When asked what successful fundraisers the St. Jude Children’s Choir organization has been involved in to help cover the expenses of their trip to the Thirty-Third International Congress of Pueri Cantores in Rome, Italy in December, 2005, Toor Coordinator Brenda Maxwell responded:

Our most successful things have been ongoing sales of private label coffee and grocery store certificates after all Masses (4 per weekend) every weekend. Our local grocery store sells gift certificates to us at a 5% discount and we sell them at cost to people (I believe all the “big” stores do this — we used King Soopers (owned by Kroger) but I know Safeway and Albertson’s do this as well….

We have also done several spaghetti dinners at a local restaurant that have brought in about $1,000 each time.

Barnes and Noble donates a percentage of sales made during a specified time period — the children sing there during the evening and hand out flyers to be turned in when people make their purchase. I think we just did this twice.

We have had a lot of cash donations from parishioners, local churches and organizations totalling over $15,000, I believe! Begging turned out to be our greatest strength!