Some churches budget thousands of dollars for their annual Vacation Bible School program. But many smaller churches struggle to find the resources to support VBS. Here are some ideas for doing your Vacation Bible School without a lot of money.
Partner With Another Church’s VBS
Sometimes the best use of VBS money is to partner with another church (or churches) in your town to do a “Community Vacation Bible School.” There are some downsides to this in terms of safety and specific evangelistic outreach, but good planning can overcome those issues. The added challenges in planning will require a good director who can work with a team to pull it off.
Reuse Curriculum From Another Church’s VBS
Why not ask a church if you can use their materials after Bible school is over? This can work very well if you plan your VBS in July, while their’s is in June. If you have time, go and volunteer at their Bible school to see hands on how the program works. Our church makes plans to pass on our materials every year. It’s become a tradition to count how many churches get to use our props and curriculum.
Plan Easy Crafts
Aside from curriculum, craft supplies can be a major expense. If you keep the crafts minimal there is a potential to save. Don’t be too cheap, but skip the expensive craft kits that some of the publishers sell.
Ask For Simple Snack Donations
In most cases, you shouldn’t have to budget for snacks. Ask volunteers or church members to donate paper goods, cookies and other durable snacks. Even drink mixed can be donated by VBS supporters or local businesses. Kids love snacks, and usually are just happy with simple and inexpensive options.
Find A Donor To Underwrite VBS
If the church budget can’t cover the expenses, look for individual donors or business to sponsor your vacation Bible school. A few hundred dollars can make a huge difference to make your Bible school a success. Make sure you thank them publicly (if they don’t mind) and send a thank you card signed by the kids.
Another option would be to have the church take a special offering for Vacation Bible school. This may be effective in smaller churches that don’t have an annual budget. Pastoral support is essential to make this happen, so be sure your minister understands how important proper funding is for running Bible school.
Only Buy The Minimum VBS Elements
Most VBS programs allow you to buy a starter kit and then optional components separately. Often you can get by without all the fancy extras. This is something to look for when you choose a curriculum. Some require materials for every learner, while others let you make do with only the teacher’s guides. I still struggle to spend money on buying the themed t-shirts. Fortunately, our craft people have the children make custom shirts. These are about 1/3 the price and have more keepsake value for the families.
Ask For More Budget Next Year
It may be too late for this year, but why not ask for a budget increase next year? Even in small churches, the people will recognize VBS as the flagship program for children’s outreach. As soon as Bible school is over, draft a budget for the next year and take it to the pastor and finance people. The timing is important because VBS is often just a memory by the Fall when the budget committee crunches their numbers. If you can get them to agree in theory that more money would help, then it should make budget process easier when the time actually comes.
How does your church save money?
Our church is very generous toward the children’s ministry and give above what we need. So if you have more ideas to share I would love to hear them. If you have experience running VBS on a small budget, leave a comment below.
Related Posts
- My Vacation Bible School Curriculum Reviews (you might also consider one of the smaller publishers linked from the bottom of that page they typically are less expensive and geared toward smaller churches)
- How To Choose A Vacation Bible School Curriculum
- Off site link: Compare VBS Prices at Family Christian Stores
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8 or 9 years ago I led the children’s ministry in a church plant in the poorest county in New Mexico, USA. While per-capita giving was high and children were a priority we still had to do VBS on a shoestring.
One thing that helped was that the children’s leadership made it into a competition to see how small an amount we could spend without making the program suffer. The two years that I co-planned the program we managed to do a highly popular program, with unusually high evangelistic results for under $200.
The secret was that we made up our program from scratch and used the resources that we had on hand as much as possible. One example of this was when we made bricks the same way the Israelites did in Egypt. All we needed was dirt with a high clay content (plentiful in NM!), some straw like weeds that grew there, water, a kiddy pool to put it all in and the kids feet (we warned the parents the day before!). It was extremely popular and cost a whopping $0! (Well, I guess there was a small expense for printing the letter telling the parents to dress in their kids in clothes that can get muddy.)
One year I helped at a large children’s outreach and was donated a lot of extra craft supplies (which certainly helped). Just some thoughts.
