Church fundraising is a great way to earn extra money for your church while also building a strong community. Church fundraising provides an effective way to reach out to the community for contributions as well as to spread the word about your organization. There are so many different types of fundraising that choosing the right one for your Church can be a difficult task. In this article we will look at fundraising and the different types. We will also look at how you can make your fundraiser better by accepting credit and debit card donations.

Church Fundraiser Types

Direct Sales Fundraiser Your Church Group gets an inventory of fundraising products to be sold by your volunteers. The item is provided to your volunteers who sell the item, deliver it, and collect payment, usually in one trip.

Brochure Sales Fundraiser This is also called Brochure Sales. Your Church Group volunteers are each provided a fundraising brochure to show potential donators and an order form. Donators select products from the brochure and record the order on the order form. Once your members are done, all order forms are tallied and sent to the fundraising company which ships the products to the contact person for your group fundraiser. Your members and volunteers then deliver the products to your supporters.

On-line Fundraiser On-line fundraising is usually handled in one of two ways. In the first, a personalized website for your church is created. You encourage donators to purchase products or services from that site and you receive a percentage of sales. The second way is to have a coded link on your Church's website that will take the visitor to a personalized page on a company's product site. Again, you encourage supporters to make donations through the coded link and your group receives a percentage of the sales.

Special Event Fundraiser These types of fundraisers usually consist of setting up an event and inviting people to participate. Events such as dinners, plays, car washes, raffles, and auctions are common but there are lots more to consider.

Accepting Debit and Credit Card donations

Once you've setup your church fundraiser, you can ask for donations through written letters, on your website, by email, or in flyers and newsletters. Make sure to include good instructions on how donations can be made. Contributions could be a weekly offering, monthly withdrawal or a one-time donation, depending on the member's choice.

To really streamline the process you could offer your contributors the ability to donate to the fundraiser using their credit card or debit card. This would allow them to easily make a donation without the hassle of dealing with cash. A lot of people don't carry cash anymore because it isn't convenient. Instead they carry credit cards and debit cards.

To accept credit cards donations you would need a way to process credit cards. There are lots of options including point of sale terminals, and online payment processing gateways.

In this article we talked about the different types of church fundraising and also how to make it easy for people to contribute with their credit card and debit card.

This article was written by Todd Nelson, Marketing Director for Capital Merchant Solutions, Inc (www.holyprocessing.com). CMS has been in the merchant account business for nearly 10 years, and offers free merchant accounts to both online and retail businesses. This article may be republished as long as absolutely no changes are made, and the resource box is included. Copyright 2007 - Capital merchant Solutions, Inc. - All rights reserved.