In early 2019, IMG selected 6 employees to take a once in a lifetime corporate service trip to Sacapulas, Guatemala.
I had the pleasure of being the group lead for our trip with School the World, which is an organization that focuses on building schools for communities in Guatemala and Honduras. The program allows companies not only to invest in new opportunities for their employees, but also to support their mission: to provide access to quality education for those living in the rural areas of Central America.
Fundraising for Mission Trips
As with most service or mission trips, we needed to raise some funds to assist in paying for our trip. Oftentimes fundraising is a daunting task. Here are some fundraising events and ideas our group utilized to hit our fundraising goal in three months. We planned many events, started early, and had a lot of fun along the way.
- Friends and Family
Start with reaching out to your friends and family. They have the strongest emotional ties to you and will want to invest in your journey. Social media is a friendly way to challenge your friends from all over the world to donate and it can be done entirely online. We accepted donations through the ‘Classy’ platform online It was fun to track everyone’s progress and success.
- 50/50 Raffle
This was one of our most successful fundraisers. A 50/50 raffle is when the winner wins 50% of whatever is in the pot, and then the other 50% goes back to the organization. We decided to host this giveaway before our company’s annual Labor Day picnic. Pro tip: price your tickets appropriately so you won’t have to carry much change. We priced ours at $1/1 ticket or $5/6 tickets. We sold over $800 in tickets! I'd also recommend buying a ticket or two for yourself in case you happen to win. Crazy enough, I entered with one ticket, and my boss happened to pick mine as the winning ticket. I was able to donate the entire pot back to the group! We also chose the 50/50 raffle as our first event as it was a fun way to get the conversation started throughout our organization.
- Donut Days
Who doesn’t love donuts? Almost every city has at least one 'incredible' donut shop, so choose the best your city has to offer. We went out and purchased several boxes of Long's Donuts and then sold them in the lobby of our office for a little more money than what we paid. Make sure that if you are paying $1 per donut, that you charge $2 or more to make your money back. People will generally pay for the convenience and it’s for a good cause. It was a huge hit, so we ended up hosting several donut days.
- Chili Cook-off
This was one of my personal favorites. We required all of the participating School the World attendees (6) to bring in slow cookers filled with their best chili recipes. We also allowed anyone in the entire company to bring in chili and did not charge any fees for participating. When the day came, we charged $5 for a bowl of chili, or $1 for a Dixie cup for tasting. Everyone came ready to compete and very hungry! If you do not have many participants, I encourage you to bring multiple chilis. Pinterest is a great resource for chili recipes.
After all of these events, we were able to meet our goal and help an amazing organization and community. Happy fundraising!