Need a new fundraising idea and don’t have any budget? There are plenty of free, and low cost, ways to jumpstart a giving campaign quickly.
The trick is to build on tools, resources, and content you already have at your fingertips to generate cheap fundraising ideas.
1. Tout the Benefits of Donor Matching
You can potentially double your incoming individual donations with donor matching. The best part is that you don’t have to seek out matching partners if you use a program like Double the Donation.
Double the Donation is a powerful platform that works with GiveWP on your WordPress website to automate matching gift fundraising. Double the Donation provides nonprofits with tools to identify match-eligible donors, drive matches to completion, and gain actionable insights.
GiveWP has a free add-on integration that puts Double the Donation directly into your donation forms to capture employment information and follow up appropriately with donors about matching gifts.
Once you have everything set up, the only thing you have to do it tell people about it.
2. Develop a Virtual Challenge
Using Peer-to-Peer Fundraising alongside Tributes, you can create virtual challenges that push donors to give so that their name shows up in a listing with their peers.
Challenges can be as simple as trying to donate at an amount or frequency level to beat your friends or to rally teams to donate and share their progress on social media.
By connecting a challenge to a peer-to-peer campaign, you create a sense of social awareness and urgency that can encourage immediate action.
3. Launch a Social Campaign
Sometimes donors will drive fundraising campaigns for you. Take the virtual challenge concept one step further by creating a specific social challenge to accompany your campaign.
Encourage social sharing with buttons and icons at the completion of each donation. The multi-step donation form template and peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns have social sharing tools included. For legacy GiveWP forms, the free Simple Social Shout add-on for GiveWP includes simple social sharing buttons to the Donation Confirmation page.
With just a click donors can share their experience to social media, creating a powerful element of social proof for your organization.
4. Create a Trivia Game
Generate additional interest in your organization and mission while attracting donations with a trivia game.
It works like this: Distribute trivia clues to donors at certain donation levels ($50 gets you 3 questions, $100 gets 10 questions, and so on). Have everyone turn in the answers and people with the most correct answers go into a drawing for prizes.
Make all the questions about your organization to help increase awareness about your goals and mission. Prizes can also be simple digital gifts, or you can ask businesses to donate goods as an incentive for your donors.
5. Walk or Run for a Cause
“For every dollar donated, I’ll walk/run one mile.”
Create a walk or run campaign where donors log miles for donations. Create a social sharing element that fundraisers can use to share and help get people to donate in order to push them to walk/run a certain number of miles. (The best part is that with this walk/run challenge there’s no event setup or takedown required.)
You can use peer-to-peer fundraising tools for this type of campaign as well.
6. Create a Countdown Campaign
A countdown timer creates an immediate sense of urgency for donations.
Pick a specific thing that your organization does and do a timed mini campaign to generate donations for that focus area. In addition to a time element, include a goal:
“We want to raise $500 for the library fund in the next 48 hours.”
With a specific goal and time element, donors will feel compelled to support that part of the mission now.
7. Say It with an eCard
Use eCards to help spread joy around a fundraising campaign and allow donors to share their donations with others.
An eCard campaign is a great option around a holiday or event, like Valentine’s Day. They can also make great thank-yous. We’ve got eight more ideas for how to use eCards here.
8. Add Donations to Your Online Store
If you have merchandise and an online store for your organization, you can use WooCommerce to sell products and GiveWP to add a donation option to the cart or checkout. (The same concept applies for items such as ticket sales as well.)
Whenever your organization conducts any type of monetary transaction, a donation option should always be included. Even small donations $1 per order or rounding up the change on every transaction can add up significantly over time.
Even if you don’t have an online store set up already, consider using a service like Printful to set one up with no overhead costs. You’d be surprised how well t-shirts can raise money for your cause.
9. Host an Online Contest – Vote with a Donation
Get the community involved in an online contest – pick a new slogan or piece of artwork or mascot for the week – and have people vote with a donation.
Create a couple of options and use separate donation forms to manage “votes.” GiveWP allows you to create an unlimited number of donations forms (and templates) with Stripe and PayPal payment integration. The only limitation for this campaign is coming up with a creative idea. (Hint: Student artwork contests are always popular!)
Once you have your idea in mind and your forms set up, you can use the form grid to display the voting options on a single page.
10. Add a Recurring Donation Option
The easiest and quickest boost to fundraising campaigns is through recurring donations. Recurring donors give 30% more per year on average, meaning you get that much more fundraising revenue.
Recurring donors generate dependable payments by giving regularly at different time intervals. Let donors choose how often they give and how much. Manage subscriptions, view specialized reports, and connect more strategically with your recurring donors with the click of a button.
Pro tip: Make the recurring donation amounts comparable to one-time donations. For example, if the average donation for your nonprofit is $100, make the recurring donation $10 per month. From the user perspective, it is close to what they could give anyway, but your organization nets an additional $20 over the course of the year.
Get Started with Your Next Online Fundraiser
Are you looking for more ideas to get started with a new fundraising campaign? We’ve got tons of ideas to help you maximize donations for almost any event or time of year. You can find them all on our blog.
Download GiveWP for free now to start raising money on your website.
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