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Telling your story

The key to inspiring people to give to your charity isn’t a brilliantly located DONATE NOW button on your website and it isn’t how robust or clear your processes and procedures are.

It’s telling people what you do and who you help by writing with emotion.

If you tell your story in an interesting and engaging way, people are more likely to support your charity… and you don’t need to be the next JK Rowling to achieve it.

I know people often struggle with writing their story because they worry about getting everything in or what they’re going to say next – and of course, it’s true that writing gets easier with practice.  So if you’re starting out and need to get your first application out the door or are trying to craft a letter to a potential sponsor, or perhaps write your Fundraising Page for your website, follow a few simple rules to help you get started:

1. Write your bid in full.  Just sit down and write (you can worry about flow later, now it’s about getting it all down).
2. Then put it down, go away – even leave it for a couple of days if you need to – before coming back and editing it with fresh eyes.
3. Make sure the sentences are short and snappy; that the paragraphs don’t drag on for pages; and that you’re not repeating yourself.
4. Be ruthless. Pretend someone else wrote it.
5. Once you’ve done this, get someone who doesn’t know your project or organisation well to read it. Do they understand what you’re trying to achieve?

For more ideas about writing with passion, I like this post from Jeff Brooks on How Not to Be a Boring Fundraiser.  I like it because it’s simple:

“Think of your mission as a destination.  It’s not about processes or philosophy.  It’s about outcomes.”

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Timetable Your Activity for the Week

Following on from my last post, you can also use limited resources better by:

Breaking Tasks into Manageable Chunks

Timetable Activity

It can help, particularly if you have other aspects to your work, if you timetable in activity on certain days or times of the week.  It helps you to manage a varied workload better and it also ensures that you are covering everything – even less pressing or non-time pressured activities, which often slip to the bottom of the pile.

Obviously, you will need to have a degree of flexibility with this.  For example, if you only fundraise on a Tuesday and a donor wants to meet you on a Friday, you’re going to have to meet them!  But maybe managing fundraising within your limited time could become easier if you spend 30 mins a day on research or block of a Monday morning?

Get ahead with your social media by scheduling in 1 hour for updates for the week ahead.  Setting aside time on a Friday afternoon to set up your Tweets for the week on Hootsuite or schedule in some Facebook page updates will mean that you’re all set to go for the following week. 

OK, so it will probably take more than an hour the first time you do this but, I promise it does get easier as you get into the habit.  

Just one word of caution, as I said in my last post: Don’t Over Automate. 

Social media works best when you’re present so, while your automation helps to provide a backbone, you still want to check in each day with relevant or newsworthy updates, to retweet others or to comment on conversations you’ve generated.

Share the Load

Who else can manage fundraising tasks in your team?  If the answer is no-one, is there someone there that you can bounce ideas off or ask to be a fresh pair of eyes on your funding proposal?  If the answer is still no, maybe it’s time to think about getting new board members!

Seriously though, if there really is no-one, you could think about speaking with a trusted associate working in an other organisation who could perform this role – or get a mentor so you can offload and bounce ideas.

Who deals with admin in your team?  Could they add in gift recording and managing the thank you process?  I’m guessing they could. 

What about research?  Can different people give up half an hour a day to help you to build your prospect list?  Even if this isn’t practical longer term, if you’ve a campaign coming up or if you’re just launching your fundraising, asking team members to help build a good quality prospect list can get you up and running.

If there really is no-one to help take on the admin, take time at the start to get some good systems in place – maybe get an intern in to help do this – and make sure your fundraising runs like clockwork.

Focus

If you want to avoid becoming completely overwhelmed, decide to focus on getting really good at one thing and spend a month really trying to blitz it! 

So if you want to improve your grant funding success rate, focus on that.  Put the systems in place that you need to support this by allocating time & resources for research, proposal writing and reporting.  Find some fantastic prospects that really fit with what you’re trying to do and get your case for support tuned and ready to go!

