Fundraisers for Youth Groups

Raising Funds in Tough Economic Times

Maggie Ray
If you're a leader of any children's non profit group during these tough economic times, you may be feeling the pinch of lower donations. Holding fundraisers for youth groups may be the easiest solution for the current financial times. With more people taking a frugal approach to finances you must have creative fundraising ideas. A good way to have successful fundraisers for youth groups is to be sure the person donating gets something in exchange for their money. Here are a few suggestions on fundraisers you may do with your youth group.

Fundraisers for Youth Groups #1: Sponsor a cake bake off

Choose a sector of your larger group to compete in a cake bake off contest as a fundraiser for youth groups. For instance, if you are working with a church youth group, you might hold a cake baking contest among the deacons or elders. The fundraiser part comes when the deacons try to get penny, dime, or dollar donations to win them a title. Perhaps you may have a best decorated cake category, a biggest flop, most likely to have had help, or other fun categories. Each deacon has a donation tray for each category and they try to drum up penny votes (one vote per cent) to win or cause someone else to win a category. This can be a fun social event and the prize for all is enjoying the cakes after the winners are named. This fundraiser for youth groups gives the young the chance to interact with the adults in a fun fashion while raising some money.

Fundraisers for Youth Groups #2 Host a Valentine's sitting service

Many parents would like a night out alone but don't have a sitter to help them out. On of your fund raisers for youth groups might be to offer a babysitting service for a more reasonable rate that sitters typically charge. This would allow the parents to go out for a lower cost, and know their children are in good hands. If you opt for these sitting service fundraisers for youth groups, make sure you plan to have plenty of youth group members on hand to care for the children and plenty of activities planned to entertain them.

Fundraisers for Youth Groups #3 Sponsor a Dime a Dip Day

Food is always a good way to reach people and ice cream is even better. Sponsoring a dime a dip day in the summer can be a good youth group fundraiser. Have each youth group member bring in a tub of ice cream for your advertised ice cream social event. This could be an event for a larger scale youth population, or could be one where you open the doors to your facility for an open house. A dime for a scoop of ice cream is a great price and dimes add up to dollars for your youth fundraiser. If the ice cream is donated, all of the dimes collected are profit for your group.

Fundraisers for Youth Groups #4 Host a Scanning service and Print Booklets for Families

Many older individuals do not have access to a computer but would like to share old pictures with family and friends. Set up a scanning and printing day as one of your fundraisers for youth groups. If you can set up multiple computers with scanning abilities you can handle multiple people at the same time. Otherwise you should book appointments and suggest a number of pictures that you could do within the appointment time. For these fundraisers for youth groups your investment cost include the CDs you will save the pictures to, or the paper you will use for printing. Set your prices in a range people can afford and make samples of what you have to offer for the youth group fundraiser.

Fundraisers for youth groups may seem difficult and time consuming and can be disappointing if they do not earn a fair amount of money. Just keep thinking of things to do for projects which are not done my many groups and your success with the fundraiser will be higher.

Published by Maggie Ray

Maggie Ray is a freelance writer with more than thirty years of experience in contract writing and program management. She experienced military life as an active duty member of the United States Air Force fo...  View profile

  • Fundraising for youth groups can be time consuming but is a worthwhile cause.
  • Have youth group members brainstorm ideas which are appealing to them.
  • Fundraisers which offer the donor something in return are more effective money raisers.

6 Comments

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  • Susan Anderson3/22/2009

    great tips....!

  • SavinMaven1/29/2009

    These fundraising tips sound much better than the so called gourmet food most groups offer.

  • Randy Inman1/28/2009

    Thanks for the tips!

  • Thomas H Forthe1/28/2009

    good ideas all around!

  • Tamara Waters1/28/2009

    These are great ideas!

  • Amy Browne1/28/2009

    great ideas for kids to raise funds for a group.

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