Fundraising with Your Group

Your cookery group presents a marvellous opportunity to raise funds, for yourselves or for a worthy cause. Unite your cookery skills to bring better food to your community, hold a formal dinner-dance, or auction your delicious themed dinners. Let the funds begin!

Book a Stall or Hold a Fete

A stall at our village market costs just £5, so the profit margin is potentially very high! If you have community markets, village fetes or church events in your local area, there is probably a good opportunity for your group to raise funds.

What should you sell? Focus on items that you can prepare in bulk; like pies, jams, syrups and cupcakes and divide your loot between take-home snacks (cookies, cupcakes, larger family cakes) and pantry consumables (jams, jellies, roasted nuts). Wrap things in cellophane and ribbon to make them appealing.

To make even more money, think of ingredients you can find for free, such as blackberries, elderflowers, rosehips, apples, and chestnuts and create countryside jams, syrups, cordials, pies and snacks!

Host Your Own Ball

How often do you get the chance to dress up in a gown and dance the night away? Not often enough. If there's a village or community hall nearby, why not hold a formal dinner-dance? Your Cookery Group members can plan and manage the catering, so you'll just need some volunteers to serve dinner, and a local DJ to play suitably sophisticated tunes.

It's easy to decorate the hall with garlands of natural foliage, foil stars, or simply romantic tealights. Print out posters advertising your bash, complete with a four-course menu, and sell tickets for £30 per head. Don't hold back, make it a swish affair!

Hold An Auction

No, you're not auctioning Betty to the single gentlemen, you're auctioning your cooking skills, of course! Decide on the date and location for your auction, and then invite people to provide the lots. Here are some of the things you could auction off:

Strawberry and Champagne Picnic Hamper: fresh berries and cream, chilled champagne and strawberry syrup, all served on a picnic rug in a local romantic location. Hamper to be delivered at date specified by buyer.
Indian Cookery Course: Instruction for 6 people in Indian cookery. To be hosted at the community hall. After the course, guests sit down and enjoy their meal while the tutors wash up and clear away!
Silver Service Dinner Party: A staff of 4 will arrive at buyer's premises with four courses of homemade cuisine, then serve and clear away for guests.
Children's Cookery Party: An afternoon of sausage-rolling and cookie-cutting for 15 children. Equipment, ingredients and tuition provided by cookery group members. Children make and eat their own party tea!

Publish Your Recipes

Nominate an editor (someone with a good grasp of grammar and a home computer) and collect all of the group's favourite recipes. Then print them, write an introduction, add illustrations by the group's children, and bind into books. Where can you sell them? Put them out at your market stall, advertise them in your school or church notices, or ask local shop-keepers and pubs to keep a pile on the counter.