I’ve been asked [a lot] about fundraising ideas for junior and teen camps. Our favorite is one we call Tract-a-thon. Basically, our kids get sponsors to pledge a certain amount of money for every tract, flier, or invitation to church they hand out. We have pre-set “group” days where as a group we go out knocking on doors & canvassing neighborhoods around the church or neighborhoods we have van routes go through. Each door gets a tract, flier, or invitation. Sometimes, we’ll walk through parks or mall parking lots handing them out as well. Then the teens/kids are encouraged to give out tracts/fliers/invitations to their family, friends, and classmates on their own. We then tally our totals and receive our pledges.

We set up three forms of pledges: 1) a simple $ amount per tract (example: 25 cents per tract), 2) a simple $ amount per tract with a cap of a certain $ amount (25 cents per tract up to 10$), or 3) a flat pledge (10$ no matter how many tracts get handed out as long as the teen/kid participates). This year our highest earner so far has made $200; last year, our highest earner made $285.

We have a form for each kid/teen to write these pledges with the pledger’s name, phone #, and amount pledged. It’s very easy to lose these so we ask parents to take a picture of their pledge forms once the kids have them filled out. 

Every year we’ve held this fundraiser, we have kids who get fully funded from this one, single fundraiser for their camp cost. Plus, the church benefits from visitors from the fundraiser AND it gets your youth involved with the church’s community outreach. Here’s some tips for putting on this great money-making camp fundraiser:

1. Plan the time period well. We typically try to have this fundraiser right before a “big day” at our church. We try to think about typical weather for the schedule we’re considering when we’re planning it out as well: if it’s too hot, the kids will fade quickly and if it’s too cold, we may be getting kids sick. We try to aim for times/days when we think people will be home. Mostly Saturdays mid-morning seem to work out best for us. We also try to keep it at under 2 hours because there’s a large amount of walking involved with our group days.
2. Prep your kids with a greeting. We always do a basic overview and how to approach a door (no more than 2 kids at a time), how & where to put the tract/flier/invite if the person is not home, and what to say if the person is home. It normally goes something like this: “Hi, my name is Meg and I’m from the Elm Grove Baptist Church. (hand tract to person) Our youth group is out today inviting people to church. We would love to see you come.” Keep it simple because your teens/kids need simple to feel confident about being able to do this. The average kid/teenager has never done something like this before and may feel a little unsure of themselves. Giving them a fall-back greeting helps their confidence level and ensures a better success rate for that person they’re speaking with to accept the tract.
3. Know the legal requirements for soliciting for a neighborhood before going there. Some areas of our country have very strict no soliciting requirements and many apartment complexes and trailer parks refuse to allow door knocking or canvassing. All of these rules and laws are online if you look before you go. It’s always a good idea to talk to your participants about the importance of obeying signs saying no soliciting.
4. Protect your kids. Don’t allow anyone to walk alone: we normally suggest three-together for younger kids and two-together for older kids. We always keep at least one adult at the front of the pack and one adult at the back of the pack. If a person gets agitated towards your kid/teen for trying to give them an invitation to church, automatically send the kid/teen ahead to the next house and you stay behind to speak to the agitated person. This very rarely happens, but it [does] happen: be prepared to take the verbal hit to protect your teen/kid. Be extremely strict about not allowing any child to enter a home or to go to a door that can’t be seen from the street. 
5. Pre-count your tracts. We typically count out our fliers, tracts, and invites into stacks of 50. Anything left at the end of each group day will obviously be subtracted, but this makes it so much easier for you to keep track of what’s going out on group day!

Use this easy fundraiser to increase your camp funds exponentially while also letting your group get involved with church ministry. Enjoy the tract-a-thon!

Love, Meghan