements, emails, and on your website, and put up flyers everywhere a month in advance. Then, pick a Sunday that you think will be a popular Mass like, for example, Pentecost or maybe close to the feast day of your parish’s patron saint, and do one of the following ideas:

• Raise the amount of dollars as the date. For example, donate $15 dollars on Sunday, the 15^th!
• Everyone donates $12 all on the same day — one dollar for every one of Jesus’ disciples.
• 10 for 10: For every 10 parishioners who donate 10 dollars on the micro-donation day, a sponsoring organization or generous donor (that you have found ahead of time) will match the $100 raised.
  
  

10. Naming Rights

This one can be really fun, but it takes a little bit of set-up. It can be used for just about anything, though. What you do is you sell the naming rights for something in the parish. It could be the parish van, the community garden, the parish lawn mower, or even Father’s car. The fundraiser consists of auctioning off the best name for the item. One dollar = one vote for someone’s favorite name.

Here’s how to do it.

1. Communicate with your parishioners about the fundraiser and how it works. Set a time frame to collect name ideas. For example, parishioners have a month to submit their favorite naming ideas. Do this through a special online form on the parish website.
2. Once name ideas are collected, have the parish staff vote on their top 10 favorite names, and create a landing page on your website that visually tracks the donations (votes) for each name option. Make sure there is a way to donate right on your parish website!
3. After a set amount of time, warn parishioners that it’s their last chance to choose the name and that they should donate toward the name they want.
4. After the allotted time is up, have a naming ceremony for the object being named after Mass with coffee and donuts and a silly celebration.
   
   

Find More Fundraising Ideas for Your Parish

While researching for this article, our team uncovered several other creative parish fundraising ideas that we’ll be sharing in a future blog on our website. To keep “in-the-know” about fresh parish fundraising ideas and have access to other great articles on the ins and outs of parish life and communications, be sure to both follow our blog and sign up for our free Vibrant Parish Newsletter.

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