Soapbox Engage Blog

Fundraising for small churches can feel overwhelming. It might seem like your options for fundraising ideas are limited but there are many creative ideas for groups of all sizes. What small church communities lack in size, they often make up for in passion, commitment, creativity, and scrappiness.

Whether you are raising funds for a mission trip, local charity, a building fund, or anything in between, there are many ideas for church fundraisers that are fun, creative, and effective.

One of the keys to fundraising in a small church is to make sure that your fundraisers provide value to your congregation. Hosting fun events and opportunities that people enjoy attending will foster a more profound sense of community within your church and make people more eager to partner financially.

Here are 10 unique fundraisers for small churches to get you started!

1. Coffee and Craft Fundraiser
2. Create A Church Cookbook For Fundraising
3. Host a Yard Sale For Your Next Church Fundraiser
4. Clear The To-Do List With Your Church Fundraiser
5. $500 Wheelbarrow Church Fundraiser
6. Church Fundraiser Cakewalk
7. Trivia Night Fundraiser For Your Church
8. Basket Raffle Bingo
9. Donut Dash or Burrito Mile
10. Dog Wash

1) Coffee and Craft Fundraiser

Who doesn’t love an opportunity to enjoy a Saturday morning sipping coffee, nibbling on pastries, and doing a fun craft together! Whether it’s a guided painting experience or a seasonal craft, this is a wonderful event that gets people socializing while creating a fun keepsake and hitting your fundraising goal!

This fundraiser for churches works year-round, too! In the winter, host a Christmas themed craft fundraiser with Christmas cookies and hot chocolate. Spring is the perfect time for an Easter basket decorating party. Escape the summer heat with a guided painting or card-making event. Either have everyone bring their beverage of choice or serve iced tea, lemonade, watermelon, and other seasonal snacks. And everyone loves a fall-themed craft day with pumpkin spiced lattes, coffee cake, apple cider, and kettle corn.

If you are looking for a fun twist on the craft fundraiser for your church, consider hosting a scrapbooking gathering. Have people bring all the printed photos of their children, grandchildren, or family gatherings they keep intending to put into a scrapbook or photo album. Provide refreshments and necessary scrapbooking supplies and let people’s creativity run wild!

Where does the fundraising come in? There are many ways to turn these fun gatherings into fundraisers for your church. You can sell tickets to the event or have people donate to the cause at the door. Add an extra layer of fundraising by having a few high-quality items to raffle off.

Soapbox Engage Feature: Soapbox Engage’s Events app will make planning your craft fundraiser infinitely easier by helping you sell church fundraising tickets online. With Soapbox Engage, guests can either pay online or reserve their tickets and pay at the door.

2) Create A Church Cookbook For Fundraising

Does your church have a casserole hero that makes the best casserole? Or is there that one member who makes the best chili and you wish you had the recipe? Raise funds for your church by compiling a church cookbook!

A church cookbook is more than a fundraiser; it’s a high-quality keepsake that can help preserve the history, traditions, and stories of your congregation. And everyone knows that even though you can find a recipe for anything online, there’s nothing quite like a great chili recipe or homemade pie crust.

Encourage congregants to contribute favorite recipes and stories, photos, or meaningful devotionals to fill your cookbook. This will make the process fun and meaningful for everyone and can foster a stronger sense of unity within the church.

Soapbox Engage Feature: Use the Soapbox Engage Shop app to sell your church cookbook or other items for your church fundraisers. It is an easy-to-use store that simplifies the ordering and sales process. Spend less time selling and more time trying your new recipes!

3) Host a Yard Sale For Your Next Church Fundraiser

They say, “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” Instead of everyone taking their gently used items to the thrift store, encourage people to do a little spring cleaning and bring their clothing and household items to a church yard sale fundraiser!

This is an attractive fundraiser for churches because nobody wants to put on their own garage sale, but many people have a few things they would like to get rid of, especially if it’s for a good cause.

Have church members bring their items to donate to the church a few days before the yard sale. Gather volunteers to sort, tag, and arrange the donations. You will also need a few volunteers to work on the day of the yard sale to answer questions, keep things organized, and collect payments.

Advertise your yard sale fundraiser around town to drum up more interest! Many people love to spend their Saturdays at rummage sales. Don’t be afraid to put a donation jar next to the checkout line and encourage additional gifts toward your cause.

Up your fundraising potential by selling baked goods during your yard sale. Nothing goes better with a Saturday morning rummage sale than a cup of hot coffee and a homemade cinnamon bun!

Soapbox Engage Feature: Not everyone carries cash these days. With Soapbox Engage's Donations app, you can easily accept online donations! Instead of limiting your sales to cash-only, accept online donations for the amount they spend at the yard sale. You can encourage people to round up to the nearest $5 to support your great cause!

4) Clear The To-Do List With Your Church Fundraiser

Everyone has a long to-do list they keep meaning to tackle. Turn those to-do lists into cash for your next church fundraiser! Have people and businesses in the community submit the tasks they would like completed in exchange for a donation to your cause. It could be anything from painting or housework for older adults to cleaning out attics and gutters, pulling weeds, spreading mulch, or anything else!

People who sign up love to cross something off their to-do list and support a great cause at the same time! This fundraiser also gets your church members out and about, offering much-needed service to the community.

This is also a great mentoring opportunity. Pair younger church members with more experienced volunteers who can teach essential life skills and tricks that will be useful later in life when they have their own houses to maintain.

Soapbox Engage Feature: Help individuals and businesses register for your work-a-thon day with the Soapbox Engage Events app. The registration forms are customizable, so you can ask all the right questions to get information about their job. Either charge a flat fee per task and let people pay online or collect donations on the day of the event.

