It’s that time of year, Summer is coming to a close and stores are starting to become overwhelmed with families shopping for new clothes and school supplies for their kids. I remember growing up as a pastor’s kid, my family didn’t have a lot of money to spend on new clothes for a growing boy, let alone new school supplies each year. Not to mention the very expensive tuition costs of a Christian school! And let’s be honest, supplies & clothes aren’t getting cheaper. As a church, you have an amazing opportunity to pour into your community and give to those families in need, both inside and outside of your church. What can we do as a Church?
Back To School Fundraising Ideas For Church
Unemployment rates are high, more families are struggling to make ends meet. Back to School fundraising is an amazing opportunity to bless families and children in your community. This gives you and your church a chance to help meet a need in a child’s life and spread the love of Jesus Christ. We hope these Back to School fundraising ideas for church help inspire you and your church to do something special this school year. Big or small, each idea has the opportunity to change a child’s life forever!
Make A Plan
No matter what Back to School fundraising idea for church you choose, first make a task list or use a free church management software.
- Put together a list of supplies needed. These can be found at most local stores or from the school itself.
- Organize and determine drop-off dates and locations for the school supplies.
- Assign someone that will be responsible for the drop-off location during the drop-off times.
- Make sure the drop-off location has a bin or receptacle to place the supplies in.
- Find out if the supplies will need to be sorted and prepped. If this is the case, make sure to have plenty of time to do this by setting the drop-off date at least one week before you need to give the supplies to the school.
- Keep a tally of the collected supplies. It’s fun to know what you have achieved as a church and then you can celebrate your success.
- Find help, divide these tasks. Don’t try to do all of this by yourself.
Fill A Backpack School Supply Drive
Recruit your church congregation to each purchase a backpack for a child. Purchase backpacks, attach an age, gender, grade and needed supplies for one of the children in your church. Send them home with the backpack and have them fill the backpack with the needed supplies plus anything extra, such as a children’s Bible or a gift card to purchase new clothes. Set a deadline for when these backpacks need to be returned.
Partner With A Local School In Your Region
Contact a local school and help them out by buying supplies for the children and school. Believe it or not, public schools and teachers need supplies just as much as children at times. Have your church drop off supplies as well as some gift baskets for teachers and staff. This is a great way to show support while spreading the Gospel to a local school.
Here is a list of suggested supplies for schools:
- Pens & Pencils: Black or blue pens, colored pencils, #2 pencils, erasers, pencil sharpeners, colored markers, crayons, dry-erase markers, highlighters, pencil cases.
- Paper: Lined paper, copy paper, spiral notebooks, composition books, index cards, construction paper.
- Classroom Supplies: Stapler & staples, rulers, glue sticks, scissors, tape, tape dispenser, protractors, calculators, paper clips, pocket folders, tissues, sanitizing wipes, hand sanitizer (you can NEVER have too much).
Create A Back To School Fundraiser
This one is by far one of the easiest ways to raise support for families in your church and community. Create a back to school fund within Sharefaith Giving and build a new giving form to place on your church website and your church mobile app. You can start promoting it right away and send push notifications through the app. Allow for the text tithing option and have your congregation text in their donations. You can certainly do this in addition to any of the above school supply drives as not everyone has the free time or ability to go shopping for supplies. With the collected funds you can either buy the supplies for the families or give them money to go out and pick out their own supplies.
Here is your checklist for creating a back to school fund through Sharefaith Giving:
- Create a Back To School fund
- Build a giving form
- Use the embed option within Sharefaith Giving to add the form onto your church website as well as your church app
- Send out push notifications announcing your new fundraiser. Learn how to send out push notifications here
- Create new announcement slides & flyers for your church service to promote your fundraiser. Browse Sharefaith’s large selection of Back to School media here
- Post on your church’s Facebook or twitter page linking to your new giving form
- Pray daily for funds to come in and for more opportunities to bless your schools and community!
Prayer Chain
While this is not a fundraiser, it is a powerful way to bless children in your community. Start a prayer chain in your congregation. Gather all of the names of the children at your church, what age and grade they are in and create a prayer list that can be passed out. That way no matter what, each child has someone praying for them on a daily basis. You can even do the same thing with a school in your area, but it might be a little more difficult to gather the information of the students; however, you can always gather the names of the teachers and staff at a school nearby and be praying over the teachers and staff each day. Just imagine the impact and power this would have on a school, if a church covered them in prayer! After all, these are the individuals who have a major influence on children’s lives.
What are the most successful Back to School fundraising ideas you have seen? Let us know in the comments below and we will add it to our list of Back to School fundraising ideas for church.
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