If you know your church needs to raise more but you aren't sure how to do it, you've come to the right place! Hosting a fun and engaging church fundraising event is a great way to fundraise and connect with your congregation. In this article, we'll share 15 creative fundraising events for your church.
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Like any type of fundraising, church fundraising can get stale both for you and your congregants if you aren’t coming up with exciting new ways to do it.
That’s where events come in. The best church fundraising events are engaging, unique, and can really amp up the energy. Plus, they are extremely effective ways to raise money for your church.
We’ve compiled a list of 15 different church fundraising event ideas ideal for different times of the year, audiences, and needs.
Let’s dive in!
Here are 15 church fundraising event ideas that you can use for your church. For each, we’ll explain the best way to fundraise. We’ve also segregated the list into different categories to help decide which one is best for the time of the year, your audiences, and your needs.
A fall festival is a broad type of event that includes activities for kids like hay rides, face painting, pumpkin carving, and more. For adults, there’s live music, food trucks, and mingling while their kids enjoy the festivities.
Obviously, a fall festival is best hosted in the fall!
For smaller budgets, think about asking for volunteers to set up booths, making sure you have a variety of activities available.
Larger budgets can hire professional activities like a rock climbing wall and professional face painter.
This event can be held in your church’s parking lot, which avoids the need for renting a venue! Just be sure your guests have somewhere to park.
Each activity at the festival should cost tickets that can be purchased both at the event and ahead of time online.
Sell festival tickets with different tiers, as shown below. For example, $10 buys 5 tickets, $30 buys 15 tickets, etc. That way someone can easily purchase as many tickets as they need for the whole family to enjoy the activities!
Sell Tickets with Donorbox Events!
Be sure to also accept donations during or after the event. Have QR codes pasted across your venue for people to quickly access your donation page. You can also engage youngsters in text-giving. That’s a fun way to empower them to support your church.
You can have a giving kiosk set up at your event as well. This helps people give quickly from a tablet device with their cards and smartphones.
Donorbox provides you with powerful features to easily and effectively implement all these options for your fall festival.
You get a free QR code with every campaign you create on Donorbox. Plus our Text-to-Give feature gives you a unique campaign ID and a texting number that you can share with your attendees.
Donorbox Events helps you create an event page and sell tickets online. You can create unlimited ticket tiers and set the tax-deductibility of your tickets, the purchase deadline, and ticket quantity. Donorbox also sends your attendees automated ticket receipts with a digital copy of their tickets.
You should also try our Donorbox Live™ Kiosk app. Add it to any iPad or Android tablet and pair it with a card reader to create a giving kiosk. It’s a frictionless and quick solution to empower your donors to easily give via swipes, dips, or taps of their cards, smartphones, and smartwatches.
Check out this family-friendly fall festival event campaign page by Port Ministries. They created this crowdfunding campaign on Donorbox to raise donations that included participation tickets to their event activities. This is another simple way to raise money with your fall event.
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Nothing brings people together like some great live music!
Concerts work any time of year, but consider getting creative and using the season to make your event more attractive. For example, an outdoor concert during the summer will attract many families looking to enjoy the beautiful weather!
You’ll need to secure the venue and the talent. The venue will probably be your church – either inside or outside. The talent could be someone who performs at your church regularly, but it’s fun to mix it up! Seek out local talent and bands with different music styles to diversify your offerings. You’ll need to establish a fee with each band.
Sell tickets to your concert both before and at the door.
Also, ask for donations throughout the night either by having the musicians work the crowd or by having someone high up in your church make an appeal.
You can sell tickets using Donorbox Events. With events, you can create as many ticket tiers as you need, include tax-deductible amounts, set limits on tickets sold, and set deadlines for purchasing tickets.
Plus, your donors will automatically receive a receipt for their purchase and the tickets – so no second guessing that their payment went through, and less work on your end.
For taking donations at the venue, set up a donation kiosk using the Donorbox Live™ Kiosk iOS and Android app. Simply add it to your tablet, connect a card reader, and accept payments from all major credit cards and digital wallets.
