How to Fundraise for a Mission Trip | 7 Tips
In this article and video tutorial, I will show you how to fundraise for a mission trip.
Fundraising can be an incredibly intimidating task. Whether you are in middle school trying to fundraise for your youth group’s mission trip this summer, or maybe you’re a college student looking to take a gap year.
Whatever it is, we have created this video where highlighting 7 practical tips to help show you how to fundraise for a mission trip.
How to Fundraise for a Mission Trip: Video Tutorial
Below is a video tutorial where I highlight 7 tips to teach you how to fundraise for a mission trip. I hope you enjoy it!
How to Fundraise for a Mission Trip
Here is a full list of the tips where we teach you how to fundraise for a mission trip.
1. Write Letters
If you’ve been thinking through how to fundraise for a mission trip, then the chances are you already knew about this idea. You may have even begun writing the letters you are going to send out.
That is great, you already got a head start.
The advice I would give to you when writing missionary fundraising fundraising letters, is to handwrite them, don’t print them out or send them digitally.
There’s a lot more that I could say about the letters, but we went ahead and created an article and video tutorial just for you as well as, a free template to help guide you when writing your letters.
2. Follow-Up
After you send the letters, whether you mail them or give them out by hand, give it a couple of days. You want to give people some time to get the letter, but also to think and pray about giving.
Once you’ve done that, follow up with that person. If necessary, you can send them a text message, but it would be ideal to talk to them in person.
In following up, your goal should not be to corner them or anything like that, instead you want to:
Remind them you sent them a letter.
Provide answers for any questions they may have about the trip or how to give.
Offer to talk with them more about the trip, if they desire.
You want to be as clear as possible and this will help. It will also help with subtly reminding people about you asking them to give to your trip.
3. Make a Video
Nowadays, people tend to prefer watching a video over reading. Making a video is a great idea when brainstorming how to fundraise for a mission trip.
Make a video talking about your trip, talking about your financial needs, and then talking about how people can help through prayer and giving.
Spend time on this, think of it as an elevator pitch in video format. Try to make it no longer than 2 minutes.
4. Post on Social Media
Remember that video you just made? Go ahead and post that on social media. Social media can be a great tool when figuring out how to fundraise for your mission trip. You can use it to update people of your needs for your trip, as well as, ways they can prayer for you.
Not only that, but it allows opportunity for people who you may not have thought of or aren’t in the circle of people you normally see regularly to give.
Maybe one of your parents old college roommates sees it from your mom sharing it on her page and that causes her to want to give, or maybe your friend’s grandma’s small group decides to give for your trip.
You might think that is super unlikely, but I promise it is not as unlikely as you might think.
When I was fundraising for a mission trip as a teenager, I had a teacher’s parent’s church small group that gave to my trip. It was such an encouragement to me and testimony of the Lord providing for his calling.
5. Create a Short-Term Newsletter
Newsletter may sound a little too formal when thinking about how to fundraise for your mission trip, but basically what I am saying is that you need something to help you communicate to those who are praying and following along.
If it’s a short-term trip, maybe sending mass emails or creating a group on facebook would be best. If you are doing a gap year, then think about a facebook group or even doing a more formal newsletter.
The goal of the newsletter is to update people on your financial needs and your prayer needs.
We actually created a video with some of our favorite tips to help you with your missionary fundraising newsletter.
The chances are, if you are figuring out how to fundraise for a mission trip it won’t be your last one and it might not even be your first one.
These last two tips will help you create long-lasting relationships with patrons and help them to see that when they give to your mission trip, they get to see the work that the Lord does in and through you.
6. Write Thank-you Notes
When you are fundraising, it is really hard not to only focus on your financial goal and nothing else. Fundraising is a super intimidating task, but I want to encourage you to really do everything you can to show appreciation to every person that offers to pray for you and give to you.
Writing thank you notes is a great way to do that.
For every person that gives to your trip, hand write them a short note thanking them for helping you answer the call the Lord has placed on your life.
7. Post Trip Follow-Ups
After your trip is over, take time to type up a letter talking about the highlights from your trip. People you saw give their lives to Christ, ways the Lord worked in your heart, even non-spiritual things like abnormal food you may have tried.
It may help if you keep a journal on the trip and write down some of your favorite things that happened along the way.
Along with this, print out and send a picture! Giving a visual like this is super helpful and is so encouraging for people to see.
If you really want to go above and beyond, get everyone who gave to you a little gift. Maybe it’s a keychain from the country you went to or a post card. Things like this make people feel extremely valued and cared for.
I hope these tips on how to fundraise for your mission trip were helpful to you. If you are interested in more resources like these, be sure to follow along, as we will release content like this every week aimed to help missionaries fundraise.
Check out our course, Modern fundraising for missionaries, when we teach you everything you need to know about missionary fundraising in our digital age.
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