Fundraising Ideas to Love on Orphans:

You need to raise $3,400 for our Visiting Orphans mission trip.  Is this holding you up from joining our crazy team?  If it is, we want to share some fundraising ideas that really work!  If you have the heart to join us, raising funds will be the easy part!  Take a peek at my past 3 posts on our Uganda/Ethiopia Mission trip for more information.  Sign up today- only 2 spots left.  We need some more men, hubbys & dads to MAN UP… come protect & love the fatherless.  Please pass on info to someone you think should be a part of my crazy mission trip!!

My co-leader Ashlie suggests:

1. Donation Letters- Make it personal!!!! Put your heart into it. Stay in touch with people, talk about the trip whenever you can.

2. Start a Blog- Just do it!!!! www.blogspot.com  My crazy blog sister, Nikki Cochrane will design your new blog header (the top design art) and column sides and help you get your blog going.  She has hundreds of kits available for you to customize your new blog or give it a face lift.  SPECIAL OFFER: if you contact her and tell her My Crazy Adoption sent you, she will give you a $5 discount ($25 to customize your blog) EMAIL NIKKI – Blogs For A Cause.  Just tell her My Crazy Adoption sent you.

• Blogs For A Cause: is the perfect way to get a great looking blog, as well as supporting charities around the world! Designs are $30; $25 of which goes to supporting my humanitarian work, and $5 goes to a Charity of the Month. Send me an email and we will get started; discussing photos for the header, text for the header, and the digital scrapbook kit I will use for your blog (see Go Shopping to the right). I will come up with a design and put it on a Test Blog. You can look it over, and get one set of changes for free.

• Paypal has a very simple “donate here” button that can be added. If you compile all of your friends/family email addresses you can “email blast” everyone to let them know when you have a new post. This is a great way to make people a part of your journey.

1. Applebees- Dining to Donate 10% of sales for 5 hours!!!! All it took was a phone call to the store Manager and I had 3 different dates! Applebees even provides the flyer. All we have to do is print it and pass it out. We are going to stand at the back of the church and personally hand the flyer to each and everyone of our church members. In addition, you can stand outside of Applebees and ask the customers coming in the door to give a flyer to their waiter. We are hoping to raise $1,000 each night. (Warning= no take-outs and customers have to give their flyer to the waiter)

2. Kohls- A-Team Volunteers- All you need to do is request 5 or more volunteers from Kohls for a 2 hour event, such as an Easter Festival, Parents Night Out, Church Landscaping, etc. The volunetters will come and work AND you will get $500.00 for your organzation!!!!! Check out http://www.kohlscorporation.com/communityrelations/Community04.htm

3. African Mission Spaghetti Dinner- We are pre-selling $10.00 tickets for a Spaghetti Dinner at our church. Dinner includes Spaghetti, Garlic Bread, Salad, and Dessert. We are also going to have a silent auction. We are designing themed baskets, such as Family Game Night, Day of Beauty, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Dinner and Dancing, etc. We are hoping to get most of the items donated.

4. Parents Night Out- We are offering babysitting on a Saturday Night, from 6-10 at our church. We are request donations from parents. This is simple and requires no upfront cost, just marketing.

Here are more ideas from bloggy friend, Big Nanny who just went on a 14 day mission trip with Visiting Orphans.  Here’s what she had to say about fundraising for missions:

Yes, we did lots of fundraising for our trip. We were in a unique position because 3 of us were on staff at our church so we had lots of contacts and were able to do some special fundraisers. Here is what we did & the results:

• We sent out letters. The 3 of us who are on staff sent out a joint letter to all of our contacts explaining when, where, why, etc. The letter was eye catching & not your typical boring m. trip letter:) I can send you a copy if you want.
• We had a t-shirt designed with Africa & had them printed. This wasn’t a huge money maker because we sell a lot of t-shirts at our church for various events. We also put them on FB on & blogs. We probably made about $200 profit. We had our t-shirts made for less than $5 bucks and sold them for $10. We had a t-shirt connection in our church & they gave us a good deal.
• Our church has a fall festival on Halloween each year. They let us do concessions and we made over $1000.
• We had a paypal button on our blogs and we made a few hundred dollars.
• We work in preschool ministry & our wing of the church does not have a coke machine so we started selling Cokes out of the fridge for $1.
• Yard Sale-we had a yard sale on a cold November day and made over $1500. We had some people in our church donate items to us for the sale.

We go to a very missions supportive church so they let us do a lot of things that most churches do not. And because we are on staff, we got to do a few things that most people wouldn’t have the opportunity to do.
Other people that we know have done some of these:

• Pancake breakfast at Applebees. Our local one supplies the pancakes, sausage, and drink. You sell the tickets for $5 and make all the profit.
• Sell items around your house on Craigslist. Some of the high ticket items that were donated to our yard sale (a Barbie jeep, john deere kid jeep, furniture, etc) I posted them on Craigslist the week of the sale and had them sold before Saturday.

Again, the 3 of us fundraised as a team from the beginning and had almost $12,000 to raise if you include our vaccinations. We raised all of it. The only money that we spent was our VO $200 application fees. It was truly a God thing. We even had an extra $1000 to give away when we got there. We were called to this trip and it was all God putting everything together to make it happen.

If you have any other questions for Angela/Big Nanny. You can email her at
I’m glad to know that I’m not the only crazy one:)

My Crazy Idea:

Mr. IPod Touch Ozark Adventure was my big crazy Haiti mission trip fundraiser.  If you’re new here, and want to see the two weeks of craziness, check this out- My Mission Trip Fundraiser!!

• Buy or get an IPod donated. (talk to local business or friends that can help)
• Create a “Donate” button on Paypal.
• Don’t use the words- raffle or tickets (PP will tag you as a gambler:)  You can say- donate to enter a Giveaway.  Set donation amounts per entries they earn. Explain this on your blog, but do not put any “gambler words” on paypal button set up.
• Create a Mr. IPod or Miss Lulu IPod.  The crazier, the more fun you will have with your readers.
• Make sure you let blog readers know 100% of proceeds goes directly to mission trip or orphans.

Britt Nicole JUST returned from a Visiting Orphans mission trip- 14 days to Uganda & Ethiopia.  Take a peek at her blog and photos and testimony.  Click here- Britt Nicole Music blog

VISITING ORPHANS WEBSITE- MISSON TRIP INFO

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