Today, we will be hearing from You… The I love Kidmin community! The I love Kidmin community was created to provide specialized support and because we can all be the expert guide to help get the answers to our ministry questions. So today our expert guide is you. Ryan, you posted recently asking for advice on how to stretch your budget dollars, so let’s take a look at these posts and see what our expert guides in the I love Kidmin community have to say! Amy-Beth Vasconcelos Ask for donations Hahahahah
Lisa Marie Durrance We have a great church family who will donate what we need. We shop at the dollar tree alot and reuse materials. We share a lot of materials and write some of our own curriculum
Peter Stow We try to reevaluate what we’ve always done, a few examples would be we switched our candy order distributer and saved a bunch of money. We found a shirt guy from our church who gave us a much better price on shirts compared to the company we were using previously. And lastly every year for the last day of VBS we had the snow cone truck come and each kid got a snow cone. This year I bought frozen icee pops from Sam’s club instead of the snow cones and saved a bunch of money there too. So I would say, look for the better deals, and contracts that save you money on the things you order all the time.
Melody Brown Foster
When I do a BIG shop, I ask the store manager or owner for a discount/donation. They are often very eager to offer their support. Over the years, I've built many strong relationships within our community just by stopping in, engaging in conversation and always remembering to say thank you no matter what size the contribution was.
Jack Henry
Lots of donations. People will give if they know the need. be creative as well when asking. We always try to re-use things we have used before. If something is on sale I usually buy more than 1. We have a class of ladies that can make costumes for plays and such. Sewing class. Most of the time they will donate the materials. Get parents on board in ministry. They will invest just like they do in school.
Kristen Cowman Varagesale for toys, and we for our camps we do a collection bin. We put out the items we want on thematical papers and then the congregation can grab them and bring in the items on the requested day.
Amy Goble Store things well! That helps us a lot! Instead of ripping stuff of the walls (which is what I want to do) I slow down and learned you can re-use a lot of sets/foamboard, etc. And I organized my closet! If you can find it - you can use it. If you can't find it - you can't use it. We've saved a lot of money from just labeling well and knowing where the blue tablecloths are stored instead of having to repurchase anything. :-)
Tracey Joy Think outside of the box and get creative by reusing things you have around the house. We made a suit of armor using a small satellite dish as the shield, a bike helmet as the helmet, and ski boots as the shoes. Altered each a bit and with some paint and added decorations we have been able to reuse it for years. Also if you need to buy cheap things to alter into props Goodwill is a great place to find treasures like this as well.
Angela Sangalang I "shop" inside our church for set design elements or props, reimagining things in new ways and borrowing what we need. Also, I write our curriculum but reuse crafts & activities from previously bought curriculum/VBS. And of course, ask for donations.
Jeana Skeen Carter Rummage sales, FB marketplace. Dollar Tree
Cathy Rice Mattingly We recycle VBS teaching materials and decorations, by collecting these resources from churches that have finished their VBS. I collect from 3 churches because you don't know if you will get everything from 1 church. Then after our VBS we have 2 churches that come and get all the decorations to use at their churches. It really helps with cleanup! We save about $1000 per year doing this.
Patty Miller Patterson Partner, partner, partner with other churches!!! I agree with Cathy Rice Mattingly!
Abby Martin Mitzelfelt We are going all digital with The Gospel Project. This will save us even with printing out guides for our leaders.
Wendy Lafoon Hicks Always ask - friends, church family, stores, business owners - you never know till you ask.
Be prepared - needed peeps for vbs bought them after Easter.
Dena Schulte Hopkins I used Amazon prime for free shipping, earn points, and then use the points to shop. Then I turn in reimbursements. I also will call when placing an order and ask if there's a code I can use, if I don't already have one. I also network with other churches to share and borrow items.
Jennifer Abercrombie Since cash flow changes so often, I like to prepare for the tight times by buying gift cards with left over budget at the end of the year.
Emily Henry I ALWAYS check the dollar store first. But I frequent FiveBelow, thrift stores, and garage sales, and any clearance aisles!
Also, reuse reuse reuse!
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