5 Easy Virtual Fundraising Ideas to Raise More Money This Year
Fundraising (insert ominous groaning here). Yes, many people don’t like to do it (maybe you do!), or at least it can often feel like fundraising campaigns are becoming increasingly monotonous each year. Not to mention the time it takes to plan, organize, and execute a successful fundraising event. Having a virtual event can help ease some of that worry and tension.
What about the fear of being monotonous or just another white noise, boring fundraiser? We’ll have to make them fun again, won’t we? Let’s spice up your next fundraising event with a few ideas to help you raise more money (while possibly gaining new skills and having a fantastic time along the way)!
1. Virtual Comedy Show
Isn’t laughter the best medicine? Tickle your supporters’ funny bones (and yours) with a virtual comedy show! Host a virtual comedy show on Zoom or other online conferencing software with a professional comedian to create a different and entertaining evening while raising money for your cause.
You can charge a suggested entry fee or offer tickets to varying levels so guests can support you even more. Supporters will enjoy sitting back on their couches while sipping their favorite beverage in the comfort of their own homes as they enjoy some fresh live comedy and laughs. Using FundEasy’s fundraising tools, you can also encourage viewers to donate to the cause directly during the show!
Don’t know an affordable comedian? No problem! With sites like The Bash you can find local talent to help your cause and offer a little more personalized comedy for your community. They’re also going to be considerably more cost-effective (and more straightforward to schedule) than the Hollywood-level celebrities that may come to mind, thus increasing your ROI.
Bonus Tip: Have the comedian for your event post about and share your event (before, during, and after) on their respective communication channels. Having a professional comedian also has the added benefit of promoting your organization and cause via their platforms as well as your own. Nothing like gaining new supporters from the comedian’s website, newsletter, and/or social media outlets in addition to your supporters’ and your own!
2. Social Media Challenge
Start an online video challenge and encourage friends, family, and followers to donate to your cause. Remember the ice bucket challenge? This campaign was so successful that it inspired other non-profits to offer their own challenges to raise awareness and funds for their respective causes.
How to Start: The best part? You don’t need to spend a dime to get started. All you need is a good challenge idea, record and post a video of yourself and/or your team members completing the challenge, and have everyone post/share their posts, tagging the organization.
Sometimes the most effective social media challenges are random and may have nothing to do with your organization. Something simple to do, yet a little challenging (it takes guts dumping a bucket of ice-cold water on yourself), and ultimately fun will keep people engaged because it doesn’t require tremendous amounts of energy on their part.
To help electrify those thinking caps, here are some more examples of past successful social media challenges, including:
No Makeup Challenge (No makeup for x amount of days with a photo showing your support)
Movember: Grow a mustache for November and post pictures with your support for the organization
Book Bucket Challenge: Raising awareness of illiteracy; the challenge: List 10 books that have inspired you on your social media and then challenge friends to do the same
Bonus Tip: If your organization doesn’t have one already, think up a hashtag to use for the campaign and have each post not only contain that hashtag but also have other participants use the same hashtag as well. That way, you can not only track engagement, but you can share their content as well (people love having their content shared by their favorite organizations on social media)!
3. Online Auction
Leverage the power of online auctions for a fundraising event! You can make it really interesting by including your local community, reaching out to vendors, retirees, and local businesses for donation items. Promoting your community can also have huge dividends in the long-term as well!
Bonus Tip: Don’t forget about your social media! It's a great way to spread the word about your event and to show off or promote any high-ticket items to peak interest and gain more supporter participation. Social media is also a great platform from which to share stories about the auction and items all while tying in to the greater story of the organization. Effective storytelling will help take your auction (and social media accounts) to the next level, giving it that personal touch that everyone enjoys!
4. Virtual Run/Walk/Cycle
Encourage your supporters to sign up for an online event and make their donations directly to your cause. Include incentives such as a t-shirt or medal, and while encouraging them to promote the event on their social media accounts. During and after the event, you can have participants post their times and pictures engaging in the event.
What makes a virtual event like a walk, run or cycle fantastic is the fact that supporters can participate from anywhere, and on their own time. Schedule the event for a limited time (typically 7-10 days) with a set distance length. Using FundEasy’s intuitive attendance and peer-to-peer software can help make registration and donation tracking a breeze, with reports that you can generate for future reference and as validation to host future successful events!
Check out more about hosting virtual walks/runs in this recorded webinar!
Even though it's a virtual event, it can still be a great opportunity to raise funds and event support with sponsorships. In fact, the reach for sponsorships may be even greater with the event being virtual, that way you could potentially have local, national, and/or international sponsors participating and sharing your event and cause.
Bonus Tip: People love event apparel and medals (If you have a virtual run, a medal will gain that many more participants. Runners. Love. Medals!). Using a local print shop for shirts (maybe as a donation to your organization while they gain some PR in the process) or simply designing a shirt yourself (with so many options like Custom Ink and Canva, it's never been more affordable and cost-effective), you can gain that much more support while building long-term brand awareness with participants showing their support wherever they go!
