Church Cookbooks -
Boosting Your Church Funds

A Church Cookbook Fundraiser is a fantastic way to boost your Churches funds and raise awareness at the same time! (Photo by Debra Roby / Flickr)

Fundraising with Church Cookbooks is not necessarily simple, but it is a very effective and enjoyable fundraiser for your Church to hold.

Other then boosting your funds, this fundraiser will benefit you Church in a few other ways...

It will get your membership involved on a few different levels. And involvement always grows spirit in an organization.
And it will also promote and raise awareness for you Church and Cause long after you have finished your fundraiser. How?

Whenever someone uses your Cookbook, or shows a friend a recipe, or lends the Cookbook out; your Church gets exposure! How cool is that!

So would I recommend this fundraiser for a Church to run...? Absolutely!

And how do you make it successful? By doing two things properly:

By making it as appealing to people as possible.
And by promoting it effectively!

Let's take a look...

Creating Your Church Cookbooks:

Your first step will be to design and make your Church Cookbooks. This is the longer task but the one that should be quite fun doing!

Of course like any fundraiser it's going to take a bit of work and effort to do properly.

Here are the steps you need to take when making your Church Cookbooks...

Decide On A Theme:

A Specific theme for your cookbook will make it unique and special. It will make it more appealing than a general cookbook!

So pick a theme of foods that would be of high interest to your supporters and members. The themes could be Desserts, Foreign Dishes, Healthy Snacks, etc., etc.

Try be as creative as possible (within reason)!

Find Your Recipes:

The next step will be to find recipes that fit your theme. This is where your members will get involved.

Send out a request to all your members to enter in their best recipes for your specific theme.

You should then review the recipes sent in and pick the ones you want for your cookbook. Make sure you have a decent variety.

A really great idea would be...

...To hold a Taste Test Fundraiser to help decide what recipes to use. People can vote for the best recipes (dishes) that they think should be in the cookbook.

A Taste Test Fundraiser is the perfect fundraising event to boost your Church Cookbook awareness and sales. (Photo by Visitnola, New Orleans / Flickr)

This will also be a great way of promoting your cookbooks and for taking pre-release orders or sales! Not to mention another great event for raising funds!

Find A Publisher:

Your next step will be to find someone to publish your cookbook, or to decide to publish it yourself.

For US churches a great option would be the fundraising cookbooks from Family Cookbooks. If you are not from the US then I'd suggest you use a Google Search below to find a publisher in your local area...

Regardless of whether you use a company or publish it yourself, you should grab a copy of 'Write a Cookbook' by Ron Douglas as well as Cookbook Secrets.

They'll provide you with all the right advice you need to get your Cookbook designed, published and sold properly!

Decide On Design:

You will either discuss with the publishing company or with your fundraising team about what design you will use for your book.

Be creative about it, but keep it simple and relatable to both your theme and your organization.

Find Advertisers:

Other than the sales of your Cookbook you will also raise funds through advertising in your cookbook.

Get local businesses and companies to advertise throughout your Cookbook.

A great idea would be to have a Recipe sponsor for each recipe. The company who sponsors that recipe will get advertising on that recipe page and also a small write up.

It's a brilliant way of raising those extra funds for you, and will be great exposure for those companies for years to come!

Take Pre-Release Orders/Sales:

This is an easy way of getting around your capital outlay costs of publishing the cookbook.

The best way to get this ball rolling is when you hold a Taste Test Fundraiser.

Publish Your Church Cookbooks

And finally your last step will be to publish the cookbooks!

Promoting Your Fundraising Cookbooks:

The promotions of your Church Cookbooks will start when you send out your requests for recipes.

From that simple exercise you will raise such brilliant awareness and the word will immediately begin to spread.

Church Cookbook Fundraiser! A really rewarding fundraising campaign for any congregation! (Photo by Natalie / Flickr)

From there, if you hold a Taste Test Fundraiser you will obviously promote that, which in turn will promote your Cookbook.

The Word of Mouth promotions from those two exercises will be phenomenal and should spread the word far and wide.

But remember that the more who know about your Cookbooks, the more who will buy your Cookbooks, therefore the more funds that you will raise.

So, right from the beginning...

When you first start finding recipes, you should start promoting your fundraiser through the methods below...

Announce about your Church Cookbooks at all congregations and sermons.
Have an announcement in all your literature, like your printed order of proceedings sheets, etc.
Post about it on your Church Website, and promote it off all your Social Media accounts. Encourage your supporters to do the same!
Ask the businesses that have sponsored and advertised on your Cookbook to promote it to all their employees and customers. Give them flyers to hand out and posters to hang up!
Post posters on your notice boards and on local community news boards.
Contact other Churches in your area or state, telling them about your Cookbook and asking them to promote it to their congregations!
When your Church Cookbook is published, write up a Press Release and send it to all your local media and newspapers! You can also post that press release on a whole stack of Online Press release sites!
And always ask all your members and supporters to spread the word further by telling all their friends and family!

You should also consider selling your Cookbook online through your Church website and on eBay. This will also help with further promoting of your fundraiser!