Tips for charity fundraising & personal crowdfunding to gain more donations

Photo by Isaac Wendland on Unsplash

Fundraising is something heroes and superheroes do.

It can be incredibly hard work, it can be demoralising and sometimes you have to ask friends for donations when they are struggling.

Having worked in and been an exec in the charity fundraising space for five years, there is a lot of insights and information that you gather and should share, many of the platforms struggle to help each fundraiser individually.

I am often approached, a few times every month on Twitter or LinkedIn of how to improve my fundraising page, or asked how to hit my fundraising target.

Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet or secret recipe, but here are a number of tips to help you with your JustGiving, GoFundme, direct with charity or equivalent fundraising or crowdfunding pages.

The Tips

Friends, Family, Colleagues, Community

• Red rope treatment — change it from open to everyone to open to a few first, invite-only feels exclusive, it is a special club. Red rope approach allows your closest friends to support and ensure your totaliser has % showing.
• Break down the ask from friends and invite small groups.
  Ask for a small contribution
• We live in a world of notifications, news and asks, remember if you do not tell your friends they will not always know. Be deliberate in telling your family and friends. Gaining cut through is more challenging than ever.
• Some friends cannot afford to support if they cannot support with money, ask for them to share directly to friends on Facebook.
  Facebook is still where your friends are and still drives the most traffic.
• Invite your closest friend or family member to be the first person to donate. The first donation is often the hardest.
• Give friends a timeline of when and how you are going to do the activity. People want to see and support your progress so they can see you are doing it when, where and how.
• If you are working & your business is in a good position, you can ask them to match a small amount of a number of donations.
• Colleagues will often support you and groups of colleagues will be your biggest fans
• There are on average 17–20 donations per page, work this out when setting your goal. Times in 2020 and 2021 are hard for many, be cautious when asking for specific values.
• Show confidence in yourself and potentially add the first donation, many of your friends will then know you are serious and can take the burden in being the first and subconsciously setting the tone for the right amount to give.
• Be creative with your page, ask if you can use pictures of friends and family, make them co-stars of your fundraising page.

Engagement On Platforms

• Ask questions for friends to answer — helps them to be part of the page or update and helps to increase the reach of your post.
• If you use instant messengers and have a close group of friends, create a group of those people who are most likely to support you and offer them a first look or updates on your training or running.
  You will be surprised how many support you and want updates.
• Sharing constantly kills reach on the social networks, ask your friends to encourage you on the social media updates, increase the engagement, it helps you update reach more people.
• Phone calls work if you can remember to send your page URL, why calls — important, personal & gives chance to ask how people are.
• Ask for help where your friends live on: Instagram DM is very popular and often is the default messenger for your friends, send messages with gifs etc.
• Consider using videos, a huge number of people only watch videos and “don’t read anything”.
• Email is still powerful:
  Leverage emails, friends rarely email other each anymore, an email is important. Work emails around paydays are full of asks, try and get in early but don’t pressure people.
• Work instant messengers are good places to help for help. These can include Slack, Teams, Facebook workplace etc.
• Story Tell At The Top: Tell friends what you are doing and why at the top of the page, — if they read it straight away it helps them donate far quicker.
• Ask for the charity or connected business to share your page across social media.

Think of Daily Habits

• Mornings, lunchtime and evenings when there is rubbish tv on (between the soaps) perform best for donations.
• Like you most people live on their mobile, Friends are constantly being contacted on their mobile, they often get sidetracked by a push notification. Try & send at times when they are likely to receive less noise and requests.
• Mobiles are tasks based, we want x answered, we need y product, we have z problem, help your friends to think this as an easy and quick task.

Local > National > International

• Speak to your local journalists; they need stories and easy for them to write up and some want to support local charities.
• If you are in a local business group or support group many will want to support you, sharing in it won’t be considered bad etiquette.

Think Outside Of The Box

• Find other people doing similar and ask them to support each other.
• If you have joined a group or a team, support their efforts, offer to help them, humans are built to survive in groups and reciprocal in nature — we support each other.
• Use your smartphone as a storytelling device, use video, create gifs, use audio as updates for your IM groups, for your page, for your audience. It seems a lot of work but we are primed for quick, easy and snackable entertainment, be a program or a channel.
• People want to invest their money not spend it, say what it is doing and where it is going, even the people who aren’t into charities love to support something bigger just need to know.

Human Motivations

• The 4 reasons why people share online:
  1. Love
  2. Hate
  3. Anger
  4. Vanity
  Try and leverage these, love for you, hate for the problems encountered, the anger of what people are going through (why charities exist) or vanity — appeal to them being a hero for supporting you.

These should give you food for thought in getting the most out of the fundraising or crowdfunding page.