5. Online Competition
There’s nothing like good old fashioned friendly competition for a good cause. Develop a challenge or “thon” that your participants can compete in at home and raise funds for your cause. This could be a virtual read-a-thon, gaming challenge (the ultimate excuse to pull out the Nintendo from the closet) or a dance challenge. Have your participants share photos, videos, and stories on social media to encourage others to join and donate!
Bonus Tip: To gain engagement and interest for the competition, create and send out a poll where supporters can choose from a handful of competitions. Give them a set deadline to vote and then initiate the chosen challenge for a competition within a competition, if you will!
Other Competition Ideas
Some other online competition ideas include:
DIY Challenge: Have supporters share a video demonstrating their favorite DIY skills and challenge others to do the same. Each participant who completes the challenge can be asked to donate and tag three friends who will be asked to do the same. Quickly gain engagement and excitement among current and potential followers all while building awareness for your organization. Bonus: you just might learn a new skill along the way!
Quiz Challenge: Create a quiz relating to the cause you are fundraising for and post it on social media. Have your supporters donate for the answer while challenging others to take the quiz and donate as well. Did you know you can create free quizzes on Google Forms and can set them up to retrieve scores and even gather contact information? That way you can keep the competition and awareness for your cause going by sharing winners and even have allotted prizes for the winners!
Tree Planting Challenge: Show your care for the environment while having supporters pledge and donate money to plant a certain number of trees in their area. Then have participants post pictures and videos of their efforts to promote their support for the cause. Make sure they tag your organization in their posts so that you can reshare them and use them for future promotion of the event and your organization (these also make a great video reel to highlight the campaign and the supporters)!
Cook-Off Challenge: Invite participants to share with you what they are making in the kitchen and challenge them to make a special recipe. Donors can vote on the best dish and the winner will receive a prize. You can even make this specific to a particular social media platform for easy and effective monitoring, management, and distribution (Instagram and TikTok are great platforms for participant video creation, with easy-to-use effects and music that anyone can use to add some personality and make the challenge that much more fun and engaging!
Music Challenge: Dance off? Karaoke? Have supporters challenge each other to see who the best dancer or singer is while sharing their favorite song. Have supporters make a donation in order to participate and then have them record and share themselves dancing the night away or singing their hearts out. Be sure to require them to tag your organization so that you can share their flair. You’ll be amazed at all of the great undiscovered talent. Who knows? Maybe you’ll help discover the next Justin Bieber!
Matching Donation Challenge: Ask participants to donate any amount to the cause and set up a system that automatically matches their donation. Hint: FundEasy’s platform and software tools make setting up matching donations a breeze! All you need is your great idea for an awesome challenge! Did you know you can also create an animated fund-meter to show supporters your progress for hitting your goal?
Survivor Challenge: Most of these previous challenges are intended for individual participation. Survivor mode! Change things up a little and divide your supporters into teams and then challenge them to a virtual competition like those previously mentioned (or something completely new!).
Ask participants to donate and post pictures of their progress and the progress of their teams with the winners getting the ultimate bragging rights and maybe even a prize of some sort that highlights and promotes the organization’s cause. The possibilities are limitless!
The Hardest Part
Author Richard Yates once said, “If you don’t try at anything, you can’t fail… it takes backbone to lead the life you want.” Fortunately, you’ve already accomplished the most challenging part of leading a nonprofit: getting it started and off the ground! Maintaining it shouldn’t be difficult, and with FundEasy’s fundraising software products, it’ll be easier than you originally thought!
Coupling any of the above ideas with FundEasy’s fundraising software to help create your own unique and fun virtual fundraising event will only build upon the success you’ve already worked so hard to achieve.
Whether it be building a creative landing page, an invitation for the event, or simply tracking RSVPs and monitoring donations, you can be sure that your fundraising event will get the attention and treatment it needs to be engaging, entertaining, and successful, all while ensuring your team doesn't become overwhelmed with the usual addition of extra duties that typically come with organizing a fundraiser. That’s all in the past now!
Please reach out if you'd like to learn more about our Peer-to-Peer, Attendance, or Crowdfunding products! We can’t wait to learn more about your nonprofit and share how we can help.
Also, if you still need to join, we have an exclusive Facebook Group just for our customers! If you are a current FundEasy Customer and would like to join, go here to learn more and request to be added!
If you'd like to learn more about our Peer-to-peer, Attendance, or Crowdfunding products, please reach out! We'd love to chat.
Also, if you haven't joined already, we have an exclusive Facebook Group just for our customers! If you are a current FundEasy Customer and would like to join, go here to learn more and request to be added!
Madison Hull
This article was inspired by our customers and written to encourage your fundraising efforts. Although we work with nonprofits and events daily, our team members are not Event Consultants. We encourage you to consult with your event consultant, executive team, and/or affiliate organization before making any major changes to your events.
