With online and mobile fundraising becoming more popular each year, it’s no surprise that traditional fundraising methods are starting to see exciting changes. But while online and mobile fundraising certainly offer a variety of benefits for your cause, not everyone immediately understands the value of adopting modern fundraising methods.
That’s why we created our top three ways to increase your fundraiser proceeds, using modern fundraising methods. Please use this as a guide to understand the benefits of online and mobile fundraising, and as a starting point for your next fundraiser!
Brief disclaimer: When we mention modern fundraising, we’re mostly referring to online and mobile fundraising. This can be anything from online donation pages to mobile silent auctions and raffles, or even a peer-to-peer or social media campaign.
1. Expand Your Donor Base beyond Those Attending Your Fundraiser Event
One of the biggest advantages of modern fundraising methods is that they are extremely effective at increasing your donor base.
Online fundraising tools now make it easier than ever, to quickly and effectively create a customized fundraising campaign, which can then be distributed to a large group of potential supporters.
This brings us to our first tip – Try expanding your donor base beyond just those who are present at your fundraiser event.
Modern fundraising tools allow you to leverage the Internet, in order to dramatically grow your potential donor base. Rather than being reliant only on those people attending your physical fundraising event, you can share your online fundraising pages to your entire network.
Sharing your story online will amplify social reach for your cause, and will result in much higher awareness for your fundraising campaign.
Online fundraising tools will also allow your potential donors to submit donations and and make payments online, meaning they do not need to be present at your event to show their support!
2. Maximize Your Donation Acceptance Period
Another common problem we see with traditional fundraising events is that attendees often think that they can only submit donations on the day or night of your fundraising event.
Our second tip is to encourage you to maximize your donation acceptance period beyond the day or night of your event!
A very simple way to increase your fundraising donation period is by accepting donations before and after your fundraising event.
Online fundraising tools make it extremely easy for donors to submit donations and make payment from anywhere, at any time.
What does that mean for a fundraising event organizer? It means that you can begin accepting donations before (and after) your event!
As an example, let’s imagine that you are including a silent auction as part of your fundraising event. Using traditional methods, you would probably have paper bid sheets, and collect cash or checks, meaning your donors can only participate if they are present at your event.
On the other hand, with online fundraising, your event host could share the link for your online silent auction or fundraiser to your attendees and supporters of your cause. This method elicits additional support and awareness for the cause, as well as early donations!
The goal here is to give your donors as much time as possible to support your cause. People are busy, and may need the extra time to ensure that they can support your fundraiser without time constraints.
3. Transform Your Supporters into Your Best Fundraisers!
As you may have figured out, the key to modern fundraising is taking advantage of online and mobile tools to remove potential barriers for your audience to donate.
This brings us to our final tip on increasing fundraising proceeds – Embrace your supporters and transform them into your best fundraisers and advocates for your cause.
Online fundraising has led to a new movement known as Peer-to-Peer fundraising. The basic premise here is that fundraising hosts and organizations should begin engaging their best donors in a way that turns them into their organization’s biggest advocates.
This involves engaging your supporters and empowering them to raise funds for your cause, instead of only donating to it!
By enabling your donors to become your best fundraisers and advocates, you will be leveraging a much larger group in order to create more awareness, a larger donor base, and a long-term increase in your proceeds!
Zach Hagopian is the co-founder and COO of Accelevents, a mobile fundraising platform that enhances silent auctions and raffles through online and text-message bidding. An active member in the Boston fundraising scene, Zach focuses on improving traditional fundraising methods and increasing fundraiser proceeds.
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