Summer Rerun–Youth Ministry on a budget
Money doesn’t grow on trees. It would be nice, and would make the attendance at our “rake-n-run” event much higher, but for most youth ministers our budgets are rather tight. In the past, I’ve had to make ministry bricks without straw because my budget was so microscopic. In one church, I had no official budget. I had to go hat in hand for everything and hope that it would be approved. At another, I got $100 a month. For both youth AND children. So I understand the budget constraints many of us are under. Its only gotten worse as the economy has sputtered along. From talking with many of my youth ministry friends, I’ve heard of budget cuts, freezes, and amputations. So, how can we do ministry on a small (or nonexistent) budget?
I am sure we’ve all been guilty of the last minute runs to the stores to find something we needed for an event. Before we look at how to save money, the easiest way to save money starts with yourself in the planning stages. Carefully planning ahead can often mean we find better deals, track down free stuff, or find something used. Better planning also means you have a good idea of how much you need, rather than just guesstimating. A few minutes looking around a month before an event or lesson could save you lots!
Here are some places I’ve found to help save my budget…
Free Online Resources
Resources such as lessons, games, and videos can quickly drain a small (or even a large) budget. Yet finding quality stuff is often very difficult. I’ve explored my share of websites, and while there are many good ones, here are a few that I highly recommend…
The Source for Youth Ministry – Games, forms, and movie clip ideas
Pastor2Youth – Lessons, games, and community
Life in Student Ministry – A variety of freebies each Friday
Simply Youth Ministry – Free lessons
Daily Devos – Free Daily Devotions that you can put on your facebook, website, or email to students
Buy Online
The best thing for a budget are websites like Ebay, Craigslist, Amazon, and Half.com. For example, I was looking to upgrade our youth room. I really wanted some XBoxes, a projector, and some other decorations. At the store, it was way out of my budget. But by searching online, I was able to deck out the youth room at surprising savings.
Donations
People in your church have stuff just sitting in their basement that they would love to get off their hands. You just need to find them! Before you go shopping, see if you can’t get donations from people at the church. In the past, I’ve got couches, chairs, TVs, VCRs (WIN!), DVD players, computers, Xboxes, Playstations, games, books, sports equipment, Ping Pong Table, Air Hockey Table, foosball table, etc.
Free Software
Software can be pretty expensive. If you deck your computer out with the latest operating system, office software, video editing, picture editing, etc you’ll quickly be broke. The good news is that you can get ALMOST any software you need free or open source.
Office Software – Google Docs, Microsoft Skydrive
Operating System – Linux (for the brave), Jolicloud (for those with older laptops or netbooks)
Video Editing – Windows Movie Maker, iMovie
Picture Editing – GIMP
Online Storage – Google (7 GB), Microsoft Skydrive (25 GB), Dropbox (2 GB)
Email – Mozilla Thunderbird
Calendar – Google Calendar
Website – WordPress
These are the ones I tend to use frequently, although if you search hard enough you can find freebies for anything you need. A word of warning, though – sometimes (not always, definitely not in the list I gave you) free software requires a bit of technical knowledge or a fair bit of googling. If you want more free software, check out this post that links you to 196 free software programs.
Free Youth Tracking
This has been one of my biggest headaches as a youth minister has been trying to find a good tracking software for cheap. Most of the free ones are junk, while the ones that cost are worth the money (generally) but if you’re on a budget they can eat up a good chunk of it quickly. The best option I’ve found is creating your own. Use Microsoft Excel or Google Docs Spreadsheet to create an address list and program check-in. You can then set up student profile sheets in word or Google Docs, and link to them in the spreadsheet. If you want a free check-in sheet, check out my article here on setting up your own computerized checkin.
Volunteer Training
You need to be training your volunteers, but if you don’t have a budget you can’t exactly take them to a conference. So, be creative. First of all, I recommend purchasing Doug Fields’ “Youth Leader Training on the Go.” With that book, you get training pages that will last 52 weeks, 12 MP3 files of training, and 12 prewritten email encouragements. You either have 1 year of training, or you could spread it out more like I do and give yourself years of training material.
Also, there are tons of podcasts and online training programs that you can get for free. You can also check out different blogs that have great thoughts or challenging ideas for you to use to train your volunteers.
If you’re looking to maximize your ministry budget, these ideas are a good place to start. You can also check out a post I wrote last year on budgeting. How do you stretch your budget? Share your ideas with us to help us out.
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