Although this can really be any type of food, the goal of a mac and cheese cook-off is to make the event friendly for kids, too! Members of your church will cook and compete for awards like “best overall”, “the crowd favorite”, “most creative”, and more.
This event can be hosted whenever!
All you need for this event is a venue and tables for each contestant to set up their samples. If you can use church property, your budget could be $0.
Sell tickets to the event online in advance and at the door. You can also sell refreshments like water and soda to boost your revenue at the event itself.
For selling tickets at the door, make sure you have a way to accept credit card and digital wallet payments. Or you can share a QR code with your potential attendees and direct them to your online event page where they can buy tickets.
During the event, you can encourage attendees to make donations to your church. You can talk about how the donations will help you and the impact you’re hoping to create. Have a giving kiosk set up at the venue, which will help people make a quick donation.
The Donorbox Live™ Kiosk app can be added to an iOS or Android tablet and paired with a card reader device to accept card payments as well as payments through Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, etc. This app is also backed by Donorbox’s powerful fundraising platform and features and can be a great addition to your event venue to accept in-person donations.
You can also create a campaign for this event on Donorbox and use the free QR code to redirect attendees to this campaign page. With our UltraSwift™ Pay feature that adds digital wallets to our donation form, your attendees can quickly make a donation from this page.
Finally, you can use Donorbox Events to sell tickets online. Along with all the effective features it brings to your event, Events also enables you to accept donations right from the ticketing form.
This fantastic event requires few resources and can result in a lot of fun! It’s a great way to create a stronger sense of community in your congregation, too.
This event can be hosted whenever. It’s great for fundraising for a specific purpose like a building fund or mission trip.
The main things you’ll need to make this event a success are games and refreshments for your attendees.
For games, ask volunteers to bring popular board games and/or come up with fun game booths like ring toss, video game competitions like Mario Kart, and more.
You’ll need to budget for food and decide whether you’re selling it or if it will be part of the cost of admission.
You can sell tickets to the event itself or sell food at the event – or both!
If you choose both options, keep admission prices low so participants feel like they’re still getting some value out of the night.
Be sure to reiterate that this is primarily a fundraiser – so any money they spend is going toward a good cause!
You can sell food ahead of time by creating a Donorbox campaign with an online donation form. Selling food ahead of time helps you plan how much you’ll need to have on hand for your event, too.
Use Donorbox Events to sell tickets to your events. You can also combine the ticket cost with the cost of food and create a ticket tier combining both expenses to streamline things for your attendees.
This is a great idea because people are already at your church for Sunday service and are more likely to join in and share a meal together.
Sunday lunch or brunch works any time of year, but is great in the spring when people are ready to reconnect and thaw out from winter.
You could even plan these quarterly if you have enough interest.
Your main expense here will be food. You could ask volunteers to sign up to bring a dish but to make your event more valuable, consider catering.
If you can use your community partnerships to find a local business to sponsor your event, this will mean more funds for your church!
Sell tickets (or “plates”) both ahead of time and at the door. You can also include fun fundraisers like a pie auction or 50/50 raffle to bring in more funds and amp up the energy.
Use Donorbox Events to easily sell tickets ahead of time. You have the option on the ticketing form to take information from purchasers regarding their food preferences. It’s a must for figuring out how much food to order and the needs of your attendees.
You can also show how much of each ticket is tax-deductible simply by including the fair market value of each ticket and the tax rate.
Donorbox Events also helps you accept donations right from the ticketing form. But to accept more donations on the day of the event, you can utilize Donorbox Text-to-Give and QR codes to redirect people to your online donation page.
The concept of a babysitting night is quite straightforward – the church provides babysitters for a night of fun for the kids while the parents go out on the town. And although it is not a family event, it is equally great for adults and their kids.
This event can be hosted whenever but should be based on parent interest. Valentine’s Day is a good opportunity for this event.
