7 Excellent Fundraising Ideas for Your Organization

Are you an association looking for ideas on how to raise more donations? You are not alone, the majority of associations depend on public generosity.

For all these associations, finding good ideas that motivate donors is a matter of survival. These ideas should persuade potential donors (Internet users) to learn about your cause and your association, and then persuade them to help you achieve your goals by making a donation.

Here we will discuss some great ideas that have helped the associations we have worked with to raise more funds online (on the internet) for their causes.

One thing to keep in mind, however, is that not all of these ideas will work for you. You will need to analyze and evaluate the results of each idea and see what works best for your organization. You will also need to think carefully about what would work best for your donors, members and volunteers before you begin your online fundraising.

1. Using digital marketing

Digital marketing has become one of the most popular trends in the world of online giving and association marketing. Digital marketing is, without a doubt, one of the most effective ways to quickly collect online donations for your organization. This technique helps generate traffic to your website (i.e. more people will visit your site) and also creates a steady flow of online donations throughout the year.

Digital marketing is about creating inspiring, informative and educational content for your target audience. You can share it on your association’s blog or website and publish it on your social networking page (Twitter or Facebook) to attract more traffic. You can also disseminate this information through an email campaign or through your newsletter. By informing your target audience about your actions, your story, your donors will develop confidence in your organization and will want to support you on a more regular basis. Digital marketing helps you build your community and interact regularly with your existing donor base.

Digital marketing simply encourages organizations to create quality content that will attract potential donors, volunteers and supporters from around the world to visit your website and find more information about your organization and your causes. Your website will attract new donors and volunteers through its keyword rich content and blog posts. Optimized content works as an “anchor” and attracts traffic to your website when you use it wisely. If you have enough traffic to your website, it indicates that you have created content and used keywords that your target audience was looking for.

Digital marketing is an effective way to get online donations throughout the year from donors with good content. The relationship between your association and your donors can be a little difficult to strengthen at times. In such cases, digital marketing can help you cultivate a relationship of trust through regular interaction.

In summary: the advantages of using digital marketing are as follows:

• Increase visits to your website
• Convert your visitors into donors

Disseminate information about your association and its cause via email (please note that your emailing campaigns must comply with the RGPD)

Convince your donors to fund initiatives through regular calls for donations

2. Apply for Google Grants

Obtaining new donors is a key concern for many associations today. The reality is that you are in competition with all other associations because a donor is likely to support one or two causes, and therefore choose a very limited number of associations from all those that exist in United states (and even worldwide). But how to stand out from other associations? The answer is in advertising.

Google has developed a very interesting offer for associations that offers them a golden opportunity to make themselves known and attract new donors on the web. Indeed, Google provides associations with a number of free tools that allow them to make themselves better known online.

• Google Grants for advertising and promotion of online initiatives
• Extended YouTube channels to post and publish videos that your target audience can share
• Google Apps Software
• The Google Earth Premium application that offers most of the features to associations for free.

Not only does Google offer all of these tools for free, but when an association signs up for Google Grants, it receives nearly $7,000 a month in free AdWords advertising. This allows you to broadcast your message on the Google search engine so that people can see your link in addition to other results when they enter a keyword and search for it on the Google search engine.

3. Pamper your donors

In order to keep your association funded over the long term, it is important for you to find and develop trusting relationships with your donors and volunteers as diligently as you work to promote your cause. If you have large donors who fund your association, you won’t need to spend huge amounts of money to organize an event to thank them more exclusively. Finding donors is an extremely difficult job for most associations, as many associations are just starting out and have not done enough groundwork to achieve anything meaningful.

Many associations do not know how to retain their donors. You will have to start by developing a marketing strategy and then organize loyalty campaigns via email. Indeed, one of the most important steps in acquiring large donors is to retain them! It is just as important to retain old donors as it is to acquire new ones. On average, it has been noted that associations lose about 70% of their new donors before receiving a second donation or funding. This is huge! and it is possible if your association does not take enough steps to retain them.

Fortunately, there are now step-by-step donor retention strategies and tools available.

4. Monthly Donations

Donor retention is possible when your organization creates opportunities for recurring donations. To ensure that your donors bring their donations to your organization on a regular basis, you need to launch a monthly giving program where your donors can sign up or register for their accounts and make a donation of a certain amount by pre-authorized debit each month.

The Monthly Giving Program can be easily integrated into your website, and offers your donors the opportunity to make a monthly donation.

Before starting the Monthly Giving Program, you will need to define a clear goal and link it to your longer-term fundraising goals. Branding and promoting your monthly giving program through social networks is a good idea and can help you reach your target audience.

5. Crowdfunding Campaigns

Crowdfunding refers to an effort by an individual or organization to raise funds for a project through donations from a group of people. Online crowdfunding sites, such as Kickstarter, offer associations a platform to present themselves and their initiatives and cause to attract potential donors. 

When you publish your online fundraising campaign, you can reach an incredibly diverse audience that can provide you with regular funding, which is not always possible through your website’s simple online donation forms.

You can share your crowdfunding campaign page via Twitter, Facebook or any social media platform you want. Crowdfunding has become an effective and important fundraising method for associations to get their causes funded by hundreds and thousands of people online. The most interesting thing about this fundraising idea is that you can receive a large number of donations in a few hours through a single campaign page.

7. Other Ideas

Below is a list of ideas for online fundraising:

• Online Auctions
• Fundraising with counterparties
• Events of all kinds:
• Dancathon, Walkathon to invite people from all walks of life to walk for your cause and show their support.
• Trivia Night Fundraiser
• Hold gala dinners
• Organize a field day to raise awareness and funds for a cause.
• Start an auction
• Hold book fairs
• Silent Auction
• Organize a wine tasting evening

Conclusion

There are a number of online donation collection techniques for associations. The key is to get maximum visibility for your organization through your fundraising initiatives and to attract both large and small donors.