Fun Fundraising Ideas
It’s that time of year again. Fundraising. Tired of the same old same old? How about a baked bean bath? Bungee jumping grandmas?
Coming up these and 7 more fun and surprisingly successful fundraising ideas you can use or suggest . Listen now to Fun Fundraising on the In His Footsteps podcast. Clue – not Firewalking
Scroll for the transcript if you’d rather read than listen. Also useful links and more information on these unique fun fundraising ideas.
These articles are written by Margaret Agard author of the In His Foot Steps memoirs:
Overwhelmed with more to do than time to do it in, Margaret began giving her daily to-do list to God. That’s when her new life began.
“”I liked the spunk and matter of fact way the author describes her daily walk with God. I liked the bits and pieces of wisdom throughout. It was a breath of fresh air from what I’m used to reading. It has little to do with productivity and everything to do with being led by the Spirit and serving others by asking God what to do every day.“
Justine
GoodreadsMargaret Agard: Happy to set your clock ahead one hour a day today. Have you got your Girl Scouts cookies yet? Isn’t that a great fundraising idea? Are you getting a little tired though of those catalogues that the kids that you love bring around and you have to spend $20 for their organization to make two? You’re thinking there must be something better than that? Today, we’re going to be talking about something better than that.
Male Speaker: Now, here’s this week’s bible question and answer brought to you by the amazing Bible Timeline. Quickly see 6,000 years of bible and world history together on one color-coded wall poster. Find out more about the amazing Bible Timeline or ask your own bible question at amazing bibletimeline.com.
Margaret Agard: Today’s question is what are the chances that Moses made up the creation account in Genesis?
Science has confirmed that the 12 events covered in the creation account are in the correct order. Not every event that science has shown happened is in the bible but every event that is in there is in the right order. Here are the 12 events.
First, light was separated from darkness. You can look photon decoupling event for that one. That earth was created and covered in water. The dry land was separated from the seas and then plans for creating it in particular order starting with grasses then shrubs and then fruit-bearing trees. Then we can see the heavenly bodies as the atmosphere cleared and then the creation of animal life in a particular order: fish first then birds then land animals followed by livestock or animals that were useful to man; and finally, the creation of man.
Those 12 things happen in a particular order. A lot of stories that talk about how things are created start with a human being and then other things are added. Only the bible has the man coming last. What are the chances of Moses correctly guessing those 12 items in the exact order in which they happened? One chance in 479 million.
This year, for our family reunion – do you have family reunions? We decided we wanted to do a fundraising project as part of our family reunion. And I’m in charge of that. All I could think of was the standard spaghetti dinners or fun runs. There’s nothing fun about running, to me. What else? I couldn’t think of anything so I decided there has to be something better than that.
I found this site with a hundred different fundraising ideas and here are ones that appealed to me: arm wrestling, bungee jumping grandmas, or firewalks. So I immediately did some research. Here’s how you make money with arm wrestling. There’s three ways: people pay an entry fee to arm wrestle, people get people to sponsor them for their arm wrestling contest, and bystanders can vote for their favorite team with money. So three ways to make money off of arm wrestling, make it fun, come up with crazy outfits, and fun team names, and go for it.
Bungee jumping grandmas, okay, it doesn’t have to be a grandma, but in a family reunion, that would be cool and you don’t have to get it all set up. Use an existing event – a state fair or in West Virginia, Bridge Day. There’s quite a bungee jump there. Get people to donate and if you get enough money, the principal or the pastor or the president of your organization agrees to bungee jump.
Here’s the third one that I thought was interesting – firewalking. I always wanted to firewalk. I wanted to see if I could do it. Firewalking is where they make this long path, a bed of coals, and people walk on it, and they actually don’t get burned. They don’t burn their feet. There’s some way it works. I don’t know what it is but I wanted to find out. So I checked with a firewalking company. Here’s what they had to say.
Allan: Good afternoon. This is Allan.
