One dynamic factor that can burden people from taking that leap of faith to be the hands and feet of Christ in ministry is fundraising. A valuable lesson I have taken away is that the key in fundraising is to display an authentic passion for your purpose in ministry and leaving the rest up to God. This is not always easy, but if you are intentional in the relationships that you are pursuing and are submitting your faith in the Lord, fruit will come – that He promises.

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My methods of fundraising took two very different routes. The first time I got my feet wet on a week-long mission, and the second experience was for a month in the summer. Initially, I took more of the “writing things”fundraiser by sending letters to family and friends for the week-long trip. However, for the month-long trip I approached fundraising using a “selling things”method. In doing so I sold t-shirts that marketed my passion and cause. In the end, this method became the most effective for my efforts, audience and personality.

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Like I mentioned previously, the key to raising money is establishing a target audience with whom you can be most intentional. While you define your market, make sure you are also preparing your heart to open up to your supporters so that they feel like they are a piece of your journey and not just a customer.  Before deciding on what you would like to sell, establish a list that can guide you in who your audience will be and how you will most effectively reach out to those people. Then brainstorm what your audience would most likely be willing to buy and decide what network/company you will sell your product through. Oh!! Almost forgot – ha – thinking out loud here!! Don’t forget to set a goal of how much of your product you would like to sell to reach your monetary goal. 

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Establishing your list 

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Creating a list of people is honestly the easy part. Whether it’s the bulk of your church congregation, your college amigos, your family friends, or Uncle Eddie and the fam, you can probably whip out a list pretty quick of people you could reach out to and would potentially be willing to support you in this journey. However, the HUGE key in making this list is to be aware that your circle of supporters should extend far outside of your closest family and friends. Honestly, I think when I made my list, I had over 200 people on there (kinda crazy but it worked soo!). So definitely establish a list that well exceeds a small circle of family or friends. 

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One beneficial factor from my method is when looking at the people on my list, I recognized that many people would donate beyond my suggested minimum donation for the t-shirts—some were up in the air, but I had a general idea of where a few of those people would stand in supporting me which helped me visualize if I could reach my goal or not. For instance, I knew my grandma would buy a couple t-shirts but also donate $200-$300ish, so I kept that in mind when establishing my list. On the other end of the spectrum, I knew that my broke college friends would simply buy a t-shirt (ballin’ on a college budget, ya feel?). However, the cool thing is EVERY single dollar helps and some people will surprise you with how generous they are! 

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Brainstorming how you will Reach your Peeps​

            

This part definitely takes more thought because ultimately this is where being intentional comes into play. Money doesn’t truly come without developing relationships, being authentic in sharing your story, and truly pursuing your target audience. Before even thinking about pursuing people, I had to ponder on how I was going to introduce my t-shirts to my audience and in what way I could do so to maximize my sells. For myself, Instagram and Facebook seemed to be a strong tool to pave the way to get my product out there to majority of my audience which would then open up the door for more intentional conversation. What I initially did was make a post on both social media outlets and just shared my conviction to go on a month-long mission to serve in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Belize. The more sincere and real you can be, the better and the more overflow of generosity you will find. After making that first post, I would pretty regularly (maybe a couple times a week max) post on my story on Instagram or create a post on Facebook to keep people updated on my t-shirt sells and my goal as far as how many I wanted to sell. In essence, my main source of showcasing my t-shirts was social media.

 

            

With all of that said, the influx of people interested in buying my t-shirts was honestly shocking. I was stoked and so blessed witnessing the generosity of others and being able to pour into these people simultaneously. Through using the social media outlets, I was able to then meet up with those people over a cup of coffee or maybe just a phone call if meeting wasn’t possible, but I tried to be very intentional in talking to each person that showed interest in supporting me because I wanted to make sure they felt like they were not just giving their money to some random organization. Overall, meeting these people definitely allowed them to see through to my heart and allowed their generosity to just overflow into fundraising for my trip. To reflect -  

#1 definitely brainstorm your main tool to target people in an effective and timely manner, but also be sure to reach out to those people in a personable way to strengthen that relationship and yield the best fundraising results.

