Twenty-six
Avoid Fund-raisers
“This will help so many in our church. I know a couple
people who could earn some extra money and it will
be good for fellowship. And, pastor, you could save
some money, too.”
It sounded too good to be true. Guess what! It was.
Rarely a week goes by that I am not contacted by
phone about a fund-raiser. A major industry has
developed around fund-raising, and of course, fundraising
companies target churches.
Fund-raising businesses purchase lists of nonprofit
organizations, and the opening tactic is to send out a
couple of slick brochures followed some days later by
a phone call. And they will have a fund-raiser
guaranteed to bring in lots of money. For example, they
will produce a directory for the church complete with
photos. They will handle everything. Everyone will
get a nice directory and for every order $5.00 comes to
the church. It works, too. This is usually no scam; it’s
just that the program has to be run through the
governing process, and promoted, and then promoted
some more. Usually there is some paper work, phone
calling, and ruffled feathers to be soothed, too.
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For Pastors
Or there is a deal for long-distance phone rates and
the church will get a certain percentage. Or perhaps it
is group life or medical insurance, and the church
members will get a break on the premiums plus a
certain percentage of the premiums paid come directly
to the church. The word is, “Simply wonderful, a winwin
situation”. And there are dozens of schemes, often
operated by Christian organizations, even missionary
enterprises. I am amazed at the creativity of these
people; they have almost every angle down.
The appeals are irresistible; some people get quite
excited about raising money for the choir or a youth
program, and “We really do need to repave the parking
lot”. In general, the support of special projects,
especially onetime events, may be okay. But the
principle I try to stick to is—no fund-raising for the
general budget. The tithes and offerings that come in
at the regularly appointed meetings and services alone
must support the budget.
There are always reasons for fund-raisers,
sometimes compelling reasons. After the package is
agreed to then the work of promoting the fund-raiser
must begin; the concept has to be sold to the people.
There will be meetings, meetings with committees and
boards and councils; of course, everyone must be “on
board”. It will be necessary to allot a significant amount
of Sunday morning announcement time, at least, for
promotional purposes. It will be in the bulletin for
weeks, special flyers will be printed, posters painted
and banners made—to get everyone excited about the
fund-raiser.
Once one fund-raiser is run there will likely be
more of them. The budget may come to depend on
fund-raisers. “We are going to make up our red ink
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Avoiding Fundraisers
through a fund-raiser.” Then there will be a lot of fundraisers.
It is a tremendously draining exercise.
Now I will admit that Miller Avenue does do a yard
sale once a year for our Annual Gospel Concert. (I am
not as clean here as it might seem.) The yard sale is a
compromise on my part and I have not made up my
mind whether I am doing the right thing or not. For
the last nine years we have had an annual yard sale to
fund the concert. I have to admit it is fun to do. All of
the money goes directly to our gospel concert. But I
have at least limited fund-raising to the concert. I say
“No” to everything else though some are quite
tempting.
Despite my inconsistency, my suggestion is to avoid
fund-raisers, particularly anything that has to do with
saving money on telephone rates, insurance, utilities,
soap, cosmetics, plastic containers, and groceries—
anything where people sign up and change who it is
they have been doing business with.
Of course, many promoters of fund-raisers are
certain it is all for Jesus. One hears, “Don’t you want
your money go to Christians rather than those pagan,
secular utility companies?” Well, I got sold once; I tried
a telephone deal. A slick start-up telecommunications
company in the south someplace sold me, and all for
the glory of God.
I got a whole bunch of people to switch their longdistance
telephone carriers to this wonderful Christian
group. We did a promotion, a company representative
even flew out; we had a couple of meetings and people
got excited about it and changed their long-distance
telephone carrier. The company made one point very
clear—there would be no charge to make the switch.
We had it in writing. Praise God! And then the long
distance bill was going to be lowered by 20% and 10%
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For Pastors
of that total would come right into the church. Imagine
10% right into the church!
It’s simple really. Let’s say the long-distance phone
bill had been $50.00 a month. The new company would
save the subscriber $10 and $5.00 would come right
into the church. Praise God! Come right here into the
church! Well, we did it, and I persuaded nearly all of
the elderly people in the church to get on board. We
were going to use the money for the choir. This was
actually the plan to fund the gospel concert before we
came up with the yard sale idea.
The first thing that happened, people come to me
and complained they had been charged, I think $10.00,
to switch over; and of course, that was not supposed to
happen. When I contacted the company they
apologized for the charges and said they couldn’t help
it, it was the FCC, or something or other, the NCA, or
the TWP, or some kind of government agency that
charged this and, well, what can you do. We had that
little hurdle.
The next thing people reported that their longdistance
phone bills had jumped considerably. I
contacted the company again and said, “We were
supposed to have a 20% saving.” I was told, “You know
that comes in the second year. We haven’t quite got
there.” I checked my notes at that point and this was
indeed news.
When after several months had elapsed and no
money had come into the church I called again. I said,
“It has been four months now and we have not received
a check. We figure it ought to be forty or fifty bucks by
now, for the choir.” And the voice at the other end said,
“We are going to look into this.” They looked into it
for more than six months. The last time I called I got a
recording saying the phone had been disconnected.
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Avoiding Fundraisers
We never did receive a single penny. Everybody had
to switch back over to their old long distance carrier
and it cost them another $10.00 apiece. It was a
complete boondoggle. In fact, a couple of years went
by before we finally got that company to keep
reenlisting us as their customers. We told them over
and over “We do not want you to be our long distance
carrier.” No matter, they kept doing it, the $10
switching charges continued and there are some people
who are still mad at me. It ultimately cost the Philpott’s
around a hundred dollars and a lot of prestige, and it
was a long time before the people on the church council
would listen to anything I brought up about money.
Flee fund-raisers!
Anybody have a story you could send me about a
fund-raiser?
Maybe someone had a good experience—tell me about
it.
How would you handle it if a person in the
congregation announced that he or she had the perfect
idea for a fund-raiser?