If you have set a high fundraising goal for yourself like $5000, you’re probably going to reach a point when all your friends and family have contributed and the donations that once came in droves have now slowed down to a trickle.  What do you do if you’re still short of your goal at this point?

Well, when the going gets tough, the tough get creative.   One good strategy is to hold an offline fundraiser event and then contribute the money you raised to your fundraiser page. read more…

Once you’ve set up your  online fundaising page and started collecting donations, it’s important to keep your friends and family up to speed with the latest news about your fundraising efforts.  The easiest way to do this is through email.

And here’s the big secret to emailing — send out LOTS of them.

The reality is that the majority of your friends and family won’t donate the first time you ask them.  Most people don’t even donate the second time you ask them.  The trick is you have to be persistent and not get discouraged because in the end, the majority of your friends and family will come around for you.  You just have to keep asking.

As a rule of thumb, If your campaign is eight weeks or more,  send out an email every two weeks for the first six weeks and then three to four emails in the final weeks and days before your event or your fundraiser, as people often wait until the very last minute to give and most fundraisers have a big final push at the end.

One question people fundraising always ask me is “how do I keep repeatedly emailing my friends and family without getting on their nerves?”

The trick here is to make sure that your emails are interesting and that they offer some updated news to your donors.  I look at online fundraising as a two-way street.  You can’t just ask your friends and family to open their wallets without giving them something back. You absolutely must give your donors something in exchange for their generous donations, and the best currency to offer them is news and updates about about your fundraising efforts.

When you email your donors with a news update, make the news update the primary subject of the email and the solicitation for more donations secondary.  This way your friends and family will become more engaged in your efforts and will want to give to you instead of just giving to you out of a sense of obligation.

This leads to the next question:

What is newsworthy?

And the answer to this is, Almost everything.

If, for example, you are training for an endurance event such as 1/2 marathon or a marathon, you’ll want to email your friends and family any time you participate in a training race like a  5K or 10K, or you reach a training milestone (e.g. the first time you have a 10+ mile training run).  Tell them about your trials and tribulations.  If you let them know how hard you are working to accomplish your goal, they’ll be more likely to contribute

Even if you’re not training for an event like a marathon, there are tons of newsworthy items you can email your friends about.  Here are some other examples:

• You reach a fundraising milestone (e.g. 10%, 25% or 75% of your fundraising goal)
• You had a great personal experience volunteering for your organization that you want to share with others
• The non-profit you are raising money for is in the news (check the organizations website frequently to see if there are updates)
• You are having an offline event, e.g. a bakesale, a bar night, etc to raise money for your cause and you want to remind people who can’t come that they can still donate online at your fundraising page.

Be a Mensch

Lastly (and this is one of the most important things you need to know), ALWAYS let your donors know how much you appreciate their support.  Be a mensch and be sincere.  Whenever you send out a new email asking for donations, start it off with a “thank you” and end it with a “thank you”.  Remember, your friends are under no obligation to donate to you, so let them know that you appreciate it when they do.

Okay, that’s your primer in emailing.  Questions and comments are always welcome, and if you need more advice, feel free to contact us directly.

Until next week, happy fundraising!

If you want to raise a lot of money for your fundraiser, instead of starting with a large goal like $5,000 or $10,000 it’s better to start with a small goal like $1,000 or $2,000 and then periodically adjust your goal upwards if and when you come close to hitting your fundraising target.

There are a couple reasons for this:

(1) A smaller goal will help you build momentum for your project.

People are more eager to contribute to your fundraiser when they see that you are making progress towards reaching your goal.  For instance, if you set a relatively low goal like $500 even a small number of contributions will affect your percentage raised.  In this example, let’s say you get your parents and your grandparents to each donate $100 on the first day of your fundraiser, you’re already 40% towards your goal before you even start asking other friends and family members.  This will make you look like a fundraising machine and will encourage others to jump on by contributing to your cause.

(2) The second reason starting with a small goal is helpful is because people like to see that their donation is making a difference.

If your goal is $1000, a $25 or $50 donation makes a real difference.  If your Aunt Thelma donates $25 she gets excited because she gets to see that her donation just moved you 2.5% closer to your goal.  On the other hand if you set your goal at $10,000, you might scare off potential donors like Aunt Thelma who might feel like their $25 donations are too small to make much of a difference.

If this strategy has worked for you in the past, we’d love to hear from you.  Comments and questions are always welcome.

Until next time,  Happy fundraising!

- Ethan

The single most important thing you can do to ensure a successful online fundraising campaign is to make sure your first five donors all give big-money donations.

Why is this so critical to your fundraising success? Well, it has to do with something I call the law of monkey see, monkey do.

When people visit your fundraising page, one of the first things they do is check out the donor list to see who has given and what the average donation size is.  Then they donate a similar amount. If they see that most people they know are donating between $50-$100, then they will likely donate between $50-$100 as well. On the other hand, if they check out your donor list and see that most people are donating between $10-$20, then they’ll probably donate between $10-$20 too.

To ensure that your first five donors all give nice big donations, make a list of the top five people you expect will be the most generous donors (e.g. Mom and Dad, Grandma and Gramps, maybe your spouse, a godparent or a close family friend).

Once you pick your “fave five,” ask them in person, call them, or send them an email asking them to donate X amount.  Tell them that you need their help to get the ball rolling and explain to them that if they donate X amount, subsequent donors will be more likely to donate X amount as well.

After your “fave five” have all donated, should you begin contacting your next closest group of friends and family and asking them to donate.  After the people in group # 2 have donated, you can start asking people in your next closest group of friends to donate, and so on and so forth…

Once you have a good number of donations on your page, you can then send the mass email to everyone in your contact book.  By this point, you’ll have a lot of momentum and people will be more inclined to donate.

My sister recently ran a half-marathon and used this exact fundraising strategy to raise $2500 for cancer research.  Before she sent out a single email, she personally asked some of her closest friends and family members to donate $100 each.  After they had all donated, she sent an email out to a second group of friends, but didn’t ask them to donate any specific amount.  Nevertheless, a good majority of them donated $100 as well because everyone else prior to them had already given that amount.  Within a week, and without ever sending out a mass email to everyone in her contact book, she had raised over $1000.  The strategy works really well.  You just have to be a little patient.

I hope this first tip is helpful. Until next week, happy fundraising!