Fundraising Event Ideas

Fundraising Event Ideas

If you are thinking about fundraising for your non-profit, I’m sure you will realize there are a lot of different options available to you. The best type of fundraiser depends on which stage your non-profit is at. I will talk about all different sizes of non-profit from non-profit that are just about to start up all the way through to very large national non-profit. If you are a new charity you are probably at the stage where you are looking simply for ways to raise money for your charity or non-profit.

This can be a hard task in the early stages as you will have a small following both off-line and online. Before you begin to look at ways to fundraise you must have a clear plan. This plan must be easily identifiable and understandable by potential donors. When designing your plan you must think about your goal, but you almost must consider the potential donors that are likely to help your cause. By considering this at the very outset of your plan to raise money for the non-profit you are likely to reach more donors at a faster rate. Realistically, you will need to spend some money in order to fundraise. You will either need to create some marketing material even if you only plan on distributing this online initially.

It is better to have something professionally prepared as there is a big difference between a well prepared advert that is explaining your goals and asking for donations than an amateur design. A lot of things can be conveyed simply by the font that you use and the layout on the page. The more readable your advert is, the more understanding your potential donors may be. You should also have a very clear goal as to what you are fundraising for. Donors prefer to give to a specific goal, whether this is a piece of equipment that you need to purchase to help your non-profit, or if it is a service that you need to fund, you need to be very clear about the actual service that you will be providing, and all the elements that make up that service. Just like with any sales material, you also need to explain the benefits of your service, not just the service itself. For people to donate, they like to feel that they are helping somebody, and so by explaining the benefits of your service, or the benefits that the new piece of equipment will bring, they can feel more emotionally involved in the donation. This means that they are more likely to donate and they are also more likely to make a higher donation.

If you are intending to make a video to explain the benefits of your service and/or fundraising campaign, it needs to be short, I would suggest up to 30 seconds if you’re planning on using social media, and again you need to convey the benefits of donating to your cause. You should also script what you intend to say in your video as preparation. Most good videos online, even if they seem like they are just done on the fly, have a lot of pre-production work go into them to make that easy-going video look easy-going! You also need to think about aspects such as lighting and sound. There are plenty of apps and tools for mobile phones that will help you make a better video, but your message needs to be really clear, otherwise with social media the next funny cat video can completely distract from your message, however will intended and well prepared you have been. So make sure your message is memorable and your video is entertaining, and that you have properly spent about three hours preparing for 30 second video.

Another way of fundraising quickly can be to run an online auction. There are many companies that are willing to donate to fundraisers, and companies that give donations for raffles, but you must understand that many companies receive many requests for these donations on a daily basis. It is best therefore, that if you are asking for donations for an auction that you ask people that you know well to start off with, just as you would when you start out the non-profit and begin asking for donations. If you are going to ask for donations to a silent auction or an online auction, then make sure that you ask for prizes that will sell. In order to find prizes that will sell, you do need to understand your target audience. Think about who is most likely to donate to your cause from either people that you know or people that you believe have a general interest in types of causes similar to you.

You won’t know exactly what these people look like, but you probably have a reasonable feel for who they may be. If it is a general non-profit that a lot of people would be interested in, then you can have a wide variety of lots available. If your charity is particularly focused on a certain type of a community or a particular gender, then it may be that your target donor audience is smaller and you should therefore make sure that you’re asking for prizes that are more relevant to that community. An online auction can be a fast way to raise money at a fairly simple cost. Without auction software, we’ve made it even easier for non-profit to have an auction as you can simply select to have an auction, and we can populate the auction with prizes from our catalogs. In these types of auctions there is a minimum starting bid which covers the cost of the item, and so we are retain, and all the money over the starting bid goes to your non-profit. This can be a good way to raise money without having to ask for online donation requests for auctions or having to approach companies for donations for silent auctions.

Established Non-profit If you are an established non-profit then you will understand that there are many different fundraising event ideas. I’ve listed some of these below: The best fundraising ideas are always the ones that raise the most money for your charity. The best people to ask for funds for your non-profit are always those who have already donated. Part of our service is to help you to cultivate your relationships with existing donors. Not every contact with the donor should be a request for further funds. If every contact is asking for additional funds, then your relationship with your donors will sour and you will lose out on future income streams. You must remember that every time you ask for money, even if they have a strong belief in the cause, it still does act as an emotional debit for most people. You need to build up your emotional credit with these people by telling them about the successes that you have had with the funds that you have raised, and just gently explaining your future plans, and letting them understand that by telling them the plans you will probably be asking them for money in the future, but maybe not today.

Obviously today there are many ways that you can analyze your donor information. It isn’t suitable anymore to just have a donor list and phone them randomly asking for money. That is not an effective use of anyone’s time in your organization. You need to have a targeted plan. The targeted plan must include a full analysis of your donor information, a plan to raise money for your annual budget, a plan to raise money for any capital needs that you have coming in the next year or two, and also a plan to ask donors for bequests in their wills. Each of these types of asks will be to a different donor and it will depend on what stage of your relationship you are at with the donor. You need to consider how you handle each donor after a donation is made.

What feedback do you give the donors once they’ve made a donation? What thanks do you give the donors? Do you have a one-to-one relationship with the donor? How much money does the donor give to other non-profit? Who else does the donor know that they could possibly refer to you to help your non-profit? You should be able to answer all these questions for all of your donors, and if you can’t there is still more work that you can do on your existing database before you go searching for additional new donors outside of your database. We can help you by providing a consultancy service that will analyze your existing database and give you detailed financial information about the people that have donated to your cause. We can assess for you how much they donate to other non-profit and their net wealth so that we can assess how likely they are to be to be able to donate to you in the future. If somebody has already maxed out their donations to you, and there is no room for making additional donations, there is little point in attempting to obtain more donations from them. But without that understanding about the person’s financial circumstances, you can’t know that, because they won’t tell you that they haven’t got any more money. On the flip side, there may be somebody that you have completely missed in your database simply because they have only given small amounts, but they may have potential if given the right circumstances to give much greater amounts to your non-profit. Again, we are able to analyze the database to find that information out for you so that you can share it internally and work out a marketing plan for these groups of people. What do you do with large donors? What is your strategy for thanking the donor, and what do you class as a large donor to your non-profit? A large donor I would generally class as somebody who gives 1% or more of your annual budget. So a large donor for a very large charity may have to give tens of thousands of dollars, if you are a newer charity a large donor may be somebody who simply gives $50 or $100 towards your cause. Whatever the monetary amount, you should view large donors on a percentage basis, and they should be treated accordingly. If somebody is providing you with 1/100th of your budget, then they are providing you with three days income to your non-profit for it to exist, and that deserves some more special attention. If these people are able to give large donations, how long has your relationship been going on? Would they be prepared to listen to an idea that you have that may require an additional contribution for a capital campaign, such as a redevelopment of a building or new facilities that you would like to extend?

For older donors who have been with you for a longer time of say at least five years, have you spoken to these people about a bequest in their will? This conversation is usually better held with older donors, because people can change their wills.