We asked three youth workers how they cut expenses on retreats and mission trips. Here’s what they said:
Rachel Blom: This is one area where I’ve found Europe tends to differ from the US. For my students, a few things were really important on a retreat: food, snacks, and relative comfort (beds, temperature, that sort of thing). We rarely spent much on entertainment for instance, or expensive games, graphics, stuff like that. We bought enough food (most of the time, you have to cook yourselves in Europe – full catering is rare and very expensive), provided the teens with plenty of snacks, and made sure we booked a place that was relatively comfortable (clean, warm, enough showers). Anything more than that was a luxury. One weekend we went ‘unplugged’ for everything and kept it as simple as possible; we cooked home-style dinners, had acoustic worship, even had breakfast outside in the woods. It was one of our best weekends ever.
Jeff Tilson: I am very fortunate to work for a church that discourages event fundraising. Why tap the resources of the congregation for your trip when they should be giving to the general operating budget? When they give to the church at large, the funding needs for your ministry and others are met. On a practical cost-saving note, I would add that it has been beneficial to utilize the generosity of people around us to use their trailer for the weekend to haul luggage or to camp on their land in the country for little to no cost.
Morgan Schmidt: One fundraising strategy I’ve used is to invite members of our church community to contribute directly to specific “perks” on the trip: “this ice cream stop is brought to you with love from the Smiths!” or “laser tag is sponsored by the Jones family!” Just make sure to send thank you notes! We always stay at a host church from our denomination, and often the community there is more than thrilled to provide a meal or two for our group while we stay. Beyond that, I think we often over-estimate what teenagers require to be entertained – I find that when I create space, they find creative ways to fill it! This allows them something they don’t often get in the course of their life at home – time and space to simply be, and imagine, and engage with each other. The last retreat I splurged and got a new outdoor volleyball set-up and had a bunch of campfire games planned – we didn’t use anything I brought to entertain them, they were happy to invent games on their own!
