Flocks of Pink Plastic Flamingos Raise Money for Small-Town Church

The First Baptist Church in Ashland, Va., has found a way to benefit from bad taste. Last summer, it planted pink plastic flamingos in the yards of its members — and refused to take them away until the members agreed to make a gift to help send a child to summer camp.

Church volunteers bought 75 flamingos for $2 apiece and divided the birds, which stand about three feet high, into two “flocks.” Then volunteers planted each flock in a prominent spot in a member’s yard when no one was home.

They also attached a note to the member’s front door. “You have been flocked,” the note read. If the member made a donation of any size, the note said, the plastic birds would be removed immediately. An added incentive to give: Donors could choose whose yard the flamingos would roost in next.

Included on the note were telephone numbers of volunteers who would accept the donation and move the birds.

The fund-raising flamingos were used for several weeks between Memorial Day and the first week in July. They raised about $1,500 to send children to summer camp — or enough to send eight kids to camp. Gifts ranged in size from $10 to $100.

All told, flamingos were placed in about 50 yards. Their last stop was the pastor’s yard, where all 75 flamingos came to rest for several days. Generally, they stayed in each yard for only two or three days.

“The key is to keep the birds moving,” says Valerie Burton, youth minister at the First Baptist Church.

She says that the church also offered members the chance to buy “insurance” to protect their yards: By making an early gift, some families protected their yards from invasion by the gaudy birds.

“This is a fund-raising idea for a place where you know your neighbors,” says Ms. Burton, adding that the idea did not work when a friend of hers tried it in a more urban setting. “It didn’t fly very well there,” she says.

First Baptist will definitely use the flamingo idea again but probably not this year, says Ms. Burton. “I don’t want to wear it out,” she explains.

For more information, contact Valerie Burton, Youth Minister, First Baptist Church, 800 Thomp-son Street, Ashland, Va. 23005; (804) 798-9014.