Greetings everyone!! I have been the VBS director for the past 3 years. Each year it gets harder trying to get supplies bought. We have a "Supply Tree" where people can pick items they would like to donate to VBS. Then once that is done there are still always alot of supplies yet to purchase. We are a smaller church and we average about 30 kids. I am just wondering how other churches go about getting supplies and having the church reimburse them. Do you have open accounts at stores or another way of doing it? This is just an issue that is coming up with our church and I wanted to get ideas from others, so that I may approach our elder's on solutions!!! Thanks so much for your time and help!! I hope you all have a great VBS....ours is June 11-15....it is going to be AWESOME!!!

Misty

I dont know if this will help, but here it goes..
What we do is set an over all budget for VBS. Each teacher is allowed 35$ per class for supplies. Anything over that comes out of their pocket. It keeps down on cost. The remainder of our budget is spent on the materials, prizes and decorations for our church.. We get some donated as you do but our teachers are really generous and sometimes they just buy their own. Our crafts is a rotating class so we buy all of our supplies for that all in bulk and get it cheaper or have members donate material. Hoped this help. Good Luck with your VBS..
MSCAROL

We do have a church account at Lifeway stores and we also give an allowance amount per teacher. We found the best savings comes from your staple supplies (scissors, markers, tape, etc..) so I made up a teacher box with enough supplies for a minimum of ten children per class. The teacher gets the box before VBS and returns it after. Each year I purchase any additional items they need as they request them. We also keep a rack filled with various colored paper for their use.

My husband being staff we have seen a few different churches in 17 years; I've been in two that actualy had an established supply closets. It was wonderful, these churchs had stacks of construction paper, as well as gallons of glue, scissors, tape, and cases of crayons and pencils even rolls of white and brown paper. I know there maybe a cost up front for a church, but when the teachers, be it Sunday school or VBS are good stewards of the supply then it cuts out double buying of staples supplies by each teacher in each dept. You could also do this sort of like a food closet in gathering many of those essintial items. calling on different groups within the Church to donate items at different times of the year. bottom line is that the teachers had what they needed, and just to clarify these two churches were small, not big churches with big supply budgets.

For us, about 2 yrs ago I started a supply box for the essentials (scissors, markers, pencils, pens, staplers and such) This supply shoe box gets pulled out during decorating week, if something is needed during VBS week it's in that box and is to be put back as soon as finished.

Each year we have a supply list, seems I always have to supplement it though since not everything is signed up for. I just shop at Walmart for the supplies and submit the receipts to church for reimbursement. We have a set budget for VBS, but the Pastors don't get upset if we go over it a little (I try not to) Last year we needed a few supplis the Pastor met hubby at church and they shopped for it with the church CC. Now that I have someone that is heading up decorating, he works at HomeDepot and is getting things at a discount or free as he sees we need things. His wife paints so she is doing the train which will be for her room, since she is doing crafts.

The other rooms I bought decorations after Christmas to save big money and the rest of the stuff we buy, after VBS I try to sell it off if possible. I had the Pastor get a church account set up with Lifeway last year, so that can get items easier, unfortunately we only can use it for the corporate ordering, the stores we need to have a different account set up for.

We have a local teacher store that gives us 50% off anything in the store so that helps for the rolls of paper and items like that. We don't really have much that we save each year, since we don't have storage space at church for it, and everything is stored at a member's home. I am having that person bring in the boxes they have so I can get through them and figure out what we have and what we can sell. It's amazing that in the 4 yrs of doing VBS as director the amount of stuff you save.

Was telling someone yesterday in the 10 yrs we have been doing VBS at our church, we have never really copied a theme once. 1 year we did have Amazing Amazon and than 2 yrs later Lava Lava Island, but that was the closest we got to copying themes.

We also have an account at Lifeway and supplies are charged directly to the church. We have a VBS budget that is figured into the church budget each year. Since we provide a meal each night before VBS, our budget is a little larger, but it is worth it. The only donations that we ask church members for is to pay for pizzas on the last night of VBS.

We cut down on what we spent this year by having one classroom for all of the classes. This saved us having to decorate 7 classrooms and it worked really well.

Also, check your local paper to see what churches in your area are doing the same VBS. We share all of our decorations and supplies with a smaller church and in return, they helped us to make some of the decorations.

Hope this helps.

If you know any teachers, you might ask them to collect used supplies at the end of the school year. Our former VBS director was a teacher and she would collect scissors, crayons, and pencils from the school. Most kids will not take home their old scissors and crayons since they'll be buying new ones for the next year. We collected alot of these items this way.

We have an account with Lifeway also. However, we have found great success in selling sponsorships (i.e. this year we sold pawprints) so that people that wanted to support VBS but couldn't physically help (older people, too busy, etc.) could have a way to show their support. This has really helped us for the past 2 years. We had over 200 children this year, with 70+ volunteers, so the cost can be substantial. Good luck!

We are a small church (in relation to many) and we have an AWESOME resource room.
It is stocked with anything you would ever want.
We do NOT have a VBS budget. We fund raise if we need anything - and we save and recycle EVERYTHING. We decorate all year long - not just for VBS. To me that is a waste - to decorate for one week. So we change everything in every class quarterly. The curriculum we use has themes, and it repeats every 2 years (for 3 cycles). So we decorate, at the end take everything down, put it in storage (large boxes, in the attic), label it and reuse it. Some items are used by more than one class, although the themes themeselves do not overlap.
I am putting pictures of the resource room (and decorated classrooms) on my website (www.puppetshoppe.com) if you would like to see them.

