18 Nov 5 Christmas Offering Strategies to Communicate and Engage Your Church in Holiday Giving

5 Christmas Offering Strategies to Communicate and Engage Your Church in Holiday Giving

The holidays are a great opportunity to bring your congregation together. When it comes to Christmas, there is an increased sense of community throughout the church, making it the perfect time to gather everyone in your church together to come around a common goal. 

Whether you’re looking to raise some money to donate to a local food shelter or charity, or are looking to do some internal fundraising so you can effectively carry out your mission of spreading the Lord’s Word, Christmas is the time to engage your church with the idea of holiday giving. 

In this post, we’ll be talking about five Christmas offering strategies that will help you raise money this holiday season. 

Let’s get started! 

Host a Holiday Dinner or Breakfast

A great way to fundraise money while also benefiting those who are donating is by hosting a Christmas-themed dinner or breakfast. 

For this idea, gather all the best cooks in your congregation and have them each pick a dish to prepare. If your church isn’t big enough to host, then a community center with a kitchen will work just as well. 

You can charge anywhere from $15-$30 per admission ticket, which may seem a little high but as long as you make it clear what the money will be put towards, people will have no problem paying extra for a home-cooked meal. 

You could even host both dinner and breakfast fundraiser. That way, if someone can’t make it to one of the days, they can try and make it to the other. Not only is this a great way to raise money, but it’s a great way to get everyone in your congregation together during the Christmas season. 

For some tips and tricks on how to pull off the perfect breakfast fundraiser, check out this helpful outline courtesy of DoJiggy! 

Have a Christmas Cookie Bake Sale

Another tried-and-true method, putting on a Christmas cookie bake sale will certainly help you reach your Christmas fundraising goal. 

To add a little incentive to ensure participation, you can make it a competition to see who sells the most cookies or who is voted the best baker between all the participants. You can then give the winner a gift card to a local restaurant or another small prize. 

Once again, it’s important to make sure you clearly articulate who the bake sale will benefit. People like to give when they know what the cause is. 

Put on a Holiday Carnival Fundraiser

Everyone loves a good holiday carnival and this is the perfect way to get your congregation together to celebrate Christmas. 

You can have a small admission fee and also create a designated booth where members of your church can donate more if they wish. Having a donation goal for your attendees is a great way to encourage giving, as they’ll want to help their church reach their goal. 

The best thing about turning your fundraiser into a carnival is that you can customize it however you want. You can offer snacks or reach out to local food trucks to see if they are willing to serve your carnival attendees for free. 

Carnival games and other activities are a must for kids and at the end of the day, you can set up an area to watch a Christmas movie before closing things down. 

That sounds like a pretty good day to us! 

If you live in an area where the weather may be too frigid, see if there is an event center, community center, or gym that you can rent out and move the party inside. 

It’s a good idea to also give your congregation the ability to give online — in the event that they can’t make it your carnival or didn’t have any cash on them at the time. 

To set up an online giving solution that your congregation can use all throughout the year, reach out to mobileAxept today! GiveNow and ReachNow will help you increase your church tithings and engagement within your community. 

To see them in action, request a demo by checking the box on the bottom of the contact page! 

Put on Your Own “Polar Plunge” 

Raise your hand if you wouldn’t mind seeing your pastor jump into a freezing lake for a good cause. 

Take a page out of the Polar Plunge book and have your own version, where recognizable members of your church can inspire donations to a good cause. It’s hard not to imagine raising a decent amount of money through this strategy. 

Whether you’re raising money for your church or to donate to a charity, people love watching other people jump into cold bodies of water. 

Offer a Christmas Gift Wrapping Service

Let’s face it, some of us stink at wrapping gifts. But that’s all the more reason why offering a gift-wrapping service through your church would be a great fundraiser. 

Get your best gift-wrapping members together and raise some money by offering the best wrapped-gifts ever. 

You can even incorporate this service into some of the past ideas, like having a booth at your winter carnival where people can drop off gifts and pick them up wrapped! 

Good luck with your Christmas fundraising!