Youth First Aids

Chili Fundraiser

7:09 PM Posted by Kat

I saw this fundraising idea in the bulletin of a church in Hawaii that we had visited for the weekend we were there. Selling Chili to raise funds for your youth event is a great idea because chili is not something that has to be consumed on the spot (compared to a hot meals fundraiser or a hot dog fundraiser). You can even promote the fact that the Chili they buy can be a meal saved for a rainy day, served for a pot luck events or even be given away!

The best way to sell the chili is to get the congregation to pre-order them. That way you know exactly how many batches you should make. You need to decide ahead of time how much chili you will be giving for each order and how much you will be selling them for.

You can announce it a week or two weeks before having a table in the foyer or at the entrance of the church to take the pre-orders. You might want to have the table out for two weekends to take the orders.

There are two ways of doing this:

You can get your own recipe for chili and with the help from the youth cook a couple big batches of the chili. With a little preparation, this can be a fun activity for your youth (as long as you make sure everything stays clean!). Make sure you have enough volunteers to supervise things. You can buy bulk Tupperware to store the Chili in the church fridge until they are sold.

Another option would be, because most families have their own secret chili recipe, is to get a couple of parents to help make the chili themselves. You might even have an idea of the mom's in your congregation who would be excited to help! It is best to tell them how much your budget is to make the chili so that they know how much to work with and you can reimburse them afterwards. Some mom's might even insist on not being reimbursed. If you are going to be requesting the help of some of the parents, please don't forget to thank them as a youth group for the time they took to help you! A nice thank you card or gift card to starbucks might be a good idea.

Don't forget to be creative! Sometimes it's the little touches that can draw people in to participate. You can create a video or skit about eating chili to help remind the congregation to buy the chili. You can even get your youth volunteers to dress up as chef's when people pre-order... you could even make 1 batch and give them a little sample (like they do at other grocery stores).

Picture courtesy of mixmingleglow.com