50 Outreach Ideas

If you have a hall…

1. Rent or donate your hall space to the community. 
2. Hold a regular community café at your hall.
3. Create a community choir.
4. Organize a parent and toddler group at your hall.
5. Organize a free coffee hour at the hall.
6. Organize after-school or breakfast clubs for schoolchildren at your hall.
7. Allow locals to use your car park during the week.
8. Provide a Christmas or Thanksgiving Day meal for your local community.
9. Provide community lunches or Saturday breakfasts (these could also be taken to a local park or area where people congregate).
10. Provide English speaking classes (ESL).
11. Organize Knit & Natter groups (informal social gatherings where people knit, crochet, or do other needlework while enjoying social connection).
12. Set up a regular soup kitchen or food pantry to provide food for those in need.
13. Set up a Kids’ Holiday club to provide a safe space for kids to go on their days off school.
14. Provide a free car wash.
15. Set up a community garage sale or car trunk sale.
16. Organize a seasonal celebration at your hall.
17. Invite neighbors to join a prayer session for the community.
18. Set up crafting days for adults or kids.
19. Offer exercise classes. 
20. Provide free wi-fi and computer access.
21. Use the skills of your members to provide classes – woodworking, needlework, cooking, tax help, computer skills, how to access resources, etc.
22. Allow organizations such as AA to use your space.
23. Offer your hall for health screenings or blood donations.
24. Hold a BBQ or Ice Cream Social and movie on the lawn for your neighbors.
25. Organize family Bible time with Bible story, arts and crafts, music, and a meal or snack for local families.
26. Hold a Game Night at your hall

Don’t have your own hall?
There are still plenty of things you can do as an individual or an ecclesia.

27. Sponsor a local assisted living facility or nursing home and visit regularly to play games, read out loud, sing and play music, or just visit those who don’t get regular visitors.
28. Collect donations to give to a local foodbank. 
29. Join or set up a time bank (https://timebanks.org/).
30. Carry gift cards to local eateries to give to the homeless.
31. Hold an ecclesial garage sale and donate the money to a local charity.
32. Help pack groceries in a local supermarket.
33. Hold a prayer walk – walk through the streets in the area where you have meeting and pray for your neighbors.  Invite people from the neighborhood to join you. 
34. Do some random acts of kindness – pay for someone’s food order, gas, groceries, etc.
35. Plant bulbs and flowers around the community.
36. Offer to help with raking or garden clearing for neighbors.
37. Church in the park- take your meeting or Bible Class to a local park and invite others to join you.
38. Deliver gifts to residents in the area where you meet – for example, seeds at Easter time.
39. Hand out free bottles of water (with an encouraging or informational sticker) at ball games or other events.
40. Offer to do minor house repairs for the elderly or disabled.
41. Adopt a local school and find out what needs you can fill – school supplies? volunteers to read with youngsters?  teacher supplies?
42. Make knitted or crocheted blankets, hats, toys to donate to a nearby hospital.
43. Do a neighborhood litter clean-up.

Another option is to work with a local charity organization.

44. Work with a refugee organization to help local refugees get settled.
45. Deliver hot meals for the elderly with Meals on Wheels.
46. Create care packages to give to a local charity serving the unhoused.
47. Donate hats and gloves and scarves to a local homeless shelter.
48. Offer to work at a local soup kitchen or food bank or homeless shelter.
49. Find an organization that helps youths recently released from the foster care system and find out how you can help.
50. Offer to help with a Habitat for Humanity project.

There are many national charities which have branches throughout North America. Consider getting in touch with one of these to find additional opportunities to serve.

• Habitat for Humanity
• Covenant House
• The Hope Center
• 30-Hour Famine (World Vision)
• The Red Cross
• Alcoholics Anonymous
• Planet Aid
• Comfort Cases
• You Give Goods
• JBJ Soul Foundation