Margaret Agard: Allan, this is Margaret Agard. I’m actually calling with a radio program. Have you ever used your firewalk for a place that wanted to use it as a fundraising project?
Allan: I have not done it as a fundraiser but who do you want to raise fund for and what do you have in mind?
Margaret Agard: Actually, I don’t know yet. That’s why I’m talking to you. The show is about different ways for raising funds. Like instead of the catalogue at the door, try something else – arm wrestling contest, a firewalk. A firewalk, to put that on, would be fairly pricey, I’m thinking.
Allan: Yes, they start in the $40,000 – $50,000 range at minimum and go up for about…
Margaret Agard: Wow. You’d have to be a big, big…
Allan: When we do the firewalk, there’s very few people in the planet that are capable of running a large corporate firewalk and it’s really not in a walk on fire though that’s the cool part, it’s about having one of the top experts on the planet teaching people about emotional intelligence, leadership, problem-solving…
Margaret Agard: I saw all your topics on there, but the firewalk itself is just a small part of that. I didn’t think you could just put a firewalk up and…
Allan: The big part as far as the look and feel and it’s a big part as far as for the rest of your life. You’ll know you walked across coals but yes, we made this gigantic bonfire, we’ve got live drummers and fire breathers and dancers and you’ve got a leader who’s got degrees in law, business, economic psychology, also the masters of education…
Margaret Agard: If I didn’t want all that stuff around it, if I just wanted a firewalk, is there somebody else who I might call?
Allan: If you just wanted a firewalk, here’s the challenge that you’re going to have, simply walking on fire – it’s the same as somebody says hey, I want to go to a high ropes course, you can put someone on the harness, put them up on a tree, and have them walk on a high wire, you can light a fire and have someone walk across the fire, there’s no meaning to it. So if your goal is just to have cool video which we get a lot of TV shows that go hey, we want to send somebody and do a firewalk. How much does it cost to light a fire and just let somebody walk on it? That doesn’t require any expertise.
Margaret Agard: Oh, I thought you had to have a certain temperatures or something or it really would burn you.
Allan: Well, you don’t want to get people burn, that’s the first thing. If you go and read the literature on this, there’s a guy who burned up, they flame broiled a bunch of Burger King executives at some place that was doing firewalks because they didn’t know what they were doing…
Margaret Agard: That’s what I am worried about.
Allan: It’s not something to be toyed with. It’s not something to be played with. I had a TV show called me up and they wanted to do a firewalk. I said yes, I will do it but we need a certain amount of money. We’ve got to get the permits. If you don’t want the seminar, we’re still going to do some of the seminar, you’re not going to film it and we wouldn’t let you film it and put on TV anyway. But if you want to get people walk in on coal, there are certain things that have to happen. Well, they didn’t want to pay the money and they found somebody who’s willing to do it. I got a call from a week later, they called up, and they found a different website and said hey we’re on the TV show. We wanted to do one of your ropes courses. I said hey, how’s your firewalk. They go, how’d you know we did a firewalk? I said, well, how did it go? They said, we’ll they burned somebody’s house down and called the fire patrol (inaudible 07:35). I said, well, I hate to say I told you so, but I was the guy you talked to last week.
Margaret Agard: Okay, we’re going to cut him off there. I wanted it to go that far so we would all know no firewalk, no to firewalk. That’s not a good idea. Flame-broiled Burger King executives – you think we’d heard about that, don’t you?
Of course, I immediately went to YouTube to see if is a video on it and I couldn’t find it. It turned out it was actually in 2002, before YouTube and it wasn’t Burger King, it was Kentucky Fried Chicken. It was in Australia. It was with a professional company and this was the second or third year they’ve done it and they did burn their feet but it was terrible burns. You can look it up. Kentucky Fried Chicken Australia firewalk for more details on that.