5) $500 Wheelbarrow Church Fundraiser

No, you won’t need an ultra-expensive wheelbarrow for this creative church fundraiser idea. Any old wheelbarrow will do. Place it in a conspicuous place in your church for a set amount of time and invite your congregation to bring their spare change in to fill the barrow. You might be surprised just how much change people are ready to part with for a good cause.

This fundraiser is very effective if you need to raise money for your church without much effort. Why the name? Because a wheelbarrow can hold at least $500 worth of pennies (that’s 50,000 pennies)! It’s a fun twist on the “penny wars” fundraiser that so many organizations do.

Are you feeling really adventurous? Get multiple wheelbarrows and divide your congregation into teams. Send them around town with their wheelbarrows and the group that collects the most change wins! Offer a fun prize for the winning team to get more people excited.

If a wheelbarrow isn’t your style, consider sending home small containers that remind people what you are raising money to accomplish. If you’re trying to fund your church’s diaper pantry or women’s clinic, provide each family in your congregation with a baby bottle to fill with their spare change. You can be very creative with this church fundraiser.

Soapbox Engage Feature: If people want to help fill the wheelbarrow but don’t have any change lying around, encourage them to donate to the cause online! Place a sign on the wheelbarrow with instructions on how to give using the donation feature. The easier it is for people to contribute to your cause the better.

6) Church Fundraiser Cakewalk

Who doesn’t love cake… or pie. A cakewalk is a simple, old-fashioned carnival game that everyone will want to play at your next church fundraiser. Have church and community members sign up to donate a cake or pie. The more cakes you have, the more winners there will be!

To set up the cakewalk, tape numbers in a large circle on the floor or place them on the ground. The size of your group will determine how many numbers you need.

Next, duplicate the numbers on smaller pieces of paper and put them in a large bowl or bag and place tables around the area to prominently display all the cakes and pies. Have the cake walkers stand in a circle around the numbers on the floor.

Start some music and the cake walkers dance or walk around the circle until the music stops. Each cake walker claims the number on the floor closest to them. The leader draws a number from the bowl or bag, and the person standing on that number wins and can choose a cake or pie. This continues until all the cakes are claimed.

There are a variety of ways to turn a cakewalk into a fundraiser. You can sell tickets to each “round” of the cakewalk, so if you have 20 cakes, you will have 20 rounds. Another option is to take donations to participate in each round.

If you would like to skip the cakewalk part, you can raffle off the cakes or hold a cake auction. However you choose to organize it, everyone loves cakes, pies, and sweets of all kinds and you will be sure to hit your fundraising goal for your church.

Soapbox Engage Feature: With Soapbox Engage, you can either sell raffle tickets or collect church donations easily online. Streamline the event registration process for both your participants and your cake contributors with our customizable Forms app that allows you to obtain the information you need.

7) Trivia Night Fundraiser For Your Church

Stoke a little friendly competition with this fun church fundraiser. Host a trivia night for your church. Gather questions about your church’s history, the local area, current events, or whatever categories spark your interest. Turn these questions into a trivia game or format them for a “family feud” or Jeopardy! style showdown.

There are countless creative ways to raise funds for your church through a trivia night. One of the easiest ways is to sell tickets to a pasta dinner and make it a “dinner and a show” evening.

Or you can arrange the contest, so each table competes together and the table with the most points at the end of the evening wins. If you arrange it this way, you can sell tables and allow people to fill their trivia team. However you decide to organize your trivia fundraiser, it’s sure to be a hit!

Soapbox Engage Feature: Make ticket sales a breeze with our Soapbox Engage Events app registration pages. Allow people to reserve their table or purchase a dinner ticket. Allow people to pay online or reserve their seat and pay at the door. The registration forms are customizable, so you can even have people contribute questions to your trivia game on their registration form!

8) Basket Raffle Bingo

It’s everyone’s favorite Bingo game with a twist! For your next church fundraiser, ask members of your congregation or local businesses to donate items for prize baskets. Themed baskets are always crowd-pleasers. Then, sell raffle tickets for the bingo night. The more raffle tickets a person buys, the more likely they are to win a prize basket!

9) Donut Dash or Burrito Mile

The charity 5K has already been done. But have you ever been to a Burrito Mile or Donut Dash? It doesn’t have to be a 5K or even a mile! People will be clamoring to test their abilities to run, eat, and run for a great cause and a good time.

10) Dog Wash

Everyone has seen the signs for fundraiser car washes, but a charity dog wash will be sure to turn some heads! Drag out the hoses, buckets, and suds and turn your church parking lot into a canine bath craze. Pet parents will love supporting your cause, and Fido will appreciate all the petting and treats while he gets a scrubbing.

Are you ready to boost your church fundraising? Now that you have some creative ideas, here are some resources to help make fundraising easier. Soapbox Engage will be there every step of the way to help your church hit your fundraising goals.

• Level Up with Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Software: Most churches have multiple fundraising campaigns or goals going on simultaneously. Peer-to-peer fundraising helps engage key financial partners while fostering relationships with new donors. With Soapbox’s donations app, your church can create an unlimited number of fundraising campaigns at the same time!
• 5 Irresistible Online Fundraising Ideas That Actually Convert in 2019: Online fundraising is not just for large organizations or churches with big budgets. Even small churches can conduct very effective online fundraising campaigns, and Soapbox Engage is here to make it easy and affordable.
• Best Salesforce Apps for Nonprofits: 7 Essential Tools: Are you ready to expand your church’s online presence? Would you like to simplify and consolidate event registration, online donations, and many other features into one, easy to manage place? Here are some easy-to-use apps designed with nonprofits and churches in mind! With Soapbox Engage, you can even create an online directory for your church.