Money is a central part of any activities you run and Fundraising is an excellent opportunity to get young people and your local community involved in the running of your club and activities.
There are many good ideas out there from the simple to the creative that you could use and we would like to use this opportunity to share a few with you.
Fundraising through Social Networks
Here are also 5 top Social Networking tips for charities:
Be informative: As you build a social network around your charity you will be able to update them with all sorts of fundraising events. Don’t just make financial asks as this community is unlikely to respond, but tell people about what else your charity is doing – community fundraising, appeals, recycling, press releases.
Be genuine: Be honest about everything that you are facing at your charity – your successes and achievements as well as the trials and tribulations. This helps to engage the public and helps them feel connected. And remember, if you don’t sing your praises then why would anybody else? Tell them, and they might well tell others. This can help spread the word.
Be varied: Don’t just talk about the serious stuff, but lighten the subject matter sometimes. Just pretend you are standing in a pub talking with like-minded people. What would you be talking about? And break things up a bit with things that amuse you. Videos, quotes, jokes, anecdotes about what’s happening in the office, the weather….whatever you like! You’ll be amazed at who else shares similar tastes and views and it quickly engages people.
Be conversational: The joy of social networking is that you can show far more ‘personality’ than in traditional marketing copy. Don’t be afraid to adopt a more chatty style of writing as this is accepted and is what people expect.
Be careful: If you do not want the world to know something, do not put it online. Messages on Facebook, private tweets on Twitter and so on could all accidentally make it in to the public domain. These are all free services so don’t assume they are perfect. If in doubt, leave it out!
For further fundraising ideas have a look at a few websites:
For training around fundraising try: www.dsc.org.uk/Training/DSCFundraisingTraining/Fundraisingtrainingcourses
Free Fundraising tips and ideas try: www.nttfundraising.co.uk/tips.aspx, www.simple-fundraising-ideas.com, www.fundraising-guide.com
Register for Donations: www.justgiving.com
‘Friends of’
Setting up a small group of people that are there solely to raise funds for your groups is another excellent way of helping to share the load. This can be anyone from your local community, friends, family, or business associates who don’t want to get to involved but are happy to give a few hours a month to carry out some fund raising events for you, how helpful would that be. They will find it fund and they can be as creative as they want. Look what fun those who get involved in Red Nose Day have.
If you have used any good fundraising ideas yourself, please let us know so that we can share your ideas with others.