Or perhaps you have a campaign coming up that you’d like to get wider support for and have decided you need to focus on social media to do that.  Spend time deciding on your strategy, choosing your platform and engaging that audience.

Or maybe you wan to get your Board more involved in fundraising and need to raise awareness by meeting with each of them and gaining an understanding of what they would like or need from you.

Choose one area and focus on it.  That doesn’t mean don’t do anything else but it does mean spend a month where the one aspect you’ve decided is a priority is what you’re spending most of your time on.

These are just a few ideas to help you manage your resources on a shoestring.  But let me know what’s worked for you in the comments below!

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Fundraising on a Shoestring

If you work in a small non-profit, chances are one of your biggest challenges is fundraising with limited resources.  I know because this is one of the questions I am asked most regularly (that and ‘who will give us money?!’)

So, how can you use your resources more effectively?  My number one tip is:

Use What You Already Have – but better!

You don’t need to invest vast amounts of money (that you don’t have anyway, right?) in new systems.  And you don’t have to completely change the way you work to be successful with your fundraising.  Start with what you have.

Boosting Your Events

So, if you already run events, is there any scope or would it be appropriate to invite donors along to these as a thank you or to potential donors as an introduction to your organisation?  You might run events for your clients that a potential donor would be interested in – or where a previous donor could see first hand how their support has helped the people that you help.

Or perhaps you and your staff take part in challenge events for your charity – such as entering teams for marathons or running your own fundraisers.  Is there potential to broaden this out with a call to the general public asking them to get involved too? Start with your neighbours – particularly companies on your doorstep who might be looking for ways to involve their own staff in volunteering or to boost their profile in the local press as sponsors of your event.

Moving on from involvement, you should also think about how you can boost the impact of your events through social media.  For example, you could encourage members of the public to sign up to taking part through Twitter promotions or a Facebook campaign.

Or you could promote your events to your followers on social media AND give your events more impact by tweeting live throughout an event or posting photos and videos of your event onto your Twitter stream or a Facebook page – while the event is happening.  This can help to give people who aren’t there a sense of being involved, helping them to become more engaged with your organisation.  It can also be a good way to promote your sponsors to an even wider audience than those at the event – which should help with your sponsorship negotiation too.

Better Communications

Do you have a newsletter that could be sent out to donors with a cover letter as part of their regular donor communications programme – to keep them at the forefront of their minds throughout the year.

Are you on Social media?  If so, could more of your messages be about fundraising?  And if not, is it worth considering building your online profile either by getting on Twitter, setting up a Facebook page or a YouTube channel? 

My advice would be to start with one channel, be clear on why you want to use that channel and what it is for and really get to grips with it before launching your next social media platform.

Do you have a website?  Most people do these days and if you do, get a donate button on there.  It doesn’t matter if to begin with you’re hardly receiving any donations through this route – you are promoting the fact that people can give and making it easy for them to do. 

Do you communicate with people via email?  And is there scope to develop this?  For example, if you build followers online OR if you have people coming along to your events in person, could you add them to your email list and then, using an email marketing service, you can engage with high numbers of people throughout the year – promoting your events, getting your message out and ultimately, fundraise from this group.

Automate – But Don’t Overdo It

And that leads me nicely on to automation.  If you use an email marketing service, you can set up your emails in advance and send them out as and when people sign up to your list.  So you can create a series of welcome emails that automatically go out as someone subscribes to your list without you having to write out to everyone individually as and when they sign up. 

Similarly, you can automate your Twitter , LinkedIn, Google + and Facebook updates by using a platform such as Hootsuite.  You can literally set all of your messages up to run for the week or month through one platform and then all you need to do during the week is check in and make sure that you’re involved in any conversations that your messages might have generated. Because you don’t want to over automate.

These are just a few tips for using limited resources more effectively by using what you already have differently.  It will create some extra work but it should be manageable within the resources you already have.

So if you don’t produce a newsletter, I’m not suggesting that you start writing one (although it might be worth considering) but try to start with where you are now and build what you’re doing in a structured, easy to manage way.

