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Fundraising Tuesday: No Volunteers, No Problem–5 Fundraising Events for Small Teams

March 22, 2022 by Dennis Fischman Leave a Comment

A guest post by Howard Gottlieb at Read-A-Thon

From bustling 5Ks to complex community events, you’ve probably run into the same handful of results when searching for profitable and effective fundraising ideas. Yet while these fundraising events can be very engaging and lucrative, they’re simply too involved and need too many hands for your small fundraising team to host.

If you’ve found yourself stuck in this dilemma—looking for great fundraisers that can be pulled off without many volunteers or event organizers—then this list was made with you in mind. Whether you’re a young team just starting your nonprofit or a small but ambitious group of PTA fundraisers, teams of any size, budget, or cause should find a solution that suits their needs among these top fundraising ideas:

  1. Read-a-thon Fundraisers
  2. Google Ad Grants Program
  3. Virtual Merchandise Fundraisers
  4. Matching Gift Fundraisers
  5. Virtual Workshops & Classes

1. Read-a-thon Fundraising Events

Read-a-thon campaigns are an incredibly popular idea for K-12 organizations and can be especially effective for teams who engage with young, developing minds. That being said, read-a-thons can be applied to any organization interested in an educational fundraiser.

Like most a-thon events, read-a-thons are like any peer-to-peer campaign where participants share their donation pages to gain support for a target activity—and in this case, that target activity is reading. But unlike many other campaigns, read-a-thon fundraisers can be managed by a mere handful of campaign organizers, with marketing, communications, and the management of your campaign easily accessible through your online fundraising tools.

For best results, consider investing in a read-a-thon platform. With an affordable, dedicated read-a-thon fundraising solution, you will have access to:

  • Integrated marketing tools
  • Easily customizable fundraising pages
  • Data and reporting features

These tools and the remote capabilities of a read-a-thon fundraiser should allow your small team to handle the entire campaign with relative ease and potentially raise thousands of dollars!

For more information on read-a-thons and other simple, effective fundraising ideas in the educational sector, explore Read-A-Thon’s list of 50+ Elementary School Fundraising Ideas.

2. Google Ad Grants Program

The Google Ad Grants program gives eligible nonprofits the chance to obtain $10,000 a month to put towards ad credits on the Google search engine. To be considered for this program, applicants simply have to:

  • Hold an official 501(c)(3) charity status.
  • Agree to Google Ad Grant’s terms of service, conditions, and certifications.
  • Host a functioning, valuable website adhering to Google’s website policy.
  • Secure a website SSL certificate.

If your organization meets these standards, then you could very well have access to thousands of dollars in Google Ad Grants to raise brand awareness, revamp your online presence, and attract a vast number of new donors.

3. Virtual Merchandise Fundraising Events

Online merchandise sales are not only a profitable, year-round fundraiser, but they’re also surprisingly easy to set up through your website, a merchandise service provider, or a merchandise fundraising platform.

Here are some of the most popular, top-selling items for these kinds of fundraisers:

  • T-shirts, jackets, and hoodies
  • Mugs and water bottles
  • Tote bags and backpacks

Once you’ve decided on your merchandise, be sure to brand these items to your organization. Every time a donor wears or uses them, they’ll be marketing your brand to family, friends, and onlookers.

Additionally, Bonfire’s guide to designing and selling custom apparel offers these tips to ensure your merchandise sale is as successful as possible:

  • Before creating your merch, identify your audience, their tastes, and their interests.
  • Determine the most effective messaging and marketing channels for your audience.
  • Draw design inspiration from past branded materials, new design trends, and popular styles.

Once you have a firm grasp of what marketing strategies your audience responds well to and what they would genuinely want to buy, your merchandise should practically sell itself.

4. Matching Gift Fundraising Events

Did you know that an estimated $4 to $7 billion in corporate matching gifts goes unclaimed every year? A matching gifts fundraiser can help you to take advantage of this untapped well of potential donations and easily maximize revenue.

The great thing is that donors’ employers already have submission systems in place through which many donors should be able to get their gifts matched. Your main job is to promote matching gift opportunities so that your donors know that they could easily be giving double or triple the support to your organization without spending another penny.

To drive more traffic to your website, your donation page, and employers’ matching gift request forms, you could:

  • Integrate your website with social media, posting information about matching gifts and links to your donation page
  • Include promotions about matching gifts in your post-gift acknowledgments and other email communications
  • Integrate a matching gifts database into your donation form, streamlining the entire matching gift request process

These strategies should keep your donors educated about matching gift opportunities and encourage them to take that extra moment of time to submit a request and expand their support.

