How to raise funds to help with your campaign!

Some campaigns raise funds from foundations but that’s often super slow. We’re going to make a guide on how to do that soon – but because most campaigns start fundraising online, we have started with this one.

Online Fundraising Tools

To raise money online you need to sign up with an online fundraising platform like GoFundMe.

They’ll securely collect the donations from people — dealing with all the complicated elements like credit cards and bank transfers — and then send the funds to your bank account.

That makes it easy for anyone to donate to your campaign, and it makes it easy for you to receive the money too.

GoFundMe is a good option because it offers its service with no platform fees and a very small processing charge.

Decide what you need the money for

Fundraising is important because it can pay for the stuff that can help you win – and those details are what supporters want to hear about.

The first step to figure out is how you could spend donations if you received them, by answering these questions to come up with a list of potential ideas:

What do you wish you could do?
Free your imagination and go back to your campaign plan to see if there are any tactics or ideas you haven’t used because they were too expensive.

What are you already doing?
If you’re already spending money as part of your campaign, Supporters might be really happy to donate to those activities.

What have you got planned?
If you’ve got an event or meeting coming up, you could ask supporters to donate to help make it amazing.

How to write a fundraiser

Writing a fundraiser is similar to writing a great campaign email — if you haven’t read that guide, that’s the first step here. 

Then with fundraisers, there’s a couple of extra tips:

Talk about the money
Supporters are more likely to donate if you explain what the money will allow you to do, and what specifically you’ll spend it on.

Explain the financial situation
If your campaign doesn’t have any money and the fundraising will help you win, that can be important information to inspire supporters to donate.

Are you special?
Is anyone else doing something similar? If not – say that! Explaining why your campaign is uniquely placed to achieve its goal can make a big difference.

Asking for money online

There’s a couple of very specific pieces of advice that can more than double the amount you can raise online – whether it’s through an email, Facebook post or just on the online fundraising page.

Many online fundraising platforms like GoFundMe already have these in place or make it really easy to set-up, but because they’re so important we wanted to mention them here.

Ask for specific amounts
Asking for a specific amount can really improve your fundraising. You can raise even more if you explain what that £5 will go towards – e.g. £5 will fund 100 posters!

Ask for more than one specific amount
Supporters will normally give exactly what you ask for, but some of your supporters may only be able to afford a fiver, while others will be happy to chip in £50. So ask for multiple amounts.

After people donate — ask them to share!
Sharing your fundraiser on Facebook can increase donations by 350% – and every time one of your supporters shares why they’ve donated it can increase that even further by reaching new networks.

Fundraising is just another way to ask supporters to help. Not all of them will be able to, but for many they’ll be very happy you asked!