Online Fundraising Ideas for Everyone!
Welcome to the ultimate list of online (and some offline) fundraising ideas & tips. Using our years of online fundraising experience, we’ve collected the best right here!
1. Create Your IDIDIT Fundraising Campaign Page
The absolute first step of fundraising is to ensure you have a safe, secure and feature-rich page where people can donate online.
You can create your IDIDIT Fundraising Campaign page in minutes and take advantage of all the ideas mentioned here. It’s free to start, you have immediate access to donations, and complete control over the whole fundraising experience.
2. Create a Fundraising Team
Fundraising campaigns run by teams raise around 60% more money than those without. Assign each team member a role based on what they’re good at and collectively work towards your goal.
Campaigns with teams also build more trust with donors and exponentially increase your network reach.
3. Offer Rewards
Be creative with our rewards feature. For example, if you’re running a humanitarian campaign, offer ‘rewards’ of 50 days water supply to a child in your nominated country for a donation of a specific amount of money.
Other popular rewards include personal thank you letters or video, a thank you dinner, a discounted product / service, novelty items such as hats, t-shirts, a chance to meet the campaign owners, involvement in a particular project, and more. If you’re not sure what might be suitable for your campaign, reach out to us so we can help with some suggestions.
4. Create Urgency With a Deadline
You have the option to add a deadline to your IDIDIT Fundraising Campaign which creates an urgency for others to donate. Remind followers that they only have X hours or days left to contribute and that will boost results.
Of course, on IDIDIT Fundraising Campaign you can always amend your deadline or create a campaign with no deadline. Regardless of which type you choose, you will always receive any donated funds immediately.
5. Create a Video
If your fundraising campaign is all online, it’s really helpful to create a video talking through your campaign. Campaigns with video raise around 105% more than those without.
You don’t have to be an expert to create a video, any new smartphone will do. Just relax, be yourself and talk through key questions donors are likely to have. For example, why you are fundraising? Where is the money going? Why should I donate?
6. Make Donating Easy
In addition to our credit and debit card processing features, make sure you enable PayPal on your page too so it’s as easy as possible for others to donate.
Be warned, unlike IDIDIT Fundraising Campaign many online fundraising sites do not support PayPal. Campaigns that enable PayPal raise more than those that don’t.
7. Set a Realistic Fundraising Goal
Donors want to be part of something successful so if you have an unrealistic goal, some people will choose not to donate at all. IDIDITFoundation.com helps you set a realistic goal based on your network reach.
Remember, you can always change your goal amount mid-campaign and allow ‘overfunding’ so that it is possible to raise over 100%. On IDIDITFoundation.com, out of every campaign that reached its funding goal, 78% raised more than their target.
8. Share with Your Closest First
You should ask your closest friends and family (your inner circle) to donate to your campaign first, before sharing it with others via social media.
Others are much more likely to donate once they see your campaign has already gained donations and credibility. Ideally, your inner circle should help you raise 40% of your goal and that’s the optimal time to share your campaign far and wide.
9. Reach Out to Bloggers & The Press
Once your campaign has gathered some momentum (more than 25% raised), reach out to local press to tell them your story. They love to cover local, inspiring campaigns – especially if they’re performing well. We’ve seen local press coverage help campaigns goes viral across the country and globally!
You should also contact bloggers and reporters who have either written on a similar topic to your campaign, or if you believe it may interest their audience.
10. Host an Event
This is a smart way to get many donors to donate more than once. Imagine a ticket only auction dinner. They not only donate when they buy the ticket, but also when they enter raffles, bid at auction, enter challenges and more.
You can tie this into your fundraising page. For example, when you’ve raised 50% you could host an event to celebrate the milestone and which could encourage even more people to get involved in your campaign.
11. Create and take an IDIDIT Challenge
Skydiving, running and long distance cycling are hugely popular challenges.
Remember to post lots of updates about your training ups and downs, so everyone can ‘feel’ your pain and dedication. If the challenge relates to something you fear and people know that, they’re likely to donate more in support of your courage.
Don’t forget to thank those that are making the challenge possible throughout your campaign.
12. Donation Matching
Many companies have donation matching schemes. Discover whether your employer, or the employer of any of your team members has a donation matching initiative in place.
If not, don’t give up on this idea! If you know of wealthy individuals that you already have a relationship with and that may be interested in your cause, ask them about whether they would be interested in donation matching up to a certain amount or multiple. Not only will this convince others to donate more, but the donation match can transform a campaign.
13. Competing Fundraising Teams
If you and a few team members are quite competitive, why not create two fundraising pages which compete against each other to raise the most cash for a common goal?
