Fundraising
The Internet, social networks, and online fundraising have added new levels of complexity to capturing donations and meeting your organization's fundraising goals.
Though technology has changed the relationship between organizations and funders, nonprofits and grant makers alike are coming to understand the importance of how hardware and software are essential components to success.
To help, we’ve gathered together information and resources on how to meet the many challenges of modern fundraising.
What Is Online Fundraising?
Technology is changing the way that organizations raise money. From fundraising websites, to accepting donations through social media and mobile “text to give” campaigns, your toolkit is growing. These tools can help you expand your donor base, and identify new supporters to turn them into funders. To get a quick overview of these changes are impacting nonprofits and their work, check out our Future of Fundraising recap.
Once you’ve decided on a path toward online fundraising, you might have some doubts: Who can help? Has this been done before? What’s the best route? Crowdsourcing is one way to help find the answers to these and other questions. Social media is another important item that nonprofits and libraries should have in their fundraising toolkit. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, and even blogs, are becoming instrumental in spreading awareness of causes and raising money. For an introduction to social media fundraising and how it can work for you, watch our free pre-recorded webinar: Introduction to Social Media Fundraising.
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Ways to Make Your Online Fundraising More Effective
When it comes to online fundraising, there is no "one size fits all" magic formula to inspire supporters to give. To see what works best, we looked at more than 180 fundraising appeals by nine national nonprofit organizations. See what worked, what didn't, and our thoughts on why.
In the nonprofit world, donations are a vital part of what we do. Efficiency through technology is important, but at a certain point you max out on stretching every last dollar and need to find a way to increase contributions. How do you go about doing this? Start with your website. When people look at the website of a nonprofit organization, they're looking for evidence that it's a real organization with real people with whom they can really communicate. Read over our Bad Websites, Good Fundraising blog, part of our Sharpen Your Website campaign, to find out what donors are looking for.
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Online Fundraising Help: The Tools and Tech
Accepting online donations is a big and important first step into online fundraising, but it can be a very confusing process. There are many options and it's not easy to determine what the best solution is for your nonprofit or library. Watch this free webinar and learn about the different ways that you can raise money online and the tools to make it safe for your donors.
Online charity auctions can be a good way to raise money, rally support for your cause, and, hopefully, have some fun. Like any special event, though, an online auction requires solid planning and a fair amount of staff time. What it won't require, however, is substantial technical expertise. This is because there are several good online platforms that will host and help you manage your online auction.
Crowdsourcing is used to gather information, have service needs met, get advice, and save money. Distributed fundraising (often called "team" or "a-thon" fundraising) is an aspect of crowdsourcing, and it isn't a new thing. Many organizations have been engaging staff, volunteers, and current donors to fundraise on their behalf for decades. But the definition of fundraising is evolving, and now includes the use of online tools to facilitate fundraising by supporters.
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