- Send out a request form in the church bulletin so that people can sponsor a child to go to camp. Ask the sponsor to include a donation in the envelope with the name of the child.
- Get a member of your AOTS club to stand up in front of the congregation to ask for support by way of names of children and donations and tell them that a member of your AOTS club will be set up in the lobby to accept donations for the next two Sundays.
- Send a letter, call or present to service clubs in the community or other church groups to ask for names of children as well as funding for the project. (Sample Letter) In your presentation or introduction letter please include a thank you letter from one of the children you sent to camp the year before or the one I have included. You may find that many of them are looking for a youth related project.
- Be sure to invite a representative of the Service Club back to the pot-luck dinner to be thanked formally in front of the children and their families. With your invitation to the pot-luck dinner send a letter of thanks, along with a copy of a children’s letter that was sent that summer. (Sample Letter)
- Call the parents of the child and tell them that their child has been chosen to be sponsored in full to spend one week at your local United Church camp. Also make sure that you ask if they are willing to make a donation to the project to allow more children to go. Suggest that the child might feel like raising some of the money him/herself by way of a garage sale or saving part of their allowance. You might find that there is no money and some families could raise a good portion of the money. The important thing is to introduce the project and help where it is needed, not to fund all of the money.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
The 5 Steps to Success
The object of the project is not to finance the children, we are hoping the club will spend more time in finding the children that would benefit the most from this experience. Try to find a child outside of the church community and you will soon see the ways that introducing children to Christianity will help benefit the community, the Church and the AOTS club. If you find the children the money will come.
