Raising money for charity is a not only a great way to support fantastic causes, it can also be a personally fulfilling and rewarding experience. Here’s how to make the most money possible for your chosen charity.
Whether you’ve decided to support a local or national charity you’ll want to make as much money for them as you can.
Here’s how to boost your fundraising efforts so you bring in as much cash for your chosen charity as possible.
Get online
Having an online presence for your fundraising mission is vital if you want to raise as much money as possible for the charity you have decided to support.
A good way to kick-start your fundraising efforts is to set up an online donations page.
There are several of different websites that are specifically dedicated to fundraising.
The most popular of which are:
Visit each fundraising site and set up a donations page on the one you find easiest to use.
Your online page can then become the hub of your fundraising activity, giving those that want to donate to your cause an easy way to do it using a credit or debit card, allowing you to update family and friends with how you are getting on, as well as providing a snapshot of how much money you’ve raised so far.
In addition to a dedicated donations page, more and more people now create an online blog to keep their supporters up to date with their fundraising efforts.
This can be a great place to upload photos and videos of your fundraising activities and training, especially if you are preparing for a charity event, (running a marathon, swimming the channel or a bike ride for example).
Be social
There can be no doubt that in the modern world that social media, including Facebook, Twitter and Google + are all useful tools to boost donations to your chosen charity.
On average every time you post a link to your donations page via Facebook, at least 3 of your friends will visit your page, while accompanying your posts with personal messages and pictures increases their appeal even more.
While it can be tempting to post a link to your donations page every hour, you need to strike a careful balance between promoting your charity and overwhelming people with pleads for donations.
Avoid overwhelming your friends but post your request often enough to keep your mission at the forefront of their minds.
A good way to promote your efforts beyond your own friends is to ask family members and close friends to share your posts to spread the word.
Just Text
A great way to get people to donate on the go is to get them to use their mobile phones.
Using the Just Text service you can create a unique code that makes it possible for people to donate to your chosen cause by text.
You simply need to get them to text your unique code followed by the amount they would like to donate to: 70070 (the Just Text number).
Setting up a text giving number gives you an easy way to get donations from people who don’t have a lot of time or aren’t able to donate in person so it’s well worth doing.
Display your text number clearly whenever you’re fundraising, posting about your fundraising online or even when you’re training for your charity event.
Mobilise the media
Getting in touch with your local newspaper or radio station can be a great way to give your fund raising efforts extra exposure and boost your fundraising balance.
Draft a press release detailing who you are what you’re doing, why you’re raising money for your chosen charity and most importantly of all how people can support you and donate.
Then send this press release to local media outlets; many are keen to promote local charity fundraising efforts and any exposure they can give you could make a big difference.
Pound the pavement
Getting out and about in your local community is still a fantastic way to raise extra cash for your chosen charity.
Be it a simply standing outside your nearest supermarket collecting donations or setting up residence for a few hours on your local high street, engaging the public and collecting small personal donations is well worth doing.
You are likely to need to apply for a charity collection permit but you can usually do this by contacting your town council.
Boost your donations even more by adding music, giving out balloons or stickers and displaying details of your online donations page or text number clearly so your fundraising efforts last longer than your time on the street.
Contact local businesses
Getting the support of a local business can be a great way to increase the amount of cash you raise for your chosen charity.
There are a number of ways you can do this, either by hosting charity events at the business in question, asking them to donate a raffle prize or simply by getting them to display a charity tin for donations from their customers.
Asking costs nothing and they can only say no, so it’s well worth being bold with your requests and presenting your case