Next time, I’ll be dealing with breaking down tasks to make them easier to resource but if you’ve any questions or any tips about ways that you’ve used existing resources more effectively to boost your fundraising efforts, leave them in the comments below!

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Successful Negotiation Can Lead to More Money for Your Non-Profit

Many small non-profits prefer not to get involved with sponsorship as they worry that they can’t deliver the promotional benefits or profile that a company may expect.

However, remember that profile and branding is only one aspect of a successful sponsorship.  What a company wants differs from organisation to organisation and you need to think about the potential benefits that a sponsor could receive from getting involved with your non-profit.  Rather than, ‘well, we can’t invite them to the opera or give them branding on every street corner’.

So, my number one tip is:

Start from the perspective of ‘what are the benefits of sponsoring x charity?’

And don’t begin and end with logos and branding.

What about recruitment? Are there companies working in your local area who predominantly recruit either from your community (in terms of the type of people that you work with and for) or you locality (in terms of your geographical location)?  If there are, they may consider supporting you as a good way of boosting their profile and improving their image among potential future employees.

One sponsor I signed up in the past was a new company that had an urgent need for temporary, part-time staff – and the charity I worked for at the time just happened to have people looking for that sort of work as their clients.  So it was an obvious fit.  We couldn’t give them national branding, press stories or fabulous client entertainment – but we could solve one of their immediate problems and that was enough.

Don’t be intimidated by sponsorship.  You are not the small partner who can be steam rollered by the sponsor.  You are possibly the answer to their key challenges.

So what problems can you help a company to solve? Think about:

1. What being involved with your charity means?

2. Can you give a company access to a client group that they want to recruit from?

3. Can you provide volunteering opportunities to a sponsor’s employees that will benefit their personal development?

4. Can you provide access to their key customers (or a group that they would like to become customers)?

5. Does your work resonate with what they do – or have an obvious link to their work/employee profile/CEO interests?

You can read more about sponsorship in my Top 8 Actions to Improve your Sponsorship Success Rate.

Katya Andresen writes about the 4 ways to engage with corporates and gain their support in terms of corporate giving rather than sponsorship but there may be some messages you can take away from this.

Most of all, enjoy it!

Enjoy the creativity that sponsorship can bring to your fundraising.  It allows you to approach your work differently and gives potential sponsors unique opportunities that they couldn’t access without your non-profit.

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Spot the Difference

As I’m about to run a workshop on Successful Sponsorship, I thought I’d talk about the different types of corporate support that your non-profit could benefit from.

But first of all, what’s the difference between sponsorship and corporate giving?

Often the two terms are talked about interchangeably which is confusing – they’re not the same thing.

Sponsorship is a business transaction.  Plain and simple.  It’s not about philanthropy.  It’s about benefits.  What will the sponsor and your charity get out of this relationship?

As a business transaction, sponsorship tends to come out of marketing budgets (although this does vary depending on each company so you’ll need to do your research).  If you’re in the UK, you’ll need to add VAT on top of your sponsorship.  So if you need £10,000 remember to charge the company £10,000 PLUS VAT.  Otherwise, at the end of the tax year, HMRC will charge you 20% and you’ll have to find it out of your own budget.  Sponsors expect it to be added on top, so add it, put it to one side and have it ready for the tax man!

Corporate giving IS a charitable donation and, as such, companies can claim tax relief on the value of their donation.  The flip side of this is that they have strict limits on what they can receive as a benefit.  So, unlike sponsorship, you can’t put a corporate donor’s logo all over your promotional material or give them lots of tickets to your theatre productions (unless you don’t sell them in the first place).  A corporate donation is philanthropic and not about what benefit they will get.  Employees can volunteer for your charity though and raise money through their own events and activities (or getting involved in yours).

The tax situation is different depending on where you live, so be sure to check with your local tax autority BEFORE you negotiate the deal.  But don’t worry about it.  The tax man (or woman) is usually very helpful!