This is a great way to spark some more excitement around the campaign. There could even be a special prize for the winning team!
14. Create Mini Fundraising Campaigns
If you have a large goal, or if your campaign can be separated into separate milestones, consider creating several campaigns. This will help create more manageable targets and donors will also know exactly where their money is going at each stage of the campaign. It’s also helpful when one part of the campaign can’t be completed without the prior step being funded.
If you take this route, it’s exceptionally important to nurture your relationship with donors throughout each campaign as they may donate more than once.
15. Make Your Campaign a Showstopper
Your campaign description should be around 300 to 600 words in which you should concisely get your message across. At the minimum, you should explain who is raising money, why are you raising money, and detail exactly what it will be spent on.
Take your campaign to the next level by adding multiple pictures to your gallery and the description of your campaign. Add pictures for each of your team members, links to any other places the campaign is shown, and reach out to us so we can give you personalized tips making your campaign a showstopper.
16. Encourage Donors To Follow Your Campaign
Always encourage your donors to follow your campaign. This way, every update you add to your campaign is automatically emailed to them, keeping them informed, included and up-to-date with progress – and can lead to additional donations.
17. Have A Backup Plan
Make sure you have backup plans for your funds and be clear about them.
If you don’t reach your goal, what are you going to do with the donations? Fund part of your cause, or donate to charity perhaps?
What if you exceed your target – where are those donations going? Nominating a charity that will benefit in some way from your campaign can increase donations because donors will know that whether you reach your target or not, their donation will still go to a good cause.
18. Host a Virtual Party
Virtual parties are becoming more and more popular. Remember to make it as funny and silly as possible. You can ask for donations for bottles of wine, birthday cake, silly string, jelly and so on, until you have everything you need for your virtual party. Doing this puts a friendly spin on asking people for donations.
Once you have raised the funds they can then be used for whichever cause you choose – a personal treat? Perhaps you want to donate it to a charity. Wherever you choose to spend the funds, a virtual party is a fun way to raise money.
19. Set A Challenge
Use the rewards section of your campaign as a voting system for a challenge. For example, you want to host a head-shaving challenge and have 6 candidates. List each 6 names individually in your reward section, the one with the most backers at the end of the campaign has to complete the challenge.
Be warned; this can get pretty competitive (and there can be some amusing underhand tactical voting)!
20. Use A Hashtag specific to your Campaign and include the #IDIDIT Hashtag for maximum exposure
Give your campaign a unique hashtag. Social media loves hashtags. Using one consistently throughout your campaign will not only help brand your campaign, but will make it easier to share, find and help drive traffic towards it.
Make sure it is simple, short, relevant and above all, memorable.
21. Skip Lunch
Have a ‘skip lunch’ campaign, where donors miss lunch for one day and donate what it would have cost for their meal. This is incredibly popular in the workplace and works exceptionally well if you are raising for a cause relating to poverty etc.
Try and get the management on board too. And don’t forget to ask if your company has a donation matching scheme you can take advantage of.
22. Donations as Gifts
Perfect if you have an upcoming celebration – a birthday or anniversary perhaps. You may choose this time as the perfect opportunity to raise awareness of a cause close to your heart. Simply ask those closest to you for donations to your campaign, instead of cards and gifts. Your donors can still leave personal messages and comments, which can make each donation a more personal reminder of who has donated.
This is very popular for those who want to do something different for their birthday, or feel they would like to do something selfless to celebrate the occasion.
23. Have A ‘Revealing’ Campaign!
If you have a new product or collection, tell donors that you will be revealing something new about it at certain funding milestones. You could even accompany it with teaser photos, videos and more.
This type of campaign encourages followers. It is also a great way to generate interest in your product and can help create that all important buzz you need to help your campaign succeed.
24. Host A Treasure Hunt Campaign
Hide a prize and when you reach certain donation milestones provide new clues. This works particularly well with fundraisers held within a company (or even groups of companies), but the prize needs to be a pretty big incentive.
Offering mini rewards at random milestones also makes it more exciting (but you cannot announce what milestones these are, otherwise donors can hold back, to try and get the prize) – a popular mini-prize is having the final clue 1 hour earlier than everyone else.
25. Start A Relay Campaign
A relay campaign is where one person donates and nominates the next person match their donation. They can either match it, pay a forfeit, or face a challenge before they nominate the next person.
If you choose this type of campaign start with between 5 and 10 participants, so that some momentum can begin to build. The challenges and forfeits can be set in the rewards section of your campaign, so as it grows everyone can see what forfeits or challenges have been accepted.
Updated January 20, 2016