Adopt a Puppet: Give members of your church the opportunity to adopt a puppet and help build your ministry. Create a puppet adoption application, it might look similar to one of those Sponsor a child fliers. It can have the name of the puppet and a pretend bio and a picture. Have an adoption day and let individuals, families, or groups take a sheet and "adopt" a puppet. Be sure to include the price for the puppet on the adoption application. When the puppets come in, have a party and let the folks "meet" their puppets. You might put a disclaimer at the bottom of the application confirming that it is in fact a fundraiser to purchase puppets for your ministry (just in case someone thinks they get to take the puppet home - you never know.)

Puppets for Puppets: Another idea might be to put on a puppet show and sell tickets. Again, you can put up pictures of the puppets you'd like with the prices. I don't think most people have any idea how expensive a good quality puppet can cost. Of course, this only works if you already have puppets. Be sure to have a donation bowl available or you may want to have the donations instead of the tickets.

more ideas to come.

Here's a page from Puppet Productions on Fundraising for puppets.

Other Tips:

• A few things to look out for. Both One Way Street and Puppet Productions carry top of the line puppets. They both regularly have great specials. Most of the puppets I have, I got buy one, get one free or in a package deal. I don't know that I've ever paid full price for a puppet...maybe one of two. So, look for deals and specials. Many times, you can get discounted puppets if you attend a companies training event or festival (which I highly recommend).
   
• Also, remember to first get some basic people puppets that you can change costumes on and play multiple roles. Specialty puppets are fun, but limit what you can do.

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