Tell us about your successful corporate partnerships – or ask me questions about sponsorship and corporate donations in the comments below…

Continue reading »]]> Aside from those in your charity who are directly involved in fundraising, do the rest of your staff have a good sense of what it is that you are aiming to achieve – and why?

I always make a point of going out to meet with other staff throughout any charity that I worked with, as creating a fundraising ethos not only makes the job easier but broadens the networks, ideas and opportunities available to the fundraising team (or the sole fundraiser!).

Having worked with large and small charities, those with a ‘traditional’ fundraising background and those who have just introduced fundraising to their charity, I’ve found that raising awareness among the wider staff group not only helps to improve understanding and support but creating a fundraising ethos within your charity can often help with networking and relationship building among broader networks.  It’s even helped me to raise a six-figure lead gift (more of which later)!

WHY?

So, first off, why bother?

Well, perhaps it’s me but my experience working as both an in-house fundraiser and a consultant has been that fundraising is viewed by the wider staff as:

“a necessary evil”

“selling ourselves to the highest bidder”

“something that doesn’t involve me”

“an area that’s of no interest”

“the CEO’s current ‘baby’”

“a passing fad”

In one charity (that will remain nameless) my colleague and I couldn’t understand why there was so much animosity from the other staff – only to discover on going out and meeting with people that setting up a fundraising office had been made possible by top slicing everyone’s budget without any explanation of why this might be important or of benefit to them.  Yikes!  (We did redeem ourselves by bringing in £5 million two years ahead of target AND building a friend-raising programme that continues to engage their wide network of supporters).

Of course, not all comments have been this negative but I have found that generally, the wider staff either view fundraising with suspicion or disinterest not as an area that they could be involved with or that can benefit them.

HOW?

In various roles, I’ve raised awareness in two main ways – first off has been running open seminars for staff, inviting them to hear more about what we’re doing (or aiming to do), why fundraising is important to the charity, what the benefits can be.  These have generally resulted in:

• getting more potential fundraising projects from across the charity (this was the desired outcome at the time);

• increased understanding for me of the work going on in the charity;

• more support from wider staff with fundraising and events;

• more information sharing and involvement – creating a two way communication channel between fundraising and other staff;

• introductions to staff networks that might contribute to or assist with fundraising.

I’ve involved external consultants where I’ve felt that their help/external viewpoint was needed.  Ffor example, in one charity I had just joined there was a ‘them and us’ attitude among the wider staff and I wanted to get them back on side so having an outside view helped to achieve this.  In other circumstances of course, having a consultant there would have the opposite affect.

In another charity, which had a background in community fundraising, I ran a couple of seminars about capital appeals prior to the launch of their major gift campaign for a capital project.  I invited a mixture of senior and admin staff to each seminar – which was interesting in itself as apparently, that wasn’t how they ‘did things’.  These seminars helped to increase awareness of what I was doing, generated discussions about existing networks among staff and resulted in me being introduced to a friend of one member of staff who thought ‘he might be interested in what you’re doing’.  That meeting resulted in the lead gift of £100,000 to kick start the £1 million appeal!

Whether you run seminars about fundraising – around current needs for the fundraising team (for example, if you’re looking for new projects or want to launch a new type of fundraising) – or if you go out and meet with staff individually, it is definitely worth raising awareness among those who don’t work in or with fundraising every day.

WHAT?

Whether a presentation or a meeting with an individual, it’s important that you talk to staff about their concerns about fundraising – if they have any – to try to address those.  If they’re worried that you’re all about pushy sales techniques or ‘selling the charity’s soul’ it’s your job to show them that it’s all about relationship building and giving donors the opportunity to give to a cause they support.  Show that you’re donor centric, demonstrate how fundraising will support the needs of the charity – not just the needs of the fundraising function.

FOCUS ON BENEFITS

• Fundraising can raise the charity’s profile among DIFFERENT networks, broadening opportunities beyond current networks.

• Diversifying income to trusts, high net worth individuals, potential sponsors, the corporate sector and the general public can help to sustain a charity – particularly in the current climate.