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Figuring Out What To Sell 

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So this is the fun part! To be honest before I begin, I will preface this by saying I have never been the huge marketing gal or been interested in annoying people with products I am selling. Solicitors actually high key get on my nerves, but I knew that for the cause of Christ, marketing and selling products had the potential to be different. 

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Taking into consideration my audience, I knew that everyone generally loves t-shirts (especially college kids) so that is ultimately why I decided on my specific product to sell. The cool thing about selling t-shirts is people are getting something they can wear to spread your ministry further. They are able to donate but also receive something that will bring them back to the heart of your mission. One thing I also realized that worked pretty well is if people didn’t want to buy a t-shirt or two, they would to decide to donate which was a second option I offered as well. With all of this said, whatever you decide on selling, make sure to key into your audience and see if that is something that is going to get you closest to your goal in the end.

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Deciding How to Sell Product 

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With a little bit of searching and talking to a couple friends who had sold t-shirts to fundraise for mission costs in the past, I ended up deciding on a pretty cool ministry within itself. Fund the Nations, @fundthenations,was created to help people raise money for missions, non-profits, and adoptions in a very cost efficient and profitable way. The process is so seamless and easy regarding getting plugged into this organization. Basically, you simply go to their website (www.fundthenations.com), click on “how it works”, and the steps are a breeze. The steps are as follows: (1) contact them following the process it indicates on the site, (2) they send you a design of your t-shirt in a very timely manner (which you can respond back and make changes if need be), (3) you then take a screenshot of the shirt and pre-sell as many as you can, (4) after selling as much or making it to your goal—you will submit your order form, (5) and lastly they print and ship the shirts to you! 

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Overall this process was SO easy and was really cool because I never had to use any of my money to buy the shirts since everything was pre-sell and I gathered the money in advance. Fund the Nations offers very cost-efficient shirts, so basically you pay a very low price and sell them for well above that price to make a decent profit in which you keep to fund your trip. For instance, the t-shirts that I purchased were $10 each, but I sold them for $20 so I was able to make a ten dollar profit on each shirt. 

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A key to make sure you do not drag your fundraiser out for months and are able to meet payment deadlines is to set goals for yourself and set an order date from the beginning of your planning. This really pushed me personally to have a firm end date and I was able to raise all of my support on time.

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To summarize, definitely work with a company that has already established a seamless process for fundraising and  be very organized. Create your start date, your projected end date, have a set aside account that will house all of the fundraised money for the trip to keep everything accessible and organized, and even an excel spread sheet was beneficial for me to keep track of everyone’s’ orders and sizes. (I think I sold over 200 shirts, so it would have been very difficult to keep up with everything if I didn’t use excel & that’s not even including the donations I received)!

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Set a goal 

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Okay so I somewhat already brushed on this, but definitely set a goal for how many t-shirts you would like to sell just so you are focused on your purpose of being intentional in everything you are doing. I initially set a goal to sell 200 t-shirts (200 shirts * $10 = $ 2000). I had faith that the other $1000 I needed for my trip would come from excess donations and thanks to overwhelming generosity, I raised well over that threshold! 

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In conclusion 

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Overall, give it yout best shot, be intentional, be extremely organized, and most importantly - trust in Him to make a way. Raising the money for both of my trips in full and having extra for the second one was more than a blessing, but it definitely was not credited to my efforts alone. I did all I could, but the Lord paved the way and I rightfully give all the glory to Him. Oddly enough I didn’t make it to my original flight (long story) and had to use the leftover money that I had. However, it was the perfect extra amount to fund the later flight I needed (WOAH…definitely all God). Anyway, pray for Him to open the door if it is supposed to happen and watch Him work through your fundraising, through the people you encounter, and witness the generosity of others pour into your life! 

 

**P.S: Also HIGHLY recommend to send hand written thank you cards after your trip with pictures to allow people to see that they truly helped a great deal to make your mission happen. It means so much and will help in your future fundraiser endeavors if you are intentional in this way as well.**

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Caroline Reed

December 2018