Check out five types of fundraising that represent fun and creative approaches to raising resources and maximizing your organization’s impact.
Fundraising is a dynamic field with many fun and creative approaches to raising funds. Some types of fundraising involve inviting peers to advocate for your cause. Other effective fundraising strategies involve spreading awareness by networking using various online platforms.
The idea is to find the fundraising types that maximize your organization’s impact. The more your company strives to engage and connect with people, the more likely they will be to donate. Understanding the most effective types of fundraising will help you decide which ideas work best for soliciting donations.
1. Major Donor Campaigns
Most of your donation revenue will come from major donors. Major donors are people who are able to donate large amounts of money or assets. They are often people who have been loyal to your organization’s cause for years. Some of the benefits of major donor campaigns are:
- Better engagement with donors as major donor campaigns are based on relationship-building, personalized interactions, and recognition of individual donors’ contributions.
- Tip: Engagement with major donors is even greater when using a fundraising intelligence platform like Kindsight that provides up-to-date information about individual donors. This information includes how much each donor has given in the past and what’s going on in their life to help you time your donation request appropriately. Generative AI tools then help you create impactful personalized emails and phone call pitches tailored to each donor’s interests and giving history for a higher likelihood of an affirmative response.
- Much more likely for organizations to receive large sums of money. As a helpful flow-on effect, research shows that when a major donor makes a large donation to a fundraising campaign, smaller donors become more inclined to support it, too.
- More credibility for your organization. Having prominent individuals or entities that support your cause will allow them to tap into their networks, potentially attracting media attention and uplifting your organization’s reputation.
Major donors are an invaluable asset in raising large amounts of funds for your organization. These types of campaigns encourage relationship-building through personalized interactions, making these donors feel more connected to your cause. Major donors also add credibility to your organization as they are often influential members of their communities, helping to attract more support from other donors.
2. Crowdfunding
Crowdfunding aims to raise money by inviting (generally smaller) participation from a very large pool of people. Crowdfunding campaigns are usually launched in a relatively short period of time, and an online platform is used to process the donations and send them to the organizer or recipient.
Some of the benefits of crowdfunding include:
- Greater visibility and exposure to a wide range of people.
- An effective way to find niche donors who wouldn’t have seen your campaign through traditional methods.
- A more financially efficient way to raise large amounts of money than getting a bank loan or a group of investors. Research shows that crowdfunding is usually considered a cheaper alternative to bank loans, with an average platform fee of 5% compared to up to 16.06% interest for an unsecured loan from a bank.
3. Peer-to-Peer Fundraising
Peer-to-peer fundraising takes a human approach to soliciting funds for your organization by tapping into the networks of individual support. It reaches a broad audience while making fundraising more personal and engaging. Other benefits of peer-to-peer fundraising are:
- A more inclusive, decentralized, and natural peer-to-peer (P2P) approach to fundraising for your cause will involve your entire community.
- A more humanized approach to collecting donations is to use anecdotal and personal stories that connect with potential donors, increasing the likelihood they will donate. For example, setting up a personal fundraising page with white-label capabilities will allow individual fundraisers to tailor a message that resonates with their audience.
- Stronger ties with donors as you can empower them to propel the campaign forward using their personal message.
Harnessing one’s personal network is a powerful way to raise funds. Individual supporters and their peers can all get involved in the cause and spread the word organically across their networks.
P2P is not only a more organic way to create awareness for an organization but is also a more emotive approach to attracting donors. When all of these factors are combined, it taps into a larger pool of donors who will feel emotionally inclined to donate.
4. Text-to-Give Fundraising Efforts
Text-based giving campaigns enable donors to donate quickly through text messages. This makes this type of fundraising technique very handy for organizations that want to leverage spontaneous giving. Some of the top benefits of text-to-give type campaigns are:
- Saves donors time by allowing them to donate without having to visit a landing page or spend unnecessary time going through the checkout process.
- Optimizes giving during emergency situations where spontaneous giving is needed.
- Donors can give at any time, anywhere, from the comfort of their mobile devices.
Text-based campaigns are an excellent type of fundraising to encourage spontaneous giving. Text messaging fundraisers will enable supporters to donate with just a few clicks. This will expedite the donation process and enable donors to contribute from any mobile device, making the process of donating faster and more convenient.
5. In-Person Charity and Fundraising Events
Most fundraising is done using the virtual world, but in-person fundraising events are still effective ways to collect donations. Marathons, walkathons, and auctions are just a few examples of events that foster relationships with existing and new donors.
Organizations can choose to sell tickets or secure corporate sponsorships for these events. Face-to-face events are also a chance to attract one-time donors who could potentially turn into long-term donors. Some of the advantages of in-person fundraising events include:
- Ability to establish an initial and more personal connection with potential new donors.
- More opportunities to build more impactful and rich relationships with donors.
- A better environment to foster emotionally driven donations.
In-person fundraising events require more resources and finances to get up and running than online fundraising strategies. However, the payoff is that an organization can establish a more personal connection with donors, increasing the likelihood they will donate in the future. Face-to-face events also encourage emotionally driven donations, making donors feel more connected to the cause and motivated to give generously.
Honorable Mentions
Other effective types of fundraising encourage giving from a large pool of diverse and generous donors. The following fundraising methods can help to maximize an organization’s fundraising potential:
- Email marketing: Today, intelligent fundraising platforms backed by behavioral science tailor and create hyper-personalized email marketing campaigns. Email marketing is a classic fundraising method that provides direct contact with potential donors. These personalized and targeted emails can build long-term support for your cause.
- Corporate sponsorships: Corporate sponsorships are payments or in-kind resources that come from companies or large enterprises that support your non-profit’s mission. These sponsorships typically generate large sums of money and function as an act of corporate social responsibility.
- Grant writing: Grant writing is a traditional but very effective way of raising considerable amounts of funds. Nonprofits can access grants by filling out a competitive application that requires a mix of story-telling and factual-based statistics about the impact of their non-profit’s mission. On average, two-thirds of organizations receive between $5,000 and $15,000 in grants.
Raise Money for Your Organization
Different types of fundraising campaigns can be used to help nonprofit organizations raise the funds they need.
- Crowdfunding is an ideal way to reach a large pool of donors from diverse backgrounds.
- Peer-to-peer fundraising takes a more human approach for individual supporters to tap into their networks.
- Major donor campaigns are a great way to target top donors who are likely to give generously.
- In-person fundraising events will encourage more emotionally charged giving and foster longer-term relationships.
Ultimately, successful fundraising requires a combination of strategies that reach out to all types of supporters, help them feel connected to your cause, and increase the likelihood of one-off and repeat donations.
