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Fun Raising

By Becky Totterdell.

Parish priest in the Diocese of St Albans

and Ministry Today Board member

One of the mixed blessings of being a minister in the Church of England is the buildings that go with it. In my case one Church building predates the Norman Conquest, though the other goes back only to the fourteenth century. Another thing you soon find out about is 'the quinquennial inspection' (the statutory five-yearly prod and poke around the church building by the diocesan-approved architect to see how much masonry, tiling, buttressing, guttering, timbering, etc. he can find that needs replacing - preferably before the next quinquennial).

At St Mary's, Walkern, the quinquennial before I arrived revealed that we would need a new roof. In fact, anyone in the congregation could have told you that, as the churchwardens needed an impressive array of metal buckets which were carefully and strategically placed around the inside of church during any shower or storm, and on a Sunday provided a fairly deafening percussion accompaniment to the service as the drips landed from a height of fifty or sixty feet.

However, once the architect's sums were done, the dreadful truth dawned on us: £200,000 was needed for substantial replacement of the roof, so we would need to have a massive fund-raising campaign. Eleventh-century churches are not just places of worship, however. They are also 'Heritage' with a big H. About 60% of our £200,000 was therefore provided (eventually) by English Heritage grants, and we applied successfully to a number of other grant sources such as the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Historic Churches Trust. However, we still had a substantial amount to raise, and a village population of just 1200. So we formed a small team, made up of both church and non-church people, to dream up ways and means, and started with the publicity.

Publicity to the immediate village about the need

The local major landowner, who kindly chaired the 'fun-raising' team, drafted a leaflet about the church, pointing out its unique architectural merits, but focussing hard on the role it had played for centuries - and still did - at the heart of the life of the village. The leaflet was blunt, to the point, spelt out the need for cash and exactly how much, and asked people to give as generously as they could. The leaflets were delivered by church members to all the houses in the village. This was followed up just a fortnight or so later by a personal letter from the fun-raising chairman to about twenty 'wealthy' or 'suspected wealthy' local people, known personally to him. It was hard-hitting and arm-twisting, though polite!

The combined result of these two approaches was very impressive. The first cheque, for £500, arrived through my letterbox on the afternoon of the Sunday the leaflets went out. This was followed by a steady stream of very generous gifts from village people, and from those further afield with links to the church.

Fundraising begins with F-U-N

The fund-raising team soon discovered what nerve-racking, nail-biting fun it could be! Fun-raising is definitely the way to get the money coming in. Here are some of the things we tried; if there's something new to you here, you may like to tuck it away for future reference.

Sponsoring roof tiles - you sign your name on one or more 'tiles' drawn on a large sheet of tiles, and each sheet of tiles has a pre-determined 'prize-tile'. A bottle of wine, box of chocs, or something else materialises if you happen to sign this tile. The prize tile is not revealed, of course, until all the tiles on the sheet have been signed.

Giving away tubes of Smarties, with the challenge to return them filled with coins (£1 coins and 20p pieces fit especially well). We found that the elderly ladies were brilliant at this. Maybe it was because they particularly like Smarties, maybe it was because it was something they were able to do, but we had several Smartie-tube champions in their 80s who gave a sacrificial amount over the course of the months. Sainsbury's had initially provided us with 100 tubes of Smarties, after we had written to them suggesting they might like to.

Needing to keep up the momentum, we knuckled down to planning some serious fun for the village. We came up with a programme to cover six months, including the usual run of concerts and BBQs. The local Police Choir drew a large crowd to church, and made the most of their captive audience by giving out handy security and safety hints between items. We also aimed a couple of big fund-raising events away from the parishioners, in order to reach other pockets: a 'big prizes raffle', with tickets being sold further afield, and a golf tournament promoted by one of the village golfers. We also had the offer of organising some ferret racing, but that, interestingly, foundered at the committee stage on the gambling issue.

However, the two most memorable and successful events were the Teddy bears' sponsored bungee jump, and the shop.

On Mothering Sunday, following the family service, the Teddy bears' sponsored bungee jump was held. It was intended that they should jump from the church roof, but we couldn't find a safe place on the roof from which to launch them, so we settled for the priest's chamber instead. This is a little stone room above the church porch, which has a small window opening out above the church path. This proved ideal, and I was astonished at how popular this event proved to be. There was a queue from the road, up the church path to the church door for over an hour - not because they were waiting long, but because they just kept coming!

