Church Fundraising Ideas

Churches are incredible pillars of the local community, providing support and spiritual guidance to their congregation year after year. For those wishing to worship and celebrate their faith, their church offers a sanctuary to retreat to and regain their internal balance and spirituality.

However, churches, much like any organization, need also to maintain good finances to ensure they can continue aiding and supporting the members of their congregation, and sometimes this requires the help from the flock itself. Church fundraisers are not a recent invention; fundraising has been used for many years, and it enables churches to continue to flourish within the community by participating in a fun way to raise money. Church fundraising ideas have changed throughout the years and one unique fundraising idea, that doesn’t necessarily have to be a fundraising event, is a brick fundraiser.

What is Brick Fundraising?

Brick fundraising is an alternative way to raise funds for your church and offers a unique way to engage the congregation, help them feel like they are giving something back, and a visual representation of their help. What’s more, it can be a highly lucrative way to ask for donations, especially since it provides a meaningful memory for those who donated.

Brick fundraising works by asking members of the congregation to buy a brick, which is then engraved with their name and will be displayed in a wall installment to view for many years. Congregants are asked to purchase or sponsor a brick, and the price will be put towards a specific project or event. There are a number of specific projects which brick fundraising can work very well for, as outlined below.

The Benefits of Brick Fundraising

Each fundraising effort has its own benefits, but the benefits of brick fundraising are unique and offer something different.

Brick Fundraising is Visual

As members of your church can view their donation every time they visit the church, it’s a visual reminder not only for themselves but for the wider congregation. It promotes a higher sense of community, allowing members to bond over their shared contributions.

Attracts Sponsors

Not only are brick fundraisers a pivotal way to raise funds from members of your congregation, but it’s also a key way to ask for sponsorship from local businesses. Asking local businesses to donate towards your fundraising campaign can be tricky, but with an engraved brick, it helps you to raise awareness within the wider community, and it also promotes the sponsors, clearly displaying their contribution.

Use the Bricks Inside or Out

As these are real, physical bricks, your church has the opportunity to place them both inside or out. Inside, you can create a unique wall display that members of your church will see every time they are worshipping. Outside, you can create a walkway that everyone will see when they are approaching the building.

A Proven Way to Raise Funds

While the above fundraising efforts all raise vital money, the amount may be significantly lower than what you can raise by brick fundraising alone. To raise a larger amount of funds by using a raffle or a scavenger hunt, for example, you may need to undertake a number of events. On the other hand, if you can sell an engraved brick for over $40 at a time, you can drastically increase your profit.

Brick Fundraisers Are Not a Single Event

You may think that a brick fundraising is a one-off event, but this isn’t true. This fundraising campaign can work year after year; after all, that walkway can always be extended to include more bricks!

What Fundraisers Work Will for Brick Fundraising

Keep brick fundraising in mind for the following events:

Church Remodel

Unfortunately, buildings don’t last forever, and it’s likely your church will require repairs or a complete remodel at some point. For example, you may require a new roof, or the heating in the building needs updating as winter prayer meetings are becoming unbearable in the early mornings and late evenings. Brick fundraising is a different way to raise money for such items, especially since the reward for donating is a visual representation of the event.

A New Parking Lot

Much like a church remodel, with more members of your congregation driving than ever before, your parking lot may have endured a lot of wear and tear over the years. As it’s a structural issue that does need sorting out to ensure the safety of both the church attendees and their vehicles, brick fundraising is a key way to raise a significant amount of money.

Mission Trip Fundraising

A mission trip is a volunteer experience where members of the church travel to help usually serve developing countries. As such, they are expensive to fund, which is why brick fundraising is so crucial to this particular event. Your church’s mission trip may involve members flying to a different country and spending a period of time away from home. Mission trips go above and beyond to help those in need, but to be successful, the journey does need funding. By charging a higher price for engraved bricks, the church can not only help those travel to the aid of others, but the display it will create is a long-lasting member of the good cause they helped with.

Community Outreach

Similar to the mission trip, community outreach enables congregants to help those in need within their local community. It may be cleaning up the local beach or tutoring children in need. Brick fundraising, in this instance, will allow the members of your church to help out in a wider range of ways. For example, it can fund a regular movie night within the church for children of the community.

5 Common Fundraising Methods Used by Churches

As mentioned, fundraising for churches is not a new concept. It’s a tried and tested method to ensure the church has enough money to continue its worthwhile and valuable work within the local area. Due to this, there are several fundraising efforts and fundraising events that have worked exceptionally well throughout the years. These include:

Scavenger Hunt

This works particularly well around holidays such as Easter. By asking the participants to donate a small contribution, you can engage both the adults and the children of the church alike, and everyone goes home with not only something tasty but with a great feeling of doing something good.

Church Raffle

A raffle is a conventional method of raising funds, and it involves members donating prizes and the church will then sell tickets for a small fee. The ticket number is typically aligned with a prize, which means when a participant chooses a ticket that has a number of a prize, they win. This method is low cost for the church, but it does open the door for a higher return.

Youth Groups/Choir Groups

Not only is this a key way to engage younger members of the flock, especially with a youth group, but it’s also a classic way to raise funds for the church. Ask for a small donation, and this can go towards heating and lighting the church during the hours the groups are meeting, especially if they are meeting in the evening in winter. Additionally, you can also enlist the help of the congregation to find a viable youth group fundraising idea, which can also add to your good cause.

Crowdfunding

A more modern take on fundraising, crowdfunding is usually online fundraising and enables wider members of society to donate, rather than solely the church members.

Yard Sale

A yard sale is a low-cost way of raising funds the church needs. It’s an informal event in which attendees bring along items they no longer want or need and sell them. How a church can benefit from this is by selling table space for a small fee.

While these fundraising methods are highly effective, there is an alternative method which is just as (if not more) good at acquiring the funds the church needs. Brick fundraising is gaining traction as an important way to obtain donations from those in your congregation, but that’s not all.

Final Thoughts

Brick fundraising is an incredibly effective and successful way to raise money for your church; however, it’s best to undertake this effort with the help of the experts by your side. At Fundraising Brick, we can beautifully engrave your brick or tile with our advanced laser, but we can also help you launch your fundraising efforts. Call our experts today to discuss how we can take your church fundraising campaign to the next level.