Okay, other better ideas for fundraising. That’s what we’re talking about today. This is Margaret Agard with In His Footsteps and we’re talking about ideas for fundraisers that are better than showing up at the door with a catalogue for overpriced items for which you get only a tiny amount. What else could you do? I decided to call my friend, Kathy Patrick, who owns Beauty and the Book, the only bookstore beauty salon in the country and it also (inaudible 08:55) with queens who are always doing all kinds of fun fundraisers.
Kathy: This is Kathy.
Margaret Agard: Kathy, it’s Margaret Agard. Kathy, I just have a quick question if you have one minute.
Kathy: Sure.
Margaret Agard: What is your most fun fundraising idea you’ve gotten involved in?
Kathy: For me, it is my author’s Silent Auction that I do with my annual Girlfriend Weekend. It’s where the all the authors that come in from my book club festival, bring a personal item that they autograph and we do a silent auction and raise it for the Dolly Parton Imagination Library.
Margaret Agard: How much do you raise?
Kathy: We raised almost $10,000.
Margaret Agard: And how much work does it take?
Kathy: Not a lot. Well, basically, the authors bring the item and we have them fill out a sheet on the estimated value and the back story and we put it on a table and we have silent auction running the entire Girlfriend Weekend and at the end of the day, on Saturday, we pull the sheets, read the names, collect the checks, and ta-da!
Margaret Agard: There it is. How well do you think that might work for someone who doesn’t have quite the contacts in the industry that you have if they just wrote and had a good…
Kathy: Well, (inaudible 10:17) Texas Literacy Council. Celebrity Doodles help raise funds for the East Texas Literacy Council and we got bills from Tom Cruise, Mohammad Ali…
Margaret Agard: Okay, you’re kind of going in and out because I think I’m calling your mobile or something. So what you did was you sent out letters to – you didn’t know these people?
Kathy: You can just get on the internet and find celebrity addresses and we just send out hundreds of letters to celebrities with Celebrities with a Doodle cardboard, you know, a card stock, Matthew McConaughey, I mean all kinds of people did that and we raised a lot of funds for the East Texas Literacy Council.
Margaret Agard: Thanks, Kathy. I knew she would have some good ideas and you could do the same thing using local celebrities. The weatherman, football players…
Here’s another idea, Tie to a Day. Have something visual that has people ask about it or lets you talk about it. Think of Veteran’s Day and the puppies. And another idea is I buy one, give one. Here’s a program that involves all three of those. Rachel, a college student shares how it works.
I want to talk to you about your experience with TOMS and going barefoot.
Rachel: Okay.
Margaret Agard: When you went barefoot, what’s the point of that?
Rachel: The point of it was to raise awareness for the children in the countries that TOMS support that are shoes and so these countries, a lot of the children don’t have shoes and so it was just to raise awareness of the harm that can come from not wearing shoes and what these kids have to go through because their whole life basically, they don’t have any shoes and they have to walk around all the time. By doing that one day…
Margaret Agard: Did you take pamphlets with you to give to people that explained how many kids live in the dumps of what kinds of diseases come through the feet and how people are affected or did you just walk around barefoot and I assume people ask you about it.
Rachel: Yes, I didn’t really take anything around. That’s actually a good idea, but lots of people that ask why are you guys…because on campus, you’re not supposed to walk on barefoot. You’re supposed to have shoes on all the time and so when you didn’t have one on people asked about it and then I just kind of explained that and I then I did direct them to the TOMS website. They have a lot of information on there about what they do and about the problems for not wearing shoes.
Margaret Agard: So it was a way for people to just say whoa, what’s going on here and you had the chance to talk with them.
Rachel: Right. Exactly.
Margaret Agard: And then the TOMS program is every time you buy a pair of shoes, they give a pair of shoes. You’re basically paying for two pairs.
Rachel: Yes, it’s just One for One and you can buy them off their website or you can get them – I know like Nordstrom has them. Lots of places have them and it’s the One for One program. For every pair of shoes that you buy, they send a pair down to help the kids in need.
