Monona County churches come together for fundraiser

Published 4:52 pm Tuesday, September 29, 2026

On Friday, Oct. 9, churches in Monona County are coming together for a “Soup’s On” fundraiser. The event will be held from 5-7 p.m. at the Onawa Community Center.
This is the second year for the fundraiser. Sharon Taylor along with Gerri Johnson developed the idea for the fundraiser.
“We thought, you know, having different kinds of soups for a fundraiser would be fun,” Taylor said. “So then we thought, well, what about asking other churches if they want to be involved?”
This way it isn’t all on one church to do it all.
Last year the fundraiser was held in March and had several of the churches in Onawa plus, the Castana Church and a church from Whiting involved.
It was decided to wait until October this year when people are starting to think more about soups. The churches aren’t told want kind of soup to make, it’s up to them.
Johnson knows lots of people and this year contacted people she knew in the other churches; they put it on Facebook and some churches then reached out to them.
This year more churches in Monona County are involved: Onawa: First Christian Church, St. John’s Catholic Church, Evangelical Free Church, Faith Lutheran Church; Whiting: First Congregational Church and Whiting Christian Church; Moorhead Christian Church; St. Peter’s UCC-Mapleton and Castana Community Church. The kinds of soup will vary from chili, tomato basil, cheeseburger, Italian wedding soup, baked potato, sauerkraut and more.
“We just asked them each to bring two crockpots of soup and a pan of bars so it’s not too much on anybody,” Taylor said. Organizers hope this fundraiser grows each year.
Those in attendance receive little cups so they can try as many soups as they want. Most of the churches will have their soup recipe on hand.
“Because if you find a good one, you want to make sure you get a copy of it,” Taylor said.
“It’s fun to try different kinds of soups,” she said. “We had some people that tried all of them, and we had, others try maybe three or four. We just get the little six-ounce cups, so they can fill it as many times as they want or get as many as they want to fill.”
Taylor added most people don’t take a lot of each one because they want to try several soups. They just take like one scoopful, actually.
The Soup’s On fundraiser is a free will donation for entry and then people can vote for the soup they like the best with a dollar a vote.
“And there’s no limit on how much they put in,” she added. “They can put in a $20 bill if they want too.”
There happens to be a big old trophy that is given to the church who gets the most votes. The defending champ is the Whiting Congregational Church as they received the most votes last year.
Money raised in 2025 went to Tara Wright from Onawa as she is involved with this organization that goes to where natural disasters are and they feed people for free. The event raised about $1,500.

This year, Taylor said that the money raised will go to the Monona County Fair Board after the arson at the fairgrounds. While the grandstand was ready for the 2026 fair, the fair board still has a lot of expenses to pay and projects to complete (like the restrooms and multi-purpose building.
“I think it’s nice to have a cause that affects everyone or that reaches everybody’s heart,” Taylor said. “Even though the Fairgrounds is in Onawa, it’s a cause that kind of reaches everybody in the county.”