There are still a few weeks to go before the Vacation Bible School season kicks off, so if you're looking for some quick promotional ideas to generate buzz, here's one my church is trying.
The great thing about this idea, which our Christian education director found online, is that it provides publicity for your VBS throughout the neighborhoods near your church AND it helps raise money. You can't beat that.
It basically costs about $120. It also requires the creation of a sturdy sign, some time developing its promotion at your church (for a sample video our church made, see below), and a group of volunteers to help see it through during the course of a few weeks.
It goes like this: You purchase 20 or more plastic, bright-pink lawn flamingos (you can find them through an internet search using "plastic flamingos" as your keywords). And you construct a wooden, sandwich board sign promoting your church's VBS–the dates, the location, and the theme, plus a holder with flyers people can take with them.
Then the fun begins.
At your next Sunday worship service, you announce that an unsuspecting member will awaken the next morning to find the flamingos gracing their front yard, along with the sign. In order to have them removed, they have to pay $10 toward the VBS program and designate the next yard for the flamingos and sign to visit. Then that family has to pay $10 and pick another yard. And so on.
This naturally moves your promotion throughout neighborhoods in your area. It also becomes a well-meaning prank for attenders of your church to play on each other. And the money raised goes directly into your VBS coffers to help pay for supplies or cover the costs of attenders whose parents can't afford to pay.
My church announced the program a couple of Sundays ago using this stop-motion video it created. But even if you don't have this capability, a clever announcement during the worship service will do the trick.
To pull this off, the VBS committee recruited five "wranglers," who agree to relocate the goods when instructed. It also involves a volunteer who puts together a tracking map in the church's lobby to show where the flamingos have traveled, and who collects the money each week through an envelope left with the map.
Understandably, not every church member wants the flamingos in their yard. Not to worry: They can buy "flamingo insurance" for $20 in exchange for a guarantee their yard won't get hit. At our church, 10 families already did this, meaning we already more than covered our cost, and now are raising money toward the VBS.
I pray this idea helps you with VBS or other programs you're hoping to promote in the community. If you've got a creative idea for promotions, please share them on our CT Pastors Facebook page.
