This and all the pages regarding fund-raising initiatives are composed in part or entirely by young volunteers who have actually done the given project successfully. The authors simply want to share their experience, and it is general advice only; Trailblazers takes no responsibility for private initiatives, nor claims any percentage from those who find these ideas helpful.

Description: You and your friends, with the help of family members, can assemble a cook book with favorite home recipies. You can sell them at your parish, school, and many other places. A good idea, where the sale of more religious items like rosaries could find resistance.

Expected Income: $600 ($15 per book; then -$3 per book for materials, assuming you sell at least 50 books); has the potential for far more profit than just this

People Needed: A few good cooks! Plus someone who knows how to photocopy, compile the pages, and find a way to bind them

 Materials Needed:

• Some manila folders, so that when you collect recipies, you can organize them while you work into the chapters where they will be found
• Paper and pens
• Stuff to bind... it depends on how you want to bind the book
• Perhaps the easiest would be a small three-ring binder; they are easy to use in a kitchen, stay open easily, and allow the pages to be handled individually by an ambitious cook. For this you would need small binders, and a hole puncher adjustable to the locations of the rings on the small binders
• This link (click here) can give you other ideas on how you want to bind your cook book
• Comb binding and link binding might work well, too... here is one web site among many, to help you brainstorm (click here)
  
• An alternative could be home-made binding (click here for an example)
• You will need access to a photocopier (perhaps your parish or school will be generous enough to allow you to use theirs), and a computer to type up and organize your materials would be best. Perhaps a home color printer would be nice to make a good cover picture
• You might need some thicker paper for the front and back cover
  

The time questions:

• There will need to be two blocks of time:
• Preparation:
• Gathering the recipies
• Putting them all one on a page (or however else the distribution would be, as for example several on a page)
• Establishing an order and table of contents
• Proofreading
• Assembly
  
• Sales
  

Location:

• Anywhere you can sell the books
• Advertise! Put your books on the web, in your parish (bulletin, web site, news e-letter, etc.), in your school, at local clubs, etc.