Why is Thanksgiving a great time for your next fundraising event?
Because Thanksgiving is perhaps one of the busiest and most overplanned holidays of the fall season. As you anticipate a long weekend of feasting, family, and fun, an expected drop in temperature enters the scene. With it come cozy sweaters, mugs of hot apple cider, and any excuse to curl up on the couch with a blankie and heart-warming movie.
Let’s face it, as fall approaches, the desire to hibernate can take over. Suddenly, mom and dad are cozying up with a good book rather than zipping around town to buy the turkey, stuffing, bake a warm apple pie, and trim the house with pumpkins and other harvest adornments.
That’s why charity organizations can make the most of the holiday by offering Thanksgiving-themed fundraising efforts to take away from the heavy load so mom can finish that last chapter by the fire, instead of via a book on tape in the car on the way to pick up a can of cranberry sauce.
As you give thanks on this holiday, digesting your huge turkey dinner with your family and friends, try raising the topic of hunger awareness in the community and get your family involved in some charity work to help them realize how lucky they are. Here are a few of our favorite ways to give thanks this holiday season.
Turkey Soup Kitchen
Give thanks by supporting the less fortunate. Arrange to go as a family, before your big feast, to the local soup kitchen or food bank and help feed the hungry and homeless. The volunteer experience will help those close to you realize just how thankful they should be.
Thanksgiving Motorcycle Ride
Get the gang together for a motorcycle ride for charity. Most local churches, soup kitchens, and food banks already organize these annual events and have the pledge forms ready for you to start collecting.
Canned Food Drive
As you start planning your family feast this month, request that each member to bring a non-perishable can of food to Thanksgiving dinner. Alternatively, you could collect the funds as a group to donate to your local food bank or grocery store directly.
Football Funds
You already know that Thanksgiving not only celebrates family and food—it also celebrates football. As your Uncle Joe, Grandpa Jim, dad, and brothers wrestle for the best position on the couch, ask every relative watching the big game to donate a quarter or dollar each time their team loses a point to the opposing team. Or make it a 50/50 fundraising raffle, and ask each spectator for a donation and draw the winning ticket at the end of the game—retaining half the winnings for your Thanksgiving fundraising efforts.
Thanksgiving Family Walk
There’s nothing better to help digest that turkey and get the blood flowing after that HUGE Thanksgiving feast! Ask the family to help out the local United Way or Food Bank by volunteering to walk for charity. Circulate pledge forms during the weeks before Thanksgiving, asking people to donate a few dollars per mile. You’re only going to fall asleep on the couch if you don’t get moving anyway.
Thanksgiving Centerpiece Auction
Assemble a beautifully festive Thanksgiving table centerpiece, or multiple pieces, and offer the décor up for auction. You can auction off the table settings, cutlery, glass wear, serving wear, and even the festive gourds. Items will go to the highest bidder.
Other last-minute, easy Thanksgiving fundraisers include…
- A draw for a festive Thanksgiving basket
- Charity babysitting services for busy parents so they can run their errands for the big evening dinner
- Sell hand-print pumpkin, turkey, and fall leaf fridge magnets
- Bake up some delicious pumpkin sweets—pies, tarts, squares, cookies, and gingerbread
- Set up a spiced apple cider stand in your neighborhood—$2 a cup!
