A community fundraiser offers good scope to charities for gathering much needed funds. Its advantage lies in the fact that it is a community activity, so overhead costs can be controlled. Community participation means enthusiastic support and also good publicity to neighboring communities, whose members are free to come and join the fun.
Start from your objective and plan backwards. What do you wish to achieve from this fundraiser? What are the monetary objectives? In fact, a good idea would be to set up tangible goals instead of money figures. People, both donors and volunteers respond better to objectives such as buying computers for the charity or painting the church, etc rather than money figures.
Connect with other causes, remember you are a charity and your responsibilities are limited only by your heart. If you have a choice of choosing a product or service to put up for your fundraiser that can make a difference to a bigger community than just yours, then choose that.
If there are other charities in the community, try to work synergistically so that there is no fatigue for donors. Host a joint fundraiser and share the funds or see that your event is not scheduled too close to another event. Basically, do not bombard your community with fundraising events in a season.
Follow-up. Don’t just accept money, exchange pleasantries, and forget about the donors. Stay in touch. Remember, it is far easier to retain donors as compared to getting new ones. Use the fundraiser as an opportunity to generate leads and then touch base with the prospective donors on a regular basis. Increase the size of your donor base.
Tap into the power of the internet. Reach out to more people; it is also an opportunity to accept donations online. It is also an opportunity to use images and visuals to great effect. Images work really well. Talk less and show more. Do what works best for you. Does it help more to hold events or is door-to-door canvassing better? The cause that your charity or non-profit espouses would make that much more sense if it touched a chord within the community; it could be education, strays on the streets, economic help for the backward classes, anything. But try to ensure relevance.