Margaret Agard: And they actually seem to be focused on college-aged kids on campuses? Why do you think that is?
Rachel: I think part of it probably is just the aspect that college-aged kids think they’re cool and like them and so they can them interested in at least shoes. But I guess also a part of it is because they’re the age that is going to be helping and they’re at the age that’s going to be doing something in the future and so they want to get them involved so that they have a say in what goes on in the future.
Margaret Agard: Well, there you have it. There’s another fundraising idea and that involved getting college students involved. Think about a way to have a day in West Virginia that raises funds and gets the youth involved. How about a heavy metal day? A heavy metal day in West Virginia where you’d send youth out into the hollers to pick up all that metal that’s been dumped? You know what I’m talking about? The old washing machines, the car parts, bring it in and turn that in for money for the metal recycler places. That actually can be an ongoing project when you think about it.
Here’s another interesting idea for an ongoing project. I just loved it because of the slogan. The slogan is “Stamp out leprosy”. I talked Glenn Waterman of the Leprosy Association about how they came up with that and was it good on the leprosy.
By the way, if you just tuned in, this is Margaret Agard with In His Footsteps. And we’re talking today about fun and effective fundraising way beyond just walking around with catalogues, asking people to buy stuff that cost $20 just so you could make two.
Glenn, the first thing about leprosy is it freaks people out, I think, to even think about it. My sister was on a plane once and she just learned to crochet so she was crocheting a leprosy bandage. And the person next to her said oh, you’re crocheting. Yes, I just learned. What are you doing it for? It’s a leprosy bandage and the person just was like whew, not talking to you anymore. It’s not really a celebrity type disease, is that a problem for you?
Glenn: It’s not a problem as such. What we find in Canada more is that people don’t even realize leprosy still exists. Once we tell them that leprosy still exists and they actually realize that it’s alive and well, so to speak, in the world today, they are shocked.
Margaret Agard: But it’s not actually in Canada, is it? You’re taking care of leprosies – tell me it’s not in Canada.
Glenn: Well, I can’t tell you that because we do have a few cases in Canada. They’re all under treatment as far as we know. But usually it’s from people who have contracted leprosy elsewhere in the world. We have probably about 500 in Canada tops but I can say they’re all under treatment.
Margaret Agard: How many do you think in the United States?
Glenn: I would say probably, you have 10x the population; you probably have something around the order of 4,000 to 5,000 cases in the United States. Again, I’m guessing most, if not all of them are under treatment, but these are cases in North America.
Margaret Agard: Now, what was interesting to me is that there is an animal, there’s only one animal that spread leprosy, is that correct? And that’s found in the Southern United States?
Glenn: Right, the 9-banded armadillo. It actually has a form of leprosy that it carries and there have been few documented cases of transmission from the armadillo to humans—
Margaret Agard: Well, the nice thing about armadillos is I believe I could actually outrun one and so you’re saying don’t pet an armadillo?
Glenn: I’m saying that if the armadillo is infected with leprosy and if you were handling the armadillo, there is a chance that the bacteria could transmit, yes.
Margaret Agard: Okay, alright. You’re not trying to go after the 5,000 in the US or the 500 in Canada, those are under treatment.
Glenn: No.
Margaret Agard: So what is your goal?
Glenn: Our goal as an organization in Canada is to fund the work in specific countries around the world. We work heavily in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and we’re funding programs to find people with leprosy, to treat people with leprosy, and even more importantly, to care for the after the treatment has been completed.
Margaret Agard: Why do they need treatment afterwards?
Glenn: Well, it depends when you find people with leprosy. If you find them very early on in the infection, we can kill the bacteria with a multi-drug therapy and there are no effects. However, if we find them later in the disease, the leprosy bacteria will have damaged or destroyed their nerves in their extremities so they’ll have no sense of touch in parts of their body, perhaps their entire body. That has real implications for someone who do manual labor. They can cut or injure themselves and they won’t feel it.
