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• Fundraising
  • Community Fundraising
  • Event Fundraising
  • Grant Making Trusts
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  • Just Text Giving
  • Examples from the Diocese: a new roof
  • Examples from the Diocese: organ restoration
• Money and giving
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Fundraising

Fundraising

In these pages you will find some advice on how to raise funds for projects at your church. These pages have been put together by Catherine Evans (Finance Manager) and Eleanor Course (Communications Officer), and we’ve focussed on the following areas:

• Community fundraising
• Event Fundraising
• Applying for grants
• Legacies
• Just Text Giving

There are also two examples from parishes that have raised funds successfully, in the hope you can find ideas and inspiration from what they have done.

Money for projects, not for day-to-day expenditure

It’s important to be aware that this fundraising advice is for particular projects – like funding a youth worker for a year, or repairing your roof – not for paying the regular bills and parish share. You wouldn’t have a car boot sale to raise money for your gas bill at home, and the same principles apply at church!

If you need help raising money for the day to day running of your church, look firstly at your expenditure, and how you are spending the church’s money. It might be useful to do a Parish Spending Survey on what you spend your money on, and how you might be able to buy your utilities etc more cost effectively - the Parish Resources website has good information on this.

Regular committed giving is crucial in meeting ongoing costs. The Diocesan Christian Giving Resources Group think about how to raise giving levels, and can help you with their programme TRIO (The Responsibility Is Ours) which addresses the issue of finances with the whole congregation. You can find details on TRIO here.

Staying within the Law

The Institute of Fundraising produces a range of factsheets that will help you organise events safely and within the law. The key ones of relevance to community fundraising are:

• Charities working with businesses
• Charity challenge events
• Event fundraising
• Fundraising in schools
• Handling of cash donations
• Raffles and lotteries
• Volunteer fundraising

The Charity Commission also provides guidance to Trustees on fundraising.

Marketing your event

To market your event – try using:

• Local papers and magazines
• Social media – Facebook or Twitter
• Posters – consider having “template” posters bulk printed with your church’s name and location and space where you can write in details of the next event
• Community noticeboards
• Banners – try having a banner printed that can be re-used at different times and locations “St Saviour’s Church – Fundraising Event here today”

There’s more ideas on how to get publicity here, and you can always contact Eleanor Course, Communications Officer for help on 01904 699530 or comms@yorkdiocese.org.