If you can use church space, the only potential costs here are hiring babysitters (unless you have volunteers!) and snacks/dinner for the kids.
Plan this event a month or so in advance so parents have time to make plans and sign up.
For the night of the event, plan some fun activities and games to engage the kids. You will need young volunteers with similar experiences to plan this event.
Parents must buy tickets for their kids ahead of time so your church can plan. Sell tickets online.
Because you’ll be providing food for the children, you can let parents know the fair market value of each ticket and how much is tax deductible. You should also accept meal preferences for the kids in case the parents want to mention anything important. Your event ticketing tool should make all this effortless on your end.
Donorbox Events is a simple-to-use and highly effective solution for selling tickets online. You can easily set up an online event page and a ticketing form. You either embed the ticketing form on your church website or use the Donorbox-hosted event page. Share the link to this page with the community and let them know you’re hosting a babysitting event.
Create multiple ticket tiers using Donorbox Events. If possible, split the event night into different slots which will help parents decide when exactly they want to drop their kids off and when they must pick them up. You can also create additional tiers for more than one kid or for additional one or two hours.
Donorbox Events also lets you accept attendees’ preferences. In this case, you can ask parents if their kids have any dietary restrictions or allergies. It will help you prepare for the event night.
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This should be sold as a somewhat glamorous night out for parents. Encourage them to dress nicely and come out to see the silent auction items!
This event can be hosted whenever you need to raise additional funds. You can add this to other bigger church fundraising events and engage your older audiences.
Your budget will depend on the scale of the evening and how much volunteer effort you’ll receive. For example, a night with a catered dinner at a restaurant will be expensive, but a volunteer-provided meal at your church will cost much less.
Soliciting items for the auction will be your biggest planning task. Ask congregants for donations and ideas and reach out to your community partners for sponsorships. We also have email templates on our Nonprofit Blog that you can use to request in-kind auction items from a local business.
You’ll sell tickets to the event online beforehand. And you’ll also receive the funds from the winners of the silent auction.
If you’d like to raise more money through donations, make announcements during the event about any campaign you’re running right now. Or your need for donations. It is advisable to talk about the impact and add the same to your online donation page. Now, help attendees quickly scan a QR code and go to that page to make a donation.
Having a giving kiosk with smaller custom amounts that are easier for people to give can be equally effective. The kiosk should be easy to use and transactions should be secure and quick.
Donorbox Live ™ Kiosk helps you add up to four custom ask amounts to easily accept in-person donations at your events. Attendees select one amount and tap or swipe their cards to make a donation. It’s that simple!
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You should use Donorbox Events to sell tickets to your auction event in advance. Our ticketing forms are embeddable on your church website. Events also allows you to accept donations from the ticketing form.
Finally, you can create a campaign on Donorbox, that includes a fundraising page and a super-fast donation form to help accept donations. Use this form to accept donations or sponsorships for your event, as Lighthouse Ministries is doing with the below page on Donorbox. Use our free QR code to redirect people to a page like this and raise more donations during the event.
Workshops are great ways to connect with the adults in your congregation. You can host workshops covering any kind of topic – from career advice to self-help, and even things like cooking and crafts. Workshops can be hosted in person, virtually, or hybrid!
Pro tip: Send a survey to your congregation to see what topics they might be interested in.
You can host this type of event whenever.
If there’s something coming up that you can tie your workshop to, like a workshop on making resolutions around New Year’s Day, then that might inspire more enthusiasm.
Your biggest expense will be an honorarium for the expert teaching your workshop. You’ll need to work with that individual to establish a fair fee.
Otherwise, you might need to buy supplies for things like craft workshops. Planning is minimal too – just be creative and be sure to get the word out so you have plenty of attendance.
You’ll fundraise primarily through selling tickets to the workshops. You can also sell materials relevant to the workshop like books or craft supplies.
Selling tickets to your workshop should be low-stress and easy for those who wish to attend. Donorbox Events is super simple to set up, meaning you don’t have to spend too much time planning this type of event. Check out this live example.