• Make it clear that you’re there to support what they do through fundraising – and not detract from their work.

Ultimately, there will be people who want to keep fundraising at arms length but the benefits of involving staff in what you are doing far outweigh the downsides of sharing your aims and objectives.

I know that sharing information or running seminars is just another aspect to add to your workload, particularly in a smaller charity, but getting staff onside can give you a sounding board for your ideas, support for your fundraising, provide a spare set of hands to help out at busy times – and can generally make your working life easier, while also positively impacting on your fundraising.

OK, so you might not raise a six figure gift as a result but you will gain crucial support for fundraising from within your charity.

Create a fundraising ethos and your charity and its donors will benefit now and in the future.

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Red Nose Day 2013

15th March is Red Nose Day – the UK’s high profile fundraising focus for the Comic Relief charity.  And in 2013 it’s not any old RND but the 25th anniversary (a fact that makes me feel rather old.  It can’t possibly be 25 years since I left high school!!).

Each Red Nose Day raises in the region of £75m by encouraging the general public to ‘Do Something Funny for Money’ – encouraging the creative side of the nation (as well as those who want to raise sponsorship for sitting in a vat of baked beans).  Sales of red noses appeal to everyone, particularly children, and up and down the country schools, nurseries, workplaces, universities and pubs take part in the fundraising.

So what, if anything, can small charities learn from Comic Relief and Red Nose Day?  Clearly, you can’t compete in terms of publicity (RND is given over an entire evening on BBC1 as well as programming in the run up to the main event) but are there any lessons you could take from this hugely successful fundraising campaign?

1. TELL YOUR STORY – Red Nose Day shows people where their money will actually go by telling the often times heartbreaking stories of the people that directly receive support throughout the year from Comic Relief grants (which is what RND fundraising money is used for).  Many a RND viewing in our house has involved me, glass of wine in one hand, phone in the other making a donation through tears.  It’s not about being clever or manipulative.  Well, actually, it is clever but it’s clever in that RND shows the donor what difference their money will actually make.  To real people.

2. MAKE IT PERSONAL – yes, Comic Relief needs huge amounts of money to do what they do but they also demonstrate beautifully the difference your £5 or £10 will make.  The most memorable for me being that £5 can buy a mosquito net that will actually save a child’s life.  Powerful stuff to know that wee blue note in your purse (the equivalent of a couple of posh coffees) can save a life.  Can you do similar with your charity?  What difference will relatively small amounts make to you?  And if too difficult to break it down like this, can you show people the part they will play in your appeal?

3. MAKE IT EASY – Watching one of the run up programmes to RND, which featured a story about an 11 year old boy who was bringing up his younger brothers and sisters after losing both of their parents to Aids – my 7 year old saw the text number to donate a fiver and said, ‘You need to do that Mummy”.  So I did.  Talk about seamless.  Text the number, your gift is automatic (via your mobile provider) then I received a text asking me if I’d make the donation tax effective through Gift Aid.  Yes, please.  Two steps, hardly any information required and it was done.  Small charities can’t afford to invest in these type of systems but you can make it easy for people to donate.

• Put a huge donate button on your website that clearly signposts where people should go to make a gift.

• Have that donate button link up to a platform such as JustGiving or FirstGiving or VirginGiving – or any of the others out there – that only asks for the information required and makes it easy for donors to make their gift tax efficiently.

• Give suggested donation amounts so people don’t have to figure out what to give.  Signpost for them what they can give and the difference it will make.  3 amounts max. plus an ‘open’ donation where they get to choose.

• Have a thank you set to go out.

• Collect email addresses as part of this process and add people to your email list so you can keep in touch with news about your appeal/project/charity throughout the year.

