A large and enthusiastic group attended a brainstorming session on October 10 to generate and prioritize ideas for fundraising events for our church.

§   We prioritized three ideas to implement during the 2018-19 church year:

• Arts and crafts sale on Saturday, December 8 – coordinated by Elizabeth Forrest
  • Participants will be members who have art and/or crafts they’ve already made for the holiday fair or who will have them made by 12/8
  • Will be held in a single room (either the sanctuary or the foyer, depending on how many tables we fill) and last 3 or so hours
  • Artists and crafters will each have their own table, or portion of a table, and will be responsible for their own set up and clean up, as well as for being at their tables during the sale.
  • We may or may not sell coffee and individually wrapped bake goods.
  • We won’t worry about decorating; if it happens, it happens
  • We will start working on publicity (aimed at both artists/crafters and the public), including a tent sign for the parking lot entrance, immediately
  • We’ll wait until the spring plant sale/giant yard sale to have our white/gold elephant sale – will hand out flyers at the craft show explaining that

• Envelope campaign – coordinated by Terri Grover, Elizabeth Wheeler, and Pauli Juneau
  • To be set up in both church foyers for the month of December
  • All it requires is a display with envelopes with various amounts written on them, a publicity campaign focused on the congregation, and instructions for potential donors
  • We will ask everyone in the congregation to select an envelope with an amount that corresponds to the amount they would have spent at the holiday fair plus the value of the time they would have volunteered, then write a check for that amount and give it to the church

• Spring plant sale/giant yard sale – we will hold another brainstorming session in January to flesh out our ideas for this
  • White/gold elephant room replacement
  • Sell crafts
  • Could include a car wash
  • Could include, or be set up as, a “makers’ craft market” with outside vendors who share our values renting space from us
  • Could piggy-back with other local groups to become a community yard sale, possibly with an auction component

§   We set aside other promising ideas to revisit at a later date:

• Cabaret/dinner theater or coffee house
  • Dinner or coffee house and a show or entertainment
  • Recruit talented church members to perform, sell tickets to the show
  • Could be a night of “fair”y tales with skits in very silly costumes, act out UU versions of fairy tales, vote on winner with your wallet
• Spring renewal health or “Love Fair” prior to Valentine’s Day
  • Acupressure, yoga and tai chi demonstrations, nutrition, exercise, fun run
  • Chocolate, stuff to give your honey for Valentine’s Day, things to sell that we once loved
• Game tournament
  • Cribbage/ other card game(s)/ bingo
  • Pay to enter and split proceeds 50/50 with winner
• Concert of area church choirs/other music with refreshments
• Making sure our stewardship campaigns are productive enough that fundraisers can become supplemental, not essential
• Auction: goods and services auction, silent and live, for in-house, not public, large and small items, a range of prices
• Church suppah! with soup and beans
• Fundraising committee/team/coordinator to coordinate fundraising proposals
• Holiday fair and auction in alternate years, with full church participation!
• Harvest festival
• Holiday white elephant/children’s gift bazaar
• Invite new Maine Girls’ Chorus (sub-group of Women in Harmony): we could cancel their weekly rent, share publicity with them and split the proceeds of concert ticket sales
• Monthly bake sales sponsored by different groups in the church
• New Year’s dance with a 50/50 or basket raffle, evening of festivities with both early (10PM?) and midnight toasts to the New Year, possibly a pot-luck dinner
• On-going, online “sale,” cost-free, selling things we already have (Craig’s List, etc.), would provide year-round income
• Perpetual sales area set up in the church
• Run/walk marathon
• Speaker/entertainment series