Create Church Events using Donorbox
Simply set the cost of attending your workshop and create an event with a single ticket tier at that price (as shown below). You can embed the event ticketing form on your own website or host it on Donorbox for even less work on your end.
Attendees can choose to add on additional donations with their tickets and check out quickly with a credit card or Apple Pay.
Don’t forget to offer events for the women in your church! Women’s events, like a high tea, are a great way to strengthen the sense of community in your congregation.
Encourage women to dress elegantly and come for an afternoon of fun conversation and delicious treats.
Teas are great for any time of year, but especially in the spring and summer. They’re great events when you have a new influx of congregants so the women can get to know each other.
Your main expense will be food. You’ll also need things like China and serving ware, but see if you can encourage women to bring theirs to share for the event.
You should plan the event months in advance so women can mark their calendars and get excited!
You’ll primarily fundraise by selling tickets to the tea but you can also ask for more donations in person. You can open tickets up to women outside of your church, too, by encouraging attendees to bring guests.
Use Donorbox Events to sell tickets to your women’s high tea event. In addition to setting your ticket tiers, you can set a deadline for buying tickets – so you’ll know exactly how many attendees you’ll have and can plan for food and serving ware.
You can also promote more giving during your tea with Donorbox Text-to-Give. When you launch your Donorbox campaign with text-to-give enabled, you’ll get a unique campaign ID you can share at your event. All the ladies have to do is text the campaign ID to the texting number to receive a link to give to your campaign.
Parents will bring their kids to the church to take pictures with Santa! It’s simple and effortless for your church and can be helpful if you do not have a lot of volunteers available for the event.
We suggest hosting this kind of event the first weekend in December, before many holiday season activities.
This event is very inexpensive for your church, provided you have someone willing to play Santa! You may need to rent a Santa costume. You can either hire a professional photographer or simply ask parents to take pictures on their smartphones.
Sell tickets per picture. So for example, if someone wants a picture with one child, then the other child, and then both children together, that’s three pictures – and three tickets.
You can also ask parents to donate at your giving kiosk for taking their kids’ pictures if tickets are not an option. Set up the kiosk next to where your Santa is, so it is easier for parents to pay for the pictures.
You can also sell refreshments for kids and parents to make this event more fun. This will also help in raising more money.
The best way you can fundraise with Donorbox for this simple event is to add the Donorbox Live™ Kiosk app to your tablet devices so that parents can quickly donate for the pictures.
You can also create a simple donation form (as shown below) to accept donations. Download our free QR code for the campaign and paste it at your venue, or add it to the home screen of the Donorbox Live™ Kiosk using the app’s QR code feature. Parents who aren’t comfortable paying with the kiosk can scan this code and pay with the donation form.
Create Customized Donation Form
Rest assured that whichever way you use Donorbox to fundraise, security is our utmost priority and we have our security team and necessary measures in place to fight any fraud attack.
Chances are you have some talented folks in your congregation. Now is their time to shine! Ask them to sell their goods. Just be sure you have a good variety of things that people want to buy.
Host this event at the end of the year, when people are shopping for gifts.
This is a low-budget event since the only requirements are space to host the event and tables for participants to set up their crafts.
Create an online event page to sell tickets to the event at least a month in advance. Depending on the number of participants, you can decide how many tables you’ll need. And if your church space would be sufficient for hosting the event.
You can sell tickets to the event online and at the door. You can also ask participants to donate all or a portion of their sales to your church.
Since this is a fundraiser after all, you should feel comfortable asking for additional donations on top of ticket sales. This takes advantage of the giving season at the end of the year and increases your results for the event!
You can also introduce the concept of peer-to-peer fundraising to your congregation with this event. Invite each participant to create a fundraising page and share it with their networks. Their friends and families can come to the event and make a donation with this page to help your church. This way, you’ll be giving them a great opportunity to support your church in an innovative and engaging way.