Margaret Agard: So you could be actually hitting your thumb with a hammer and not know you’re hitting your thumb with your hammer.
Glenn: Absolutely. We’ve had cases where one has been walking and looked down and saw a nail sticking through their foot and they didn’t know it.
Margaret Agard: Okay, I actually talk about spiritual leprosy like people say guilt’s a bad thing. I think you want to know, you probably have to stop whatever it is that you’re doing. It makes you feel bad on purpose and that’s the thing you’re saying that pain is a good thing at times.
Glenn: Pain, can be a very good thing at times. It’s interesting you talked about spiritual leprosy in this context because one of the huge areas we deal with is the fact that most of the world, people absolutely are terrified with leprosy. The stigma these people live under is just immense. Again, we have cases of husbands throwing wives out of the house because the wife has leprosy; wives throwing the husbands out and even throwing children out because they have leprosy.
The stigma is just overwhelming so we worked very hard to teach the communities that leprosy is just a disease and that can be cured.
Margaret Agard: This show is unique fundraising ideas that an average human being could do, which is probably not going to approach a big foundation and ask for money. You could but what are your chances? I like your Stamp out Leprosy program.
Glenn: It’s a neat, little program, isn’t it?
Margaret Agard: Yes, tell us about that.
Glenn: People will collect stamps, trim them, so the stamp doesn’t have a lot of (inaudible 20:12) left on it and send them to the Leprosy Mission. It is an entirely volunteer run program so we will have volunteers here who sort stamps, trim them even more, put them into 25-pound bags and then we sell them to stamp dealers. Upon occasion, we will a collection that is more valuable and we’ll actually send it to a stamp collector, get it evaluated, and sell it. Again, this is entirely volunteer run program is raising between $12,000 to $14,000 a year for us.
Margaret Agard: $12,000 to $14,000 a year – that’s not bad. Some other ideas might be coin collecting. I know a lot of people have just small coin collection. In most families, there’s only one person who wants to collect coins and everybody else tries to stay and not talk about too much, but when that person passes on, one thing you could do with the coin collection is donate it. If it was going to be ongoing project for people to do coin collecting, that’s nice because you’re just always looking through your coins. We have a grandson who collects coins. We’re always looking through our coins to find special ones. We’d be happy to do the same thing for an organization that was doing coin collecting.
Now, were going to talk about reaching out with even younger people. It’s amazing how generous young children are. I think you’ll enjoy of the special projects that Shoes for Orphan Souls has. This is similar to a TOMS project. It’s by a different organization but the person I’m going to be talking is also named Rachel. She’s going to share with us one of their special projects that a lot of young people have gotten involved in on their own impetus. It was their own idea to do this.
Rachel: We finally talk and I’m so excited. This is wonderful.
Margaret Agard: Rachel, I was really looking for different fundraising ideas. That’s what we’re talking about today and I liked the idea of just collecting shoes. Let’s put it in context, Buckner works with orphans, children at risk, and families, is that correct?
Rachel: Yes. That’s correct.
Margaret Agard: Tell me a little bit more about that and then how Shoes for Orphan Souls fit into that?
Rachel: Well, the history of Buckner actually goes back to 1879. We were one of the first orphanages built west in the Mississippi River. We’ve been helping children for a very, very long time.
Margaret Agard: Okay and then how did the shoes get started?
Rachel: What happened is that years ago a local radio station here in Dallas – they did a mission trip to Russia. It was right after the Iron Curtain was lifted and when they visited orphanages, they found the one thing that none of the children had shoes. They came back and said we need to do a shoe drive so we can send these shoes to Russia. That’s it. That’s how history was made. In working with that, radio stations, they eventually turned the program over to us because they’re a radio station and not a shoe distribution center or humanitarian aid center. We really worked on providing shoes not only in Russia but globally. It kind of opened the door, it kind of got “our foot in the door” in several different countries.