Once at the church porch, the teddies gave their names, paid an entry fee of £1, and then were taken in batches in a Sainsbury's basket up the spiral staircase inside church to the priest's chamber. One by one they appeared at the window, the little harness was put on, they were given a last pep talk, and then pushed out of the window, watched by the excited queue. Most bounced up and down very happily before being unharnessed by the safety officer waiting below; just a few who were a bit too heavy for the harness suffered slight concussion or had to have first-aid administered. Once unhitched, the teddies were given back to their proud owners, and were given certificates to commemorate their achievement. The owners were given a 'My teddy did the bungee jump' badge, and then took the teddies on into church where they found a whole array of teddy-related activities to keep them intrigued for about another hour. These included a teddy-bear hunt round church, teddy bear face-painting, teddy-bear biscuit decorating, making jointed teddy-bears, and so on. We were planning to have a teddy-bear's picnic, but it was just a bit too cold for that, and we found that teddies and owners had had enough excitement for one day by the end of the jump and the activities.

What was so brilliant about the day was seeing the church full and buzzing - full of children and families we had not seen inside before, all discovering what it looked like from the inside, and feeling at home, being interested, enjoying what they were doing, and all-in-all having a good experience of 'church'!

News of the bungee jump had been spread by leafleting all our regular families, but also via the village primary school, and sponsor forms had been out for some time. Many of the forms and the money were brought on the day, but when all were in we discovered the teddies and their owners had raised an astonishing £860.

The biggest single fun- and fund-raiser was the Raise the Roof shop. This was Bridget's brain-child. Bridget breezed into church on one of our sponsor-a-tile open afternoons (Sunday afternoons, with tea and cake), and commented that the butcher's shop in the village was closing. She knew the owner and wondered if I would consider approaching him to see if we could 'borrow' the premises to sell 'things' - anything, in fact, bric-a-brac. I had not envisaged going into the retail trade, but knowing Bridget to be a canny and enthusiastic manager (she had managed the hospice shop in a neighbouring town for some time), with lots of contacts in the village, I said I thought it was an excellent idea and I'd talk it over with the churchwardens and fun-raising team. The upshot was that the landlord offered to let us use it while he looked for a commercial tenant, for £5 a month, and that would be his contribution to the Raise the Roof Fund. He was happy for us to do what we liked with the inside in terms of decoration (necessary after its previous use!), and so Bridget very quickly got to work on finding all that we needed - carpet, tables, desk, etc - from willing donors, and over the course of a month people turned up to paint, decorate, lay carpet, put up shelves and generally make the place more user-friendly. Our local MP came to open the shop and from then on we had coverage in the local paper on almost a monthly basis.

People from the village who were by no means churchgoers were more than willing to volunteer to 'man' the shop on a rota basis, and over twenty women were regularly taking turns, doing three or four hours at a stretch in twos. I had no idea that bric-a-brac was so lucrative, but over the course of the seven months we ran the shop, it raised £11,000, and a new party-game emerged in the village: 'spot your old bric-a-brac in your neighbour's house'. Friday was home-made cakes and jams day, which was particularly popular. We ran an adverts board where people could pay to advertise their no-longer-needed washing machine, or their holiday home in Spain, or whatever. The spin-offs were surprising too. In particular it became quite a social centre for the older folk, who would drop in for a chat on their way to or from the post office, or just because they wanted to talk to someone. It also was a great way for those of us who were 'church' to work alongside our non-church volunteers, and relationships here were helped by fairly regular get-togethers for meals at the local pub (twenty at a sitting and good for local business!) or a glass of wine round at the Rectory.

When the landlord found a commercial tenant, everyone was very sorry! People really missed the shop (even though we do have a village grocery shop), in particular its social side. I realised, just too late, that we had proved we could afford the full rent - and asked the landlord to come back to us if the new venture foundered, because the PCC would certainly wish to consider taking it back on a commercial basis.

A year later, that is now the case because, unfortunately for the tenant, his venture did not work out. The PCC has agreed to underwrite a new bric-a-brac venture, this time with a view to making it a truly 'village' fundraiser, helping to raise funds for a variety of village concerns, not just for the church. The need for a drop-in centre of some sort, for young and old alike, became apparent over the course of the months the shop was open, and we hope now to be able to go on to convert one of the back rooms to a coffee shop and another to a community meeting room for craft groups and other meetings.

From roof timbers and the necessity for working together creatively over those months, God has opened our eyes to wider needs and has now given us another wonderful opportunity to create some long-term fun, with a very supportive landlord, an excellent and enthusiastic manager, and a highly motivated band of local volunteers. We'll see what we can make of it for the village as a whole.