Divine Mercy Yard Sign Campaign

Running a Divine Mercy Yard Sign Campaign at your parish can be a very uplifting and unifying projects for a parish. A campaign could be held during Lent, leading up to Divine Mercy Sunday, or as a stand-alone effort to focus the attention of a community on the Mercy of Jesus at any other time of year. With the approval of your pastor and the help of just a handful of people, a campaign is easy and fun. We promise this will be a blessing to your parish!

Successful campaigns have been held at parishes around the country to the tune of about 175,000 yard signs currently in circulation.

Here is a short list of tasks that we have put together based on the experience of people who have run campaigns in the past.

1.     Coordinator
The coordinator or coordinators will have to be organized and driven. If you are reading this page, that’s probably you. Pray about this effort. On one hand, you are about to transform your neighborhood and parish, and on the other hand, there will be obstacles placed before you that you MUST overcome. Stay close to the Sacraments and get ready to have a blast spreading the Mercy of Jesus to everyone you know!  
“Souls who spread the honor of My mercy I shield through their entire lives as a tender mother her infant, and at the hour of death I will not be a Judge for them, but the Merciful Savior.”

2.     Get your finances set
Make personal phone calls and get some people together to purchase the yard signs. Single yards signs cost about $10 each, but yard signs can be purchased in bulk for as little as $5.00. Metal stands for your yard signs can be purchased for about $.75 each. So now do a little math and decide how many people would be leaving each Mass on a given Sunday. Your parish office can help you with these numbers. Normally, almost every family will pick up a yard sign. Some will request two. Based on these figures, you have the amount you need to run the campaign. For example, 1000 signs and stands will cost you $5750.

3.     Get approval from the pastor
Pastors are busy and understandably shy away from a project that will require them to do too much more work. It is important to present this to your pastor as an all-inclusive arrangement where all you need from him is his green light.  Assure him that the rest will be taken care of.

4.     Order signs
Sign pricing is HERE. If ordering more than 1200 signs, the price can be slightly reduced. Shipping yard signs can cost about $100 per 1000.

5.     Order stands
Usually stands costs about $1.50 at a large home improvement STORE. However, we have a contact at a sign company that will sell you stands for .75 each if you are doing a parish campaign. As this is being written, many big home improvement stores are offering FREE home delivery on these signs so it may be worth your time to call one locally and negotiate!

6.     Bulletin announcements
Leading up to your campaign, make sure you contact your parish office early to get a blurb in your bulletin. Yes! People still read their bulletins.  Do this a few weeks early and you won’t have any problems.

7.     Homily and/or pulpit announcement
The best possible scenario would be if your priests were on board and agreed to tie in their homily with one or more of the Corporal Works of Mercy, or with Divine Mercy specifically. Almost any Gospel reading has something to do with mercy. Also, ask for the campaign to be announced from the pulpit when other important items are being announced.

8.     Social Media
Posting an event on social media is always a good idea. You don’t have to make an “event page,” but make sure the post is sharable and then ask people to do their part. Getting even a small buzz going is very effective.

9.     Recruit Volunteers
Take a look at your parish and you will find many groups and clubs that will enjoy being a part of this. From the Knights of Columbus to the Divine Mercy group, the impact you are about to make in your parish will be obvious to enough people and they will ready and willing to do whatever it takes.

10.  Assemble the signs
It may seem like no big deal to just hand a person a sign and a stand and let them assemble the sign themselves, and on some level this is true. But image a family coming out of church with their children in tow, a bulletin and maybe some Sunday school artwork, a stroller… get the picture. It’s just helpful if they can grab a sign with one hand and go. An assembly party can be a serious or as casual as you want. You can order pizzas and recruit the youth group, Knights of Columbus, or any group of volunteers. You can pray a chaplet before or after you start but is always good to acknowledge that everything is possible because of Mercy. Assembling signs is always more fun than it sounds so blessed are they who show up!

11.  Allocate signs
Get your signs ready to transport to your parish. Load them in a car or truck and have everything in place. Doing this when you have volunteers is MUCH easier than doing it by yourself. You may be doing this in your parish only, but are running campaigns that involved several parishes, set up a time for reps from each parish to pick up their allocation of signs. Also, if you are indeed coordinating with various parishes, you will add each of those parishes to this list starting with item #2.

12.  Set up early
You will need a few tables and any church has these. To make is super easy, bring your own and you won’t be waiting on someone to find the keys to the storage room where the church’s tables are kept. You might bring some shade or a tent. Keep a few boxes around for later. You might make a display inside the church in the annex just to get people excited. Make it beautiful!

13.  Distribution
All distribution happens outside. Signs are free, so people will feel blessed and they will show their gratitude in various ways. Most importantly, make it easy for everyone to grab a sign. You can send out a few people with 5 or 6 signs to hand to people as they are walking to their cars in case the crowd around your tables looks overwhelming, especially to that family with a heavy load. Offer to load someone’s car with extra signs if they have a place to plant them. You are giving away free signs so you might as well give all of yourself in the process. Hold nothing back!

14.  Photos
You are going to want photos to share on social media so send someone out to grab a few action shots. We’d love to see them too!

15.  Left over signs
These will be gone soon – don’t worry. After your yard sign campaign, there will be people who didn’t get a chance for whatever reason to grab a sign so they will be calling the church office. To make things easy, you can leave your leftovers with the parish office so that when people inevitably stop by for a sign, there they are. That is IF you have any leftovers.

16.  Thank you notes
Send out a few thank you notes to everyone that helped you. They will probably think that the gratitude should go in the opposite direction – and they might be right – but a thank you goes a long way in expressing your gratitude which all that matters to you.

17.  Go for a drive!
Wait about a week and then take a drive around the neighborhood to see just how many signs are out. Enjoy!