Start your Sunday School Store!

If you don’t already have a Sunday School store, allow me to humbly suggest that you at least think about setting one up.  It is a great way to expand on the excitement of your existing children’s ministry and to involve some of those members in the church that want to be involved in children’s ministry but may not want to actually teach.

A Sunday School store is like the redemption counter at a Chuck-E-Cheese or similar type of amusement establishment where a customer can redeem their dearly earned tickets for trinkets and treasures.  Instead of tickets however you would use Sunday School dollar customized specifically to YOUR church!

These dollars are given out for a myriad of reason to the attendees of your Sunday School or Children’s Church and make the entire experience more exciting.  We give away dollars for the following reasons:

• For just showing up
• For bringing their bible
• For bringing offering
• For wearing their Sunday School shirt (given after 4 consecutive weekly visits)
• For bringing a friend that hasn’t been before AND an extra one to the friend that just came
• As prizes or rewards for whatever activity you are currently doing!
• In pinatas or candy rains

Each and every dollar is not only a piece of currency but is also a tract and a custom invitation for whoever might happen across it, to visit your church.  We kind of, secretly, hope that these dollars become lost because who do you know walks past a dollar lying on the ground?  When someone sees one laying about, odds are high that they will pick it up and check it out.  On it you can have the following information and more:

• Your church name, address, phone number and website
• Your church & children’s ministry logos (if applicable)
• Acts 2:38 or other doctrinal verses letting everyone know what kind of church you are
• A phone number they can call to be picked up by the bus for Sunday School (if applicable)
• A statement saying something like: This currency is redeemable only at “your church name” Sunday School store

Besides using them as incentives in your classrooms, what better way to get kids to church?  Give these dollars away on outreach, put them in pinatas for your park outreaches, use them in your candy rains on the street, WHATEVER! Just make people want to come to your church to use them!

There are several questions that people have asked and I will do my best to answer as many of them as I can.

What kind of items do you sell in your store? EVERYTHING!  We want a child to be able to buy something if a single dollar if that is all they have, we want kids to learn the value of saving their money so we have big things in there as well and everything in between.  Whatever we can buy on sale or for a very good price that is wholesome.

Where do you buy your items?  Anywhere we can find a good deal.  We order occasionally from USToy.com whenever they have a good sale.  When on sale they are considerably less expensive than Oriental Trading.  I go under Categories > Bulk Novelties or under the Sale or Clearance sections.  We buy quite a bit from dollar stores such as 99 Cent Store or Dollar Tree.  We also buy a lot from Walmart and other such places right after big holidays such as Valentines Day, Easter, Halloween or Christmas.  The day after is just amazing as you can usually score big time!  We also try to let everyone in the church know that if they are ever out and about and see great deals to scoop them up and donate to Sunday School.  If they aren’t where they can donate, we will reimburse.

How do you determine your pricing?  This depends on how freely you give out your dollars.  If you are reasonably careful and try to make sure that all classes are giving the dollars away at the same rate, a general rule of thumb we have used is 5 to 1 (though this is not something we feel we always have to stick to… we may give an exception up or down on a particular item).  This means that if the full retail cost of an item is $1, in the store we would charge $5.  If the retail cost is $10 we would charge $50.  This means that an item that would sell for a single Sunday School dollar would need to be purchased for 20 cents or less.  Not too hard to do actually.

Whatever pricing you set, track what is bought and sold.  Make sure that you find out what your kids like and don’t like and adjust your pricing on the fly to match the demand.  We can’t keep chips on the shelf hardly but there are some toy items that have been there a LONG time so we have to lower the price to get rid of them and then avoid buying them in the future.

How much room do I need for this? It’s completely up to you and your particular setup.  If you have a small room to use exclusively for this, then GREAT!  Use it but make sure it can be locked up tight as the temptation can be rough on children.  If you don’t have much room, you can use a rolling cart that travels from class to class.  This takes up very little room and is mobile but you can’t have as many options available, especially the bigger items.

How often are the kids allowed to spend their money? We have done a couple of things.  When we were split into 6 different classes we would allow each class to attend the store every third week and also for a few minutes before and after classes.  This meant that two classes would have exclusive access to the store each week and the others could only go immediately before or after clas.  Now that we have gone to a children’s church style, we only do before and after class but try to allocate more time afterward to make sure everyone gets to spend their accumulated money.

Do you hang onto the kids’ money for them? Except for our 3&4 year old class, no.  As I mentioned before, lost money is an invitation to someone else to come to church.  Worst case, if a child is upset about losing money, I usually replace it (unless it is a ludicrous amount).

How can I make dollars specific to our church?  I can help you here. Here is a link for the front and the back of what we use for our dollar along with a sheet of these same dollars.  

• Front of dollar
• Back of dollar
• Full page front of dollar
• Full page back of dollar

You can edit them in Photoshop to add your information.  HOWEVER, if you do not have Photoshop or access to the same or similar software, I would be happy to put your church’s information here at no charge.  Just email your church’s name, address, phone number, church and children’s ministry logos, bus pickup phone number and anything else you want on the dollar to info@apostolicsundayschool.com or pbooker@inlandlighthouse.com and as soon as I have time I will do it for you.  I will email you back two PDFS with the fronts and the backs laid out for you to print.

Give some examples of items and their sale prices.  

• $1 items:
  1. Bibles! – We purchase these in bulk at Dollar Tree and put a big shipping label inside with all of the church information along with several doctrinal verses listed prominently.  We break the rule of 5 to 1 on this because we want as many kids that want bibles to have them!
  2. Small pieces of candy (tootsie rolls etc)
  3. Small nick-nacks and toys such as the bulk items from USToys.com or Oriental Trading (cheap magnifying glasses, yo-yos, plastic animals etc)
• $3 items:
  1. Bags of chips (BIG FAVORITES) – Can be purchased usually for 50 for $11 or so at Smart & Final or equivalent big-box store.
  2. Hotwheel knock-off cars
  3. Dollar store item that can be bought several for a dollar
• $5 items:
  1. Candy bars
  2. Coloring books
  3. Any dollar store item
• Larger Items:
  1. Basketballs, soccerballs
  2. Dolls
  3. Bicycles
  4. MP3 player
  5. Scooter

I think you will find that this store is a great and fun way to add to your church’s children’s ministry.  If you have any other questions besides what was listed here, feel free to contact me at info@apostolicsundayschool.com.