Margaret Agard: Okay, very punny.
Rachel: Very funny, but really when we deliver shoes, it’s about helping the children. It’s about providing self-esteem for the kids. We know by putting a pair of shoes on a child’s feet that we can increase their health by 50%.
Margaret Agard: Oh, because they’re not walking…go ahead.
Rachel: Right. Because they’re not barefoot, yes, and getting cuts because you get so many infections by the cuts on your feet. In Ethiopia, there’s a soil borne disease that’s very prevalent there and kids that are barefoot can obtain this disease through their feet and it’s commonly known here – now it’s commonly known as elephantiasis where their just get very, very large where they can’t wear shoes or it can’t even walk in many cases. Like I said, we know by putting a pair of shoes on a child’s feet that we can increase their health.
Margaret Agard: One of the things I’d like done here was the Birthday Club. Tell me about the idea of the Birthday Club and about Flyers and things that you provide to help people do this.
Rachel: Okay. With regards to the Birthday Club is we started learning that there were some kids out there that would have a birthday party and ask their friends to bring shoes and we thought, well, this is a great idea. We really need to publicize it and we need to support kids in this particular type of shoe collection. Well, we found out that a lot of adults started doing it as well. On their monumental birthdays of say 30, 40, or 50, we would have adults that would be having a birthday party and say hey, just bring shoes. I’m going to collect shoes for orphans, for kids around the world in need. The children are the ones the most folks that conduct a Birthday Club shoe drive, if you will, where they just ask their friends to bring shoes, brand new shoes. We do provide flyers.
Margaret Agard: What a great way to introduce children to the idea of giving is better than receiving. I think that would be very exciting. What you’re really looking for are sneakers and athletic shoes.
Rachel: Yes, we are. That’s what protects the feet most.
Margaret Agard: Rachel, is there anything else you want to say?
Rachel: Just to visit our website www.shoesforophansouls.org. Sign up if you want to conduct a shoe drive and we actually will provide you an entire kit with all types of information as well as best practices on how to conduct a shoe drive. For you Girl Scouts that are out there, it’s actually an authorized Girl Scout project where you can earn a badge.
Margaret Agard: That’s perfect to know that. Thank you, Rachel. I appreciate your taking the time. That is so like a child to decide that instead of getting birthday gifts for himself, he’d like people to bring shoes so he can send birthday gifts to other children overseas.
I know of children and their family who voted to give up a big part of their cable bill and some of their favorite stations so that they could use that money to support children in a mission school overseas. They lead the way. Christ is right when he suddenly need to become like little children. It’s easy and good for us to remember that as we have done it on the least of these, we have done it under Christ.
So there are some ideas. Now, as far as those people with the catalogue showing up at your door – here’s an easy solution for buying overpriced things where they get a little bit of money, you could offer to give them $10 instead of buying a $20 item, you’ll have to spend less and they’ll have more money for their organization than if you bought the $20 item for which they’ll get only maybe 2 or 3.
Okay, we have time for three more fun fundraising ideas. How about a baked bean bath? Okay, you’re not up for bungee jumping, ask people to donate a can of baked beans and some money and when you get enough, you agree that you will take a bath in baked beans. Tell the local newspaper about it and it’ll make a great photo shoot.
Never heard of such a thing? Well, these you can see on YouTube. Just look up baked bean bath or how about this? Set up a face-painting booth at sports events and pain faces in the team colors. Or give up something. That’s my favorite. For my children, “I will pay you to stop texting for a day or I will pay you so much per day for not playing video games”, you get to say.
Okay, so there you are, a whole slew of fundraising ideas that has to be better than those catalogue sales, but there is one fundraising event that I will always support because it is my favorite and that is spaghetti dinner. There’s a reason why spaghetti dinners are a good fallback for any organization because they know people love spaghetti dinners and they’ll pay to eat it.
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Kathy Patrick Girlfriend Weekend and Celebrity Auction