5. Virtual Workshops & Classes

As remote work and digital engagement increase, many donors are going a bit stir crazy, spending much of their time at home, on their devices, and looking for fulfilling activities. This is part of what has made virtual classes such a popular choice for many fundraising teams.

Streaming an online class is not only a great way to remotely engage your donors and increase donor affinity for your organization, but it’s also an especially easy event to host. All you have to do is choose a topic, select an instructor, organize your agenda, promote your fundraiser, and charge a small admittance fee for attendees to get the stream link.

Take a look at just a few class, webinar, or workshop ideas that you might use to attract interested supporters:

  • Painting, drawing, and crafts. These art-based class topics are a favorite among various age groups, working both as a fun online school fundraiser or a relaxing paint-and-sip for adult donors.
  • Dance and fitness. Promote health and physical activity with a dance, yoga, or fitness workshop. This can be a one-off beginner’s class or part of a recurring series.
  • Professional development. If you’d like to take a more serious approach to your online class, you could conduct a book discussion, an educational webinar, or a lecture about a professional topic that you think your donors would find interesting.

To maximize revenue and increase marketing and engagement potential, you might even partner with a local business or instructor that specializes in your workshop’s topic or activity.

As a smaller, newer, or more local fundraising organization, it can often feel as if you’re at a disadvantage in terms of your ability to effectively fight for your cause. However, while you may not have the same access to campaign resources or volunteers, these simple, manageable, and effective fundraising ideas should lead you in the right direction towards fundraising success!

 


HOWARD GOTTLIEB

Howard GottliebFounder and CEO, Read-a-thon Fundraising Company
Howard Gottlieb has been a serial entrepreneur for more than 35 years. His latest venture, Read-a-thon, is a novel school fundraising concept that truly shifts the paradigm when it matters most. Read-a-thon replaces in-person bake sales, magazine drives and the like with a contactless method of raising much needed cash, one that can be used both in real classrooms and virtual learning spaces. The real bonus? It promotes literacy and gets kids excited about picking up a book.

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Leveraging Google Ad Grants for Brand Awareness: 4 Tips

October 18, 2021 by Dennis Fischman Leave a Comment

Raising brand awareness online can seem challenging at first. The internet is full of a million distractions and competitors, so your organization needs to stand out to the people who matter most: your supporters.

That’s where Google Ad Grants come in.

Google Ad Grants give eligible nonprofits up to $10,000 in ad credit each month. With these ad credits, your nonprofit can place targeted ads in search engine results about topics relevant to your work. Think of how easily you could meet your fundraising goals if you could double or triple the number of visitors to your website!

The key to raising brand awareness is to make sure that your brand is being seen. You can master Google Ads to get clicks online with a little time and practice, and anyone can learn the basics in a few short minutes. To increase your brand awareness with the Google Ad Grant, you should:

  • Design a branded website.
  • Identify high-priority conversions.
  • Create targeted ad campaigns.
  • Meet your supporters’ needs.

We will explore a few tips that anyone can use to gain an edge with their brand awareness online, starting with the center of it all: your website.

Design a branded website.

Your website is the most influential piece of your branding strategy. Remember, a poorly designed or under-used website can say just as much about a brand as an expert one.

An effective and well-maintained website is the headquarters of  your nonprofit’s online success and how well the Google Ad Grant will work. Here are a few things to examine to improve the quality of your website’s branding and functionality:

  • Your mission statement should be featured prominently. Your mission statement is like your nonprofit’s heartbeat. It inspires visitors to take action and gives your brand a chance to speak.
  • Choose your images wisely. Images and infographics provide a splash of color and useful information that can stay with a reader long after they have moved to the next website, but be careful about image sizes. An image that’s too large can make your website take a long time to load!
  • Say what you mean and say it well. The text on your site should be engaging to your readers. Think of your website as an always-on spokesperson for your nonprofit’s brand, and write something that gives life and energy to what you do.
  • Make your website accessible to all. Ensuring that your website follows accessibility guidelines, such as being navigable by keyboard alone or using clear fonts and text sizes, are simple steps that may help your website be fully functional to a wider audience.

Having a quality website is also one of the things that Google checks when examining your application for the Google Ad Grant. Put in the time to make your website into your brand’s helpful home on the internet and you will find that more of your visitors decide to stay awhile!

Identify high-priority conversions.

Getting visitors to your site isn’t everything. You also need to make sure that they are interacting with your site in ways that contribute to your cause. This is called a conversion.