Donorbox Events is your best solution for selling tickets to this event. It also enables you to manage your purchasers’ data and sold tickets at the backend. You can analyze this data to plan your event accordingly.
You can leverage our fundraising pages and online donation forms to accept donations during the event. If you’re going to have young people at the event, try Donorbox Text-to-Give. Empower them to text your campaign ID and donate easily using their smartphones.
If you think your congregation would love to help with peer-to-peer fundraising, Donorbox Peer-to-Peer is the way to go! Simply create a campaign and toggle a switch to turn it into a peer-to-peer campaign. Invite your best supporters from the tool. They’ll receive email invitations to sign up and customize their fundraising pages. Check out this short video to understand how Donorbox Peer-to-Peer works!
Plays are a fun activity for the kids in your congregation. They get to learn more about stories from the Bible and practice their acting chops at the same time.
It’d be ideal for Christmas time.
You can also use this event idea to get creative and host Easter plays! Summer is a good time for these kinds of events too, since kids are out of school and parents are looking for activities for them.
You’ll need volunteers to direct, make costumes, make sets, and help manage the kids.
You should plan on starting to bring the play together a month or two in advance of the date you want to sell tickets.
Most likely you’ll fundraise by selling tickets. Parents and other family members will want to see their kids perform! You should also collect donations in person on the night of the play.
Selling tickets online and at the door is a breeze with Donorbox.
First, you’ll want to use Donorbox Events to create your event. You can create different ticket tiers if you want to offer things like VIP tickets (better seats). You can also set quantities for each tier, so you know you won’t sell more than you can reasonably seat in your church.
On the night of the event, use Donorbox Live™ Kiosk app to create a giving kiosk to accept donations. This app easily turns your Android tablet into a donation kiosk that can pair with a card reader device and enable swift cashless donations for your church event.
You can also direct people to your online donation page using the free QR code you get on Donorbox for every campaign.
Fundraising with a choir performance works because people want to experience the choir and support their friends and/or family performing.
Although great for any time of year, choir performances are especially good for fundraising around the end-of-the-year holidays – when people want a little extra cheer!
Luckily, there aren’t really any expenses associated with a choir performance. All you need are the performers (who are usually volunteers) and maybe some programs printed for the event.
You can get the word out for free in your church newsletter or on social media.
Sell tickets before the event and at the door.
You can also have the choir encourage giving during the performance; especially if you have a specific fundraising goal you’re trying to hit.
Selling tickets for a choir performance is super easy with Donorbox Events. Once you set up your event ticketing form, you can choose whether you’d like to embed it in your website or simply host it on Donorbox.
Then you just share the link on your social media, in your church newsletters, and as a QR code on in-person flyers. Anyone who wants to attend must simply follow a link to checkout. Then, they’ll receive their tickets automatically, meaning they have all the info they need to attend your choir performance.
If you want to leverage in-person donations to meet a specific goal, consider setting up a Crowdfunding page on Donorbox with a goal thermometer to track your progress at the event. You can direct people to your crowdfunding page through a QR code or through Donorbox Text-to-Give. We have 6 tips to help you make the most of your crowdfunding campaign – watch this quick video here.
Quickly Set Up a Crowdfunding Campaign!
Book musicians to put on a virtual concert with a variety of music styles, so there’s something for everyone! The perk of a virtual concert is that people from all over can participate and you’ll increase your attendance.
This event can be hosted whenever.
The perk of virtual events is that they’re easy to plan and don’t require a big budget! But keep in mind that fundraising with virtual events is tricky as people may not be willing to buy tickets for a virtual experience.
You’ll need to opt for a virtual events hosting platform that lets you embed an online donation form. Have a clear fundraising goal in mind for the event. Add it to the form. This is a great way to encourage attendees to donate and help your church meet its goal.
Airmeet is a great option and it also seamlessly integrates with Donorbox to help you embed the form in a live event session. When your attendees don’t have to go outside of the event to make a donation, you can expect more donations to pour in.
Donorbox + Airmeet - Learn More!