We have one woman who collects business donations. While we do have it budgeted, it doesn’t help if the money is not giving:) For the past several years we’ve done a sponser a child campaign where work out what it would cost for one child to attend VBS and then people in the church sponser a child to help cover the cost.
-Janine
christianparenting.today.com
Janines last blog post..Proud Mama of Caring Boys
We did this for our vbs, and our church family gave enough last summer to help us get through this year, as well. God does provide for the leaner times! When they realized how much vbs actually costs per child/per day, they were eager to help. Those who couldn’t volunteer to work in vbs told me they were happy they had a way of helping by sponsoring children through this donation—a ‘win/win’ situation, for sure!
Could you please suggest if any agency or church is ready to sponsor a VBS program this summer for a group in India?…we run a mission and seek financial assistance for different projects and so we look forward to get help to organize a VBS camp this summer for children around…who hardly get good study material.
Thanks
Our 2008 VBS was the first VBS that our church has ever had in the history of our church. And I was blessed to be the director. God gave me a vision last year and a burden for the kids so I decided to get started right away.
What I did was I had a candle fundraiser through Home Interior. They donate 50% of what you sell to your organization. That was a big help since this was our first year and we had tons of things that had to be bought! Then after that we had a couple of bake sales and then we had the “adopt a VBS kid”. We had about 25 people in the congregation to adopt a kid for $5.00. Doesn’t seem like much, but it sure helped.
This year, I’m not quite sure what we will be doing but I do know that I have got to get started. God has blessed my church and I and now we want to bless someone else.
Best Wishes and happy VBS!
Denise
In reference to the borrowing of another church’s VBS curriculum: are you sure that this is legal under copyright laws? It is my understanding that a church purchases a non-transferable license when they buy the curriculum. While they could reuse it, another church cannot use it, because the holder neither controls or is using the material once it is donated or sold for a nominal price. I would caution churches from using this unless someone has a release from the curriculum publisher.
I am a Christian Filipino, i am now belong to one of the outreach of Living Word Christian Ministry here. I and our Pastor’s wife (Norma) have suppose to conduct a dvbs in our church, yet it’s too late for us to do it. We both agreed that we’ll do it next year, at the same time i read today (april 23, 2009) what you have suggested from your website. I find your website very helpful to me since this is the first time for me to conduct a dvbs, though many times i was a helper of this event. Your tips, “How To Do Vacation Bible School On A Tiny Budget”, confirmed and agrees to our plan.
Thank You and GOD BLESS YOU AND YOUR CHURCH!
It sounds like a wonderful ministry, thanks for sharing your comment.
i’m a member of Heavenly Way Baptist Church in Griffin, Georgia we are a very small church. we don’t have vacation bible school and it’s been on my mind to find out what you need to start aVSB. I thank you for the help you have shown me from your sight. and i will carry this imformation back to my Pastor. I would like to see the kids at my church have a vacation bible school and hope we can get the money and teachers to have one. Thanks again for your ideals and help.
I direct VBS each year our church has a budget of 2000 for VBS…. and I have managed to stay within or under budget the last few years. One way we did this is our local sports store prints all of our tshirts for 6 $ a shirt… we take a donation on the xtra tshirts that we sell… each child gets a tshirt as a gift… it gets the word out and you see kids wearing these shirts year after year… adults also buy the shirts and wear them out about town. We don’t purchase any other “gift” or certificate which cuts down on cost… We also don’t purchase the books that go along with the vbs… we do a more hands on activity I love the VBS that we are doing this year … rather sad that it ends tonight.
We have a church that donates all their decor and materials to us after they use it. We then pass it on to others. The curriculum/decor from last year has been used by at least 10 churches so far!
At our annual CM workshop this year we had a class on doing a “One Day VBS.” The CM director who taught the class told us they used to have VBS all week, but they had a hard time getting volunteers. Then they had it in the evening. Tried a 3 day instead of 5, and for the last several years have had a Saturday only VBS.
It is very successful, and they do it at a different time than all the other churches in town do their VBS.
Crafts are one of the most expensive parts of VBS. I encourage you to keep this in mind when looking for craft ideas. Be sure it is something the children will want ot take home and keep. Otherwise it will be left at church or in the parking lot.