A few high-value conversions include:

  • Increasing donations
  • Recruiting volunteers
  • Connecting with local businesses to encourage workplace giving
  • Getting views or downloads of important content
  • Signing up for an email newsletter

Ask yourself:  What does your organization hope to accomplish? What do they want to be known for? Which statistics might help with future grant proposals or program expansions? Ultimately, the conversions you decide to anchor your brand around will form the basis of how you target your ad campaigns with Google Ads.

Create targeted ad campaigns.

When you post an ad with Google, it doesn’t appear in every search on the internet. Google Ads can only place you at the top of the right search results if you know which searches to target, which will likely require a bit of critical thinking and research.

Spend some time thinking about your cause and your brand. What are common internet searches that your ideal audience might make? Use demographic data and from past fundraising or volunteering if you have it to inform your decision. Prospect research can also help you identify your ideal audience.

For example, let’s say you run a  nonprofit that aims to place stray animals in loving homes. If your organization was hoping to find volunteers, you could target phrases like “where to help animals in my area” or “benefits of volunteering with animals.” However, if you’d rather fundraise, you could shift your ads to target phrases like “support local animal rescues” or “how to help stray dogs.”

As you gain more experience in placing targeted ads. you will see what strategies and marketing channels are more effective to reach your ideal audience.. Your supporters have much to offer, but you need to understand them in return.

Meet your supporters’ needs.

Making a difference in your community is a collaboration between you and your supporters. It is important that you consider what they hope to gain through their volunteering or support for you, and meeting those needs will help to solidify your brand in their mind and build trust.

The Google Ad Grant gives you an easy way to speak directly to them. Think of your targeted ads not as marketing, but as the chance to answer a question, and even get to know your donors’ needs in the process.

Here are a few tips for how to meet potential new supporters where they are:

  • Track past ad campaigns to see which ones work. Google Ads tracks extensive data for you. This allows you to explore which ad campaigns are more successful than others and which goals they are helping you to meet.
  • Tailor your messaging to the campaigns that work best.  Successful campaigns indicate that something is resonating with your readers. Try to focus on what made those campaigns effective as you think of future ads.
  • Connect tailored messaging and your brand. Your supporters will show you which messaging works and which doesn’t. Take what you learn beyond Google Ads and use it to help improve your brand’s tone and voice everywhere that you communicate with your supporters.

The takeaway

Seeking change in your community is a team effort. It means taking the time to listen to your supporters and understand their needs and wants. Google Ads provide a way for you to find new supporters and communicate with them both directly and indirectly, providing essential information you need to help your organization thrive.

The size of your organization doesn’t have to limit how many people you can reach or what you can accomplish. Whether you choose to put the Google Ads to work for yourself or seek the help of Google-certified grant management, there is something for everyone in the Google Ad Grant to increase brand awareness.

 


Grant Hensel nonprofit awarenessGrant Hensel is the CEO of Nonprofit Megaphone, an agency focused 100% on Google Grant Management for nonprofits. NPM is honored to manage the Google Grant for 370+ leading nonprofits worldwide and to be an inaugural member of the Google Ad Grant Certified Professionals community.

 

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Fundraising Tuesday: The Right Tools Help

January 24, 2017 by Dennis Fischman Leave a Comment

Feel like a numberYour supporters aren’t numbers. Why are you keeping track of them with a spreadsheet?

A recent study by Software Advice, a consultancy that helps nonprofits find software, found that 52% of the organizations they studied currently use general-purpose software, such as Microsoft Excel or Google Drive, to manage data. That includes all the data on their donors and prospects.

I feel your pain, nonprofits. You’re strapped for time and short on money. That makes you use the tools you already have–especially if they’re free.

But free is not always the best price.

What it Costs You to Use Free Tools

Using Excel or Google for your fundraising database may be fine if all you want to do is look up what you know about one person. Suppose, however, that you want to:

  • Send a carefully crafted email to only those people who have given more than $100 as a donation and who live in the zip codes closest to your office.
  • Keep track of registration for a gala or other event.
  • Print call sheets for a phone-a-thon.
  • Automatically send a welcome message and a series of follow-ups to new members.

You can’t do any of those directly from free tools.

If you want to send a targeted email message, for example, you might have to create a distribution list in Outlook, export it to Excel, import that to an email marketing system like MailChimp or Constant Contact, compose and schedule the email, and then enter the results back in Outlook–all by hand. What a waste of time! Don’t you have better things to do?

Better Tools for the Personal Touch

“Nonprofits have always tracked donors and contributions, but increasingly, buyers are requesting robust