How to Throw a Fundraiser Event to Help Pay for Medical Bills

Though GiveForward users are clearly hip to the advantages of online fundraising, we’ve seen a great number of them also throw offline fundraising events to help a loved one pay for medical expenses. These users have proven that offline fundraising events can be a great way to supplement online fundraising efforts.

These events don’t have to be extravagant; a simple bar night, dinner function, bowling party or (legal) poker tournament could give your fundraiser a big boost. Simply think of what type of fun your friends might like to have and plan your event accordingly. If you already have a fundraising page set up on GiveForward, you can use that to sell pre-sale and/or raffle tickets in addition to collecting donations from those who can’t attend the event but would still like to contribute.

The inspiration for this fundraising tip actually comes from the “Team Nicole” fundraiser, which has just organized a cornhole tournament for September. Each team’s $40 entrance fee will go towards helping Nicole pay for breast cancer treatment, as will 15% of all food sales at the event and any donations made by spectators. It’s too bad we can’t get to Virginia for this tournament, but we’re sure it will be a smashing success!

If you need ideas on how to plan your own bar night, bowling party or soirée, here are a few more examples of people who have thrown successful fundraising events. You can check out their pages to see what they did right!

Organizers of the “Minty Python Benefit” fundraiser sold raffle tickets and earned more than $20,000 to help a young girl with a rare type of brain cancer.

Organizers of the “Ronai-Going-Away Party and Fundraiser” sold pre-sale tickets and raffle tickets on their GiveForward page and raised more than $12,000 to help pay for chemotherapy and radiation treatments for their friend.

The combination of online and offline fundraising is clearly one that we wholeheartedly recommend. If any of you decide to throw a cool event that happens to be in the Chicago area, please let us know; we’re always up for a good time to help out a good cause!