Chris Storms

We have Club on Mondays starting the first Monday after Labor Day.  So, on the Sunday after Labor Day (the day before our first Club), we have our annual tradition of T-Shirts & Popsicles.

We do a simple shirt design trying to keep the cost below $7 and we charge $10 for them.

On the day of the event, we get a bunch of popsicles and some white car window paint.

The event takes place at our high school football stadium parking lot.  We set up shop so that kids can drive up, hold out the money out their window, and yell out their size & the popsicle flavor they’d like.  We have one leader throw the shirts in, one leader hand them their popsicles, and a couple leaders & kids write “Young Life Tonight” on the cars.

Usually, lots of our kids stay in the parking lot and spend time writing more on their cars as we hang out together.  In all, we usually are there for only 30 – 45 minutes.

The next day at school there are about 100 kids wearing Young Life shirts and dozens of cars in the parking lot advertising for Club.  And, we’ve made $300 that we use for Club expenses.

Do The Same Thing For Camp

We’ve done the same-type thing for camp.  Some years it works well and some years it doesn’t, depending on the number of kids who are pumped to go to summer camp.

If we feel like we have a large enough group that will be excited to be the first to turn in their money, we’ll publicize a “first day to turn in your deposit” event, similar to the T-shirts & Popsicles, where kids can drive up, turn in their form & deposit, and get some sort of something or other.  One year, we had nearly all our camp spots full by the end of January because we got so much momentum toward this event.