The Bake Sale
Fund raising for any enterprise can be a daunting task, but even more so for a Christian organization seeking to finance a mission trip. Mission trips can be expensive, and depending on how many volunteers are going, can literally cost thousands of dollars. Often, a group may spend more than a year raising the money needed for their trip.
One way that a missionary group can raise money is through the use of the bake sale. This practice has been around for a long time, and has a proven track record of success for this type of fund raising. Local bake sales are used for all types of organizations from school parent and teacher associations to other local chapter non-profit organizations, as well as religious organizations.
So how do you get started in organizing a bake sale? First, you need to round up all of the members of your church or organization that will be sponsoring the mission trip. Ask for volunteers to cook, and also volunteers to promote and work the event. Ideally, you will want three separate groups of people, so that nobody gets burned out by having to ‘do it all’.
Once you’ve got enough people volunteered for the event, you need to decide when you will do it. Traditionally, the weekend has seen the best results for bake sales, as there are more people off from work, and out buying things on the weekend. You have several choices when holding a bake sale as to where you will hold the sale. Most people prefer to find a high traffic area that will allow them to set-up on their property, such as the local Wal-Mart Supercenter, or mall location. This will provide the type of traffic needed to make the bake sale a success.
After the date is set, and the location is selected and confirmed, you are almost ready to go! Make sure that everyone who is going to cook some items for the bake sale will be enthusiastic, and has assigned or agreed upon menu items. This way you don’t end up with only one or two types of items, but with a larger variety. Pies and cakes of almost any variety usually do well, as do cookies. Other baked items will sell as well, but these are the usual fare because they are successful.
You will want to not only advertise your event in the local paper, but also employ some of the volunteers to hand out flyers as well as posting them on local bulletin boards. Sometimes local newspapers and/or TV and radio outlets will put out a public notice of upcoming events free of charge for non-profit organizations, such as churches.
After completing the weekend sale, you should be well on your way to collecting enough money for your mission trip. Again, depending on how many people are going with the group, you may have to repeat the event several times or even do a different fund raiser to complete the task and raise the needed funds. In the spirit of Christian giving, you will find that volunteers should be more than willing to help out – especially when the cause is as honorable as a mission trip.