If you’re here, you’re probably scratching your head and coming up short on effective and creative church fundraising ideas.
Church fundraising can often feel like a stressful obligation, often falling on just a few members of the church staff.
And more things add to this stress! For starters, it’s rare that the weekly tithes and offerings can cover a church’s basic expenses.
Furthermore, there are those other times when your church needs extra funds for a mission trip, a repair of the church building, or another special project or initiative.
This is why churches and other faith-based organizations need to ramp up their fundraising strategies and activities.
In our following list of the top 15 church fundraising ideas, you’ll find a variety of church fundraising ideas. There is something for everyone, from small congregations to big ones. Some of the fundraising ideas are virtual, and some are designed for an in-person organization — for whenever that’s an option. 2021 anyone?
These are our top picks for the 15 most effective church fundraising ideas in 2021:
Set up Text-to-Give
Text-to-give is a highly effective fundraising tool, especially for churches and other faith-based organizations. It’s easy, simple, and fast. In just a few clicks your congregation members can text a keyword (such as “give”) to your church’s text-to-give number confirming their donation. church fundraisers ideas
Text-to-give is also known as text-to-tithe or text-to-donate. Consider text-to-give as a digital offering basket or plate that gives your congregation members a different, modern way to tithe and support your church.
To use this fundraising method, make sure you find a text-to-give software platform that suits your unique needs and then ensure that you promote this giving method to your congregation.
Pro tip: Stay tuned with GiveForms updates. We’re releasing a text-to-give feature very soon!
Run a crowdfunding campaign
Crowdfunding is all about raising funds from a large number of people. It relies on a higher number of smaller donations, rather than several larger ones. The idea was born in the startup world but is nowadays successfully used by many nonprofit organizations. Crowdfunding raises funds through a collective effort of friends, family, community, donors, and other supporters.
So, what differentiates a crowdfunding campaign from general online fundraising?
A crowdfunding campaign, as the name suggests, is a campaign. Campaigns are projects that have a specific goal, a beginning, and an end. For example, you might run a crowdfunding campaign to repair your church roof.
To run a church crowdfunding campaign, a crowdfunding platform is a must. The platform will host your donation page and serve as a gateway to process the funds that you receive.
Design a beautiful, visually-appealing crowdfunding page that will contain the name and logo of your church, the goal of your crowdfunding campaign, an eye-catching call to action button, and a donation form to collect the basic information about the donor.
Promote your crowdfunding campaign online, such as via social media and emails. Get creative with images and videos.
Pro tip: In addition to promoting your cause online, it’s also important to keep your donors and supporters updated on the progress of the crowdfunding campaign.
Sell engraved bricks
Albeit traditional, engraved bricks are a very effective church fundraising idea.
In a nutshell, to run this fundraiser, you will sell bricks/pavers/tiles to donors who will purchase the bricks and choose the wording that will be engraved. These bricks can then be incorporated into a building, a sidewalk, a courtyard, a memorial wall, etc.
Start by choosing your installation area. Subsequently, the size of the area will determine how many bricks/tiles you need to sell and how to price them.
Find a company that will do the engraving for you, usually by using laser etching or sandblasting. When choosing among brick fundraising companies, you need to look at the total delivery cost, particularly the shipping costs.
Finally, start promoting your brick fundraiser. Include pricing and sample photos so that your donors can visualize what the finished product will look like.
Make use of peer-to-peer fundraising
You’ve probably seen some version of peer-to-peer fundraising on social media, even if you didn’t know it was called that.
A friend asking his friends and family, on his/her birthday, to donate towards a specific cause. Another friend is running a marathon and asking for donations to his favorite nonprofit.
This is known as peer-to-peer fundraising, a fundraising method that utilizes the power of the network by recruiting fundraisers to raise funds on behalf of the nonprofit.
Peer-to-peer fundraising has great fundraising potential since it exponentially increases your reach, and therefore the chances of new donations coming in. Congregation members who become your fundraisers will reach out to their family, friends, and other members of their network to raise money for your church.
You can utilize peer-to-peer fundraising any time of the year but connecting it with birthdays or specific times of the year (e.g. Easter or Christmas) can make the fundraiser even more effective.