In addition, we have a paper room, where we store bulletin board paper, and a Puppet/costume room for those items.

The key is to be on the lookout 24/7. Right now Wal Mart has gobs of school supplies for 25 cents and 50 cents each (crayons, etc.). This is the time to stock up. End of season sales, garage sales, etc. Our teachers usually buy anything that they want that we don't have and turn in the receipt for donation tax credit.We have taught them to be good stewards.

One way for us to get kids to come to our VBSis by giving away backpacks with school supplies in them. We tried this last year and our attendance skyrocketed! Praise the Lord for donations. Our stewardship director is awesome and she helped me to call big corporations like Office Max and one company actually donated the backpacks! Anyway, I also go and ask for donations from local grocery stores and Wal-Mart. They are great about donating and actually expect me to ask again the following year. This greatly decreases my VBS budget. I normally don't ask the church members for anything but I do say that if they feel led to donate to please do so.

Our church always tries to pass along our reusable VBS supplies to another smaller church after we undecorate and pack up after ours is over! We have even reused another church's decorations! We just adapted the murals and drawing to fit our areas. Our VBS materials and decorations are budgeted into our yearly budget just like we do for Sun school materials, plus we have genorous VBS workers who will often pay out of their own pockets for extras they want or need to decorate with or to go with their lesson plans.

If you want to ask your church to support vbs by giving money, consider making up special offering envelopes. My husband is printing some envelopes for our church, but anyone can purchase Game Day Central logo stickers from Lifeway and put them on plain envelopes.

We have special envelopes for Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong offerings...why not for VBS? I think it will encourage folks to give.

We have a Supply Closet that is used by anyone needing supplies. It is well-stocked with construction and writing paper, crayons, pencils, glue, scissors, yarn, paint/brushes--just about everything a teacher could need.

During VBS training, I give a Supply Needs List to my directors with all of the above listed. They check off what they need and add anything that is not a closet standard. To control cost by purchasing in bulk, I do all the buying. I prepare supply boxes 1 month before VBS and get them to the directors. That way they have everything in their room and don't have to run around looking for supplies at the last miniute.

If any class needs something "unusual" or "specialized," the director lets me know and they are authorized to purchase it and turn in the receipt for reimbursement.

Our Closet is a life saver.

iT HELPS TO HAVE A VERY CREATIVE SIDE. I START EARLIER EVERY YEAR MAKING DECORATIONS FOR VBS. THIS 2008 YEAR I HAVE GOTTEN FREE FORM APPLIANCE STORE STRYOFOAM I AM MAKING PALM TREES TIKI TORCHES AND SURFBOARDS SO FAR MY ONLY COST IS PAINT AND I HAVE DISCOVERED I CAN GET IT CHEAPER AT ORIENTAL TRADING.COM BY THE GALLONS CAN ALSO USE REGULAR PAINT ON THESE SURFACES ?S KIMMMENSER@HOTMAIL.COM

Esquiboys2:
I have been looking through the posts for church supplies, I had been thinking about calling/contacting companies to help defray the expense since we are such a small church.
Could you please tell me who or how you contacted to have backpacks, etc donated.
I need to get to work on this as soon as possible.
Thank you for your time!
Dixie

Hi yall. I wanted to share something about supplies with you guys. I learned 8 yrs ago that classroom supplies are important. We tell our leaders not to try to get everything it suggests and to ask around to other leaders to see if you can share some needs. With our decorating we put a dollar limit on it. Anything over that amount then they pay for it. This has worked out great for us. I am so glad this is here for us to share

Our church runs about 100 kids for VBS. To raise money I have a VBS dinner. I have ladies in the church donate the food for the dinner. This year we are having a ham and bean dinner to go along with the Cactus Canyon theme. Ladies are making cornbread, desserts and ham and beans. We have the dinner before the Wednesday night service. Pastor annouonces that the cost of the dinner is a love offering. I usually get between $300-400 dollars each year. All the money raised goes for VBS. I thought about having a dinner in the fall and the spring. Right now we have it in the spring. Hope this idea helps. Shannon

We are also a small Church. We average 30 - 40 kids. Most of the Churches in our area hold VBS
on the same dates. Luckly we have a few that have theirs a week later. So the minute we are through they meet us at our Church and are welcome to most of what we have. We do save some reusable things because, the themes do show up again.

This is my first year as Director so hopefully my ideas will work, but if not... oh well
I created a 2nd registration page for parents and had a place they could check if they would like to donate supplies and then they were to include an email address. As our VBS gets closer I will send out an email list of things we need for crafts and snacks...
For the normal stuff like paper/markers/etc. I'm happy to say we do have a good amt of supplies in our Sunday school closet but to bulk up the supply we're asking school kids to donate items with life left in them. The 2nd gr-high schoolers are having a first ever "Un-Sleepover" to celebrate the end of the school year. They are being asked to bring used notebook paper to be recycled and then bring any other supplies with life left in them to donate to Sunday school and VBS... we'll see how it goes

I have done a supply tree in the past but found that some people would take a supply and not buy it. Then I started to lose track of what we had, because it wasn't all getting bought. We had an idea to buy the supplies and have a store in the lobby, where people can "buy" the supplies and donate them back to VBS.

This also solves the problem that we sometimes have that we don't get exactly what we asked for. We haven't tried it yet, but I think it will be good.