4. SURPRISE PEOPLE – there is nothing funny about poverty or the story I just told you about the boy and his family (or the fact that the 11 year old had actually died since making the film) but RND has humour at its heart.  We’re all used to it in the UK now but the original concept meant that people who probably wouldn’t have given to charity before, tuned in to something they were interested in (comedy) and through that medium, were encouraged to give.  It appeals to a huge range of people.  Those who love raising sponsorship to do crazy things, those who’d rather watch comedians being funny, those who like alternative comedy and those who prefer the mainstream.  What can your charity do to appeal to a wide range of people?  Can you run 2 or 3 different kinds of events throughout the year that will appeal to different types of people?  Can you use social media to leverage events – e.g. by tweeting live or taking photos and posting them online – to make those who aren’t there feel part of the action? Can you run different types of appeals or provide a range of ways of people getting involved – events, campaigning, volunteering, social media engagement?

5. PROFILE – RND has a huge profile which no small charity is going to be able to emulate (and most large ones can’t either, so don’t feel too bad).  However, you can use different platforms to raise awareness of your charity.  For example, online through social media or through the local press (who are always looking for a story to run if you need publicity), through networking events, making presentations at Rotary Clubs or business groups – the list is endless.  So where can you raise your profile that won’t cost money or take too much time?

6. CONSISTENCY – Each year, RND has a slightly different red nose design and different TV programmes and events going on but the brand is clear, instantly recognisable and everyone knows what it’s about and what they are asking you to support – the poorest people in the UK and the third world.  Can the same be said about your charity?  Make sure that all of your messages – whether fundraising or not – are consistent and represent your brand.  That way, people will understand what they are giving to without huge amounts of explanation.

Just a few lessons from Red Nose Day – are there any others you think I’ve missed?  Please add them to the comments below – I also appreciate your views.

Continue reading »]]> If you’ve found me here at Activate Fundraising, chances are you’re looking for some fundraising advice and ideas – so here I’ve put together a wee blog roll of my favourite fundraising ideas sources on the web.  All are free and all offer a slightly different perspective on fundraising – be it donors, board engagement, social media.  So grab a cuppa, sit down and get some inspiration to make your fundraising sparkle!

SOFII – I have to start with SOFII (which I’ve featured before) as a great place to get ideas that really make your fundraising rock.  Featuring detailed case studies, a blog written by professional fundraisers and even a thank you letter clinic, this is an excellent resource for any charity looking for inspiration.  Different types of fundraising are presented in different ‘Showcases’: from Campaigns to Major Donors and everything in between.  It’s a unique resource and one I refer to time and time again.

Future Fundraising Now – written by Jeff Brooks, FFN is a resource for professional fundraisers, which looks – not at fundraising from the perspective of the fundraiser but from the perspective of the donor.  Jeff curates content from other sources on the web and posts it here regularly.  It’s definitely a blog worth subscribing to – or adding to your reading list on Google Reader.

Fundraising Coach – written by Marc Pitman, this is more than a blog – although  he does post excellent content on a range of aspects of fundraising: from making the most of your time (in fact he finds an extra month in the year – honest!) to using Google+ successfully.  Marc has a huge amount of experience and delivers training seminars around the world.  His website features information for everyone from the starter fundraising to the more experienced – and he has a range of products available too (some of which you can buy here via my affiliate code).  Even if you’re in the market for freebies rather than products, his website is well worth a visit.

101 Fundraising – is the first ever crowdblog focused entirely on fundraising.  Written by fundraising professionals from around the world, this really is the place to start if you want to put a different perspective onto your fundraising.  With posts ranging from Optimizing your Facebook presence to 7 Things that Will Make You a Better Fundraiser, there’s content here to interest everyone.  It’s an innovative idea that is packed with innovative ideas and one I’d recommend you take a look at.

Katya’s Non-Profit Marketing Blog – if marketing is more of your thing, take a look at Katya Andresen’s blog.  Based in the US but with lessons for everyone no matter where you are, Katya offers fresh insight into marketing your non-profit.  There are often ideas that are easy to implement and, of course, joined up thinking in terms of marketing and fundraising working together.

