This Thursday we will be holding our fifth NENgage workshop, all about online fundraising. We’ll be hearing from two experienced fundraisers, Mark Cooper and Peggy Hughes, and learning lots about the different tools which you can use, and the best strategies for hitting your targets.
There are lots of different tools available to raise funds for projects on the internet – Just Giving, BT My Donate or Virgin Money Giving for registered charities – Kickstarter, We Fund and Indiegogo for creative projects, and specialist sites like Start Some Good and People Fund it for social enterprises. How can even raise money for charity by shopping online, using sites like Give As You Live.
Online donations can be a exciting way to raise money. An online campaign can reach new supporters that traditional fundraising efforts won’t reach – particularly younger supporters. It also raises more than money – it can raise the profile of an organisation too.
It’s also efficient and transparent – the money goes straight into your charities bank account, so there’s no need to deal with and gather cash donations or cheques. People can donate online, or even by text message from their mobile phone, use tools such as JustTextGiving.
A small but growing percentage of charitable giving in the UK is made by online donations – the percentage nearly doubled between 2008 and 2010 from 4% to 7%, and that proportion is likely to rise, so it’s worth learning how these tools work.
But before we get carried away, it’s important to remember that it still takes hard work and effort to run a successful online fundraising campaign. You have to have a plan. You’ll need to write about your project, share pictures and you may need to make a short video explaining what you are hoping to achieve and why to encourage people to give.
You’ll need to drive traffic towards the donations page, using social media tools like Facebook and Twitter. You’ll need to thank and perhaps reward people for giving to your cause – a lot of crowd-funding campaigns offer a sliding scale of rewards for people who give the most.
So, it’s not necessarily an easy option, and you certainly shouldn’t ditch your traditional fundraising efforts – but it is another useful tool for community groups to raise money, and their profile, and one that is sure to get increasingly popular.
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