— Guest blogger, Fiona Smith.
Asking your friends, family, colleagues and random social media contacts for money can be daunting! Even for us fundraising professionals, asking someone to make a donation can result in butterflies in the stomach and your heart in your mouth!
As the Fundraising Manager at Volunteer Service Abroad, one part of my job is to work with my team to encourage and provide support to our amazing volunteers who are all asked to raise $1,000.
For my 40th (eek) birthday last year, I set up a registry with The Good Registry to raise money for another charity close to my heart, Good Bitches Baking, which I have been involved with as a volunteer for almost four years.
My family and friends donated more than $400, which I am delighted to say will be lots of cake, cookies and other treats that can be delivered far and wide by the Good Bitches bakers.
Here are some of my top tips for successful fundraising:
1. Tell Your Story
- Share your passion, why is this organisation important to you? Has it made an impact on your life or on the life of someone close to you?
- Don’t forget that as well as words, photos and videos can also tell a powerful story.
2. Spread the Word
- Tell as many people as possible, friends, family, workmates, people on your sports team. The more people who you ask, the more people who have the opportunity to give!
- It can also be helpful to let people know what to donate. A good way of doing this is to make it relatable, for example, “instead of shouting me a glass of wine on my birthday, I’d love it if you could donate $13 or more to…”
- Think about how you are going to ask. You can use Facebook, Twitter, email or text message. I set up a Facebook Event for my birthday and invited people to donate. It was simple and easy.
3. Follow Up
- We all lead busy lives, it is so easy to think, “Yes, I’ll do that!” and then have to attend to the needs of a child or answer a phone call. Don’t be afraid about asking more than once. People will appreciate the reminder.
- Provide updates of how the fundraising is going. If you are involved in the organisation as a volunteer use this as an opportunity to share more information about your cause.
4. Give Thanks
- Don’t forget to share the love even more and say Thank You!
5. Last but not least, enjoy!
- Fundraising doesn’t need to be hard, and research shows giving is actually good for us — it makes us happier. So embrace the joy of giving, and feel good about sharing that joy with friends and family.
Find out more
You can read more about how Fiona used her birthday for good, why she chose Good Bitches Baking, and how good it felt, here.
Join the good giving revolution
The Good Registry enables anyone from small kids to big corporates to give the gift of giving with charitable donations instead of unwanted gifts.
We're not anti-gifts — we’re just helping to make giving more simple, sustainable and kind.
We have created two simple ways to give through our website:
- Create your own Good Gift Registry for a special event — like Fiona did (e.g. a wedding, a child’s birthday, a milestone birthday) and ask friends to donate to a charity you choose, instead of buying gifts.
- Give Good Gift Cards instead of traditional gifts, to enable others to make donations to charities they care about.
Comments