And finally (because I could literally go on listing blogs all day long) Craig Linton blogs as the Fundraising Detective on a range of topics relating to fundraising.  With lots of information about what works and what doesn’t, it’s a good place to garner some ideas.  He also features a regular blog roll (featuring Craig’s favourite recent blog posts from around the world) and has information about different online fundraising information and ideas.

So that’s my very quick round up as to where I think you should start to look for fundraising ideas online – without becoming too overwhelmed by all the information out there.  And of course, I’d add Activate Fundraising to the list but, as you’re already here, perhaps I don’t need to

Please sign up to receive my regular fundraising ideas and advice (it’s the box on the right hand side of the page) and you’ll also get lots of lovely freebies, including my Fundraising Toolkit, Cheat Sheets and a whole lot more ideas for successful fundraising!

Continue reading »]]> Recently, I ran a survey asking charities about their main fundraising frustrations and challenges. The top 3 challenges were:

• Managing Fundraising within Current Resources (42%)
• Being able to take a strategic approach to fundraising (21%)
• Finding Potential Funding (21%)

The vast majority said that, with regard to their resources, finding the time to fundraise was their biggest challenge (61%) closely followed by finding the time to invest in researching potential donors (44%).

I also asked what charities were going to focus on in 2013 when it came to fundraising and a huge 71% said that making their fundraising more strategic was their main priority.  This is encouraging as – if the main challenge is using resources effectively to fundraise – taking a strategic approach by planning and managing your fundraising effectively is by far the best way to determine how you should use resources to bring in the most money.  It’s also encouraging as, often, where resources are limited, strategy is the last thing on anyone’s mind – far behind bringing in the money.  And 9 times out of 10, it’s the first area that I recommend small non-profits look at in order to structure their fundraising to become more successful.

So taking into account what the main challenges and frustrations are, what are my top 3 recommendations to make your fundraising more successful?

1. Plan – putting the structures in place to support fundraising – from taking a strategic approach to determining fundraising priorities to putting in procedures for thanking donors – having a systematic, well structured approach will help any small charity to fundraise more successfully.  Within the larger plan, you should also consider plans for fundraising activity and using social media (and you can get more ideas as to how to do this by signing up to download my Fundraising Toolkit)
2. Use Your Networks – from staff to board members, look at who you know as an organisation.  Who are your partners, who else gives you funding?  Think about everyone who knows you and who is in their networks to help figure out where you can start to look for money.
3. Leverage what you have – if you produce a members newsletter could you send it or adapt it for donors? Are you on social media and if so, could you use it to build an audience of potential future donors? What events do you run that donors could be invited to or that could become fundraisers for your charity? Look at your existing staff, are there opportunities to diversify their roles helping them to gain new skills and a different perspective of your charity by getting involved in fundraising?

Take a look at my Successful Fundraising video series to get more ideas to help your fundraising to become more strategic; make better use of your resources; and get ideas about where to look for potential donors.  And sign up to my regular fundraising tips and ideas – you get a free Fundraising Toolkit to download too – that’ll help boost your fundraising.

Continue reading »]]> If you’ve visited here looking for fundraising ideas and advice, you’ve come to the right place.  And if you want even more creative tips, I’d recommend that you sign up to my ebulletin.  But, of course, so will just about every other website you come across.  So why should you choose Activate Fundraising’s ebulletin?

Well, you’ll:

• Get lots of great content, tips and ideas delivered direct to your inbox without having to search for it
• Not only get regular news and advice but you also receive a FREE Fundraising Toolkit, complete with Activity Planner, Successful Trust & Foundation Fundraising eguide AND my Fundraising Cheat Sheets – all yours to keep for free
• Get regular ideas to help you to reinvigorate your fundraising – and raise more money
• Be on my exclusive mailing list to receive advance details of products and services before anyone else AND you’ll be eligible for exclusive subscriber-only discounts
• Get tips on planning and managing your fundraising in the longer term

AND most importantly, we’ll give you the tools to successful fundraising that will help you to raise more money for your charity now and in the future.

So go on, pop your name and email address in the box (on the right) and receive your Fundraising Toolkit straightaway!