You’ll sell tickets online prior to the event. When someone purchases a ticket, they should receive an automated thank-you with a receipt and information about how to access the virtual event.
You should also fundraise during the event with text-to-give. Share details like the texting number and the keywords with your attendees from time to time. You should remind the performers to ask for donations throughout the concert to keep the momentum going!
Sell tickets to your virtual concert with Donorbox Events. Set your ticket prices keeping in mind that it’s an online event. Our event pages are highly customizable – you can add your event description, details about where and how to attend, images, and other information. You can also add a ticket-buying deadline to create a sense of urgency among your potential attendees.
Finally, embed the Donorbox donation form in a virtual event hosting platform like Airmeet. This makes fundraising super-easy. Your donors would love this option as well.
But if you’re using another platform, try Donorbox Text-to-Give to encourage your attendees to give via text. Share your unique campaign ID along with the texting number with your virtual attendees. When they text the ID to the number, they receive a link to your mobile-friendly campaign page to complete the donation. It’s also very simple to repeat this donation – with no need to go to the campaign page again!
Your church can include a virtual raffle or penny social with all kinds of virtual fundraising events, but it can also be a stand-alone event! Pick some attractive prizes or experiences and sell tickets to win!
This event can be hosted whenever. Themed raffles like pool toys for the summer or tickets to baseball games might affect when you host your raffle.
The biggest expense here will be the items unless you’re able to get them donated! Get in touch with your local businesses to see if anyone would like to partner with your nonprofit.
However, this requires some planning. You’ll need to list the marketing opportunities you’ll be able to provide the businesses with if they donate an item to your penny social.
You’ll also need to create a strategy for pricing your event tickets. The only way to raise money with a raffle or penny social is by selling raffle tickets. So create different ticket tiers to ensure this event meets your fundraising goal.
Sell tickets to your raffle online. Different ticket tiers should represent different amounts of raffle tickets so participants can give at a higher level to receive more entries in the raffle!
Choose a virtual event hosting platform to live stream the raffle drawings. Embed a donation form to help people make additional donations to your church during the event. Make sure this showcases your fundraising goal meter. That way, if you’ve yet to meet the goal, your supporters would love to give extra to make that happen.
Donorbox integrates with Airmeet, an all-in-one event hosting platform, to make fundraising with your virtual events easy and convenient. You can embed your donation form in your live event session and encourage people to give to your church. Use this powerful combination to livestream your raffle or penny auction and raise donations.
Donorbox Events will help you sell raffle tickets. Add as many tiers as you must to generate revenue with your church event. You can also calculate the tax-deductibility of your ticket tiers by inputting the fair market value in the tool. Highlight this to sell more tickets and create transparency among purchasers.
In addition, you have Donorbox Text-to-Give and QR code options. Simply share the code or text-giving details with your attendees and ask them to support your church with donations.
A solid fundraising year for your church will likely include multiple events. Events are a great way for your churchgoers to get to know each other better and grow even closer to your church.
Church fundraising events can also help you raise funds for specific needs like capital campaigns, mission trips, and new initiatives in your community. Choosing creative events like the ones listed above will ensure a good time – and some solid fundraising for your church!
And as you navigate your way through it, Donorbox Events is there to help you succeed. We have a number of other features like Text-to-Give, Crowdfunding, Peer-to-Peer, and more to add to your event to be able to raise more and engage better. Explore them on our website.
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Want to learn tips and tricks on church fundraising? Go to our Nonprofit Blog. You’ll also get several templates and samples to help with event sponsorships and donation letters. Subscribe to our newsletter and we’ll send a collection of our best resources to your inbox every month!
Lindsey spent years wearing many hats in the nonprofit world. Whether she was helping arts nonprofits with their messaging and content, planning a fundraising gala, writing an NEA grant proposal, or running a membership program with over 400 members, she learned how to navigate – and appreciate! – the fast-paced world of fundraising. Now, she loves sharing those hard-earned lessons with the Donorbox community.
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Lindsey Baker Bower