All buildings need maintenance and this includes churches. In the past, it was not so much of a difficulty as it is today, because the congregations were larger, so if everybody chipped in, the maintenance could be done.

These days, the congregations are smaller,so donations have to be higher. The price of maintenance has also gone up substantially. One of the main methods of topping up the maintenance fund is by fund raising, which involves holding fund-raising events.

It seems that each charitable organization is having the same difficulty, because in an average sized town, there are frequently a dozen fund-raising events every Saturday and Sunday. There are church fund-raisers, scout and youth club fund-raisers, school, YMCA and Women’s Institute fund raisers all battling to be the prime event of the weekend.

This amount of competition makes it difficult to choose which type of event to hold. In this piece, we will take a look at some of the most popular kinds of fund-raising events – maybe the kinds of events that will raise the most money for your charity’s building or your favourite good cause.

You could distribute catalogue order books. Some catalogue order books are non profit-making, which means that the catalogue firm does not make a profit so that your church can. These catalogues are mostly accessible only to churches, but some schools run them too. If you do not want to step on anybody’s toes, you could run your church’s catalogue only during the school’s summer vacations.

You could hold cookie dough sales. If every household in the congregation donated two pounds of cookie dough, the kids could go out and sell it on Saturday and Sunday mornings. This works well a few days before a big holiday like Thanksgiving or Independence Day. it also works quite well throughout the summer.

You could give a dinner dance with guest speakers. The dinner could also have a theme – a different one (or none) every time, until you find the most popular: Barn Dance, Viennese, Cajun, Gypsy et cetera. The food would match the theme and so would the music. The speaker must not be the vicar or the charity’s president, but should be someone off the guest speaking circuit – someone who can bring the house down with humorous anecdotes and stories.

Do not make them cheap, aim to double your money and invite local business to purchase a table of six or eight for their star employees and customers. If you go down this path, you could also organize a boxing event with dinner jackets and a five course meal.

Ask the local amateur boxing club to help set up a series of bouts with a neighbouring town and offer them 20% or whatever. They may do it free for the free publicity or they could hold the raffle (the prize could be the winner’s boxing gloves signed by all the contestants).

You could hold a day out with a difference. You could have a travelling fair put up its rides (but pay a rent for the privilege) and you could have stalls and small ‘cafes’. You could hire a bouncy house for kids to go moonwalking (and charge for it), but what would make it a lot different would be if the local amateur dramatic society put on a suitable play for you.

I do not what you would call suitable: it could be a classic, a comedy or even a pantomime, but obviously you would have to give them time to learn their lines, so you would have to plan well in advance. They hold outdoor plays like this in rural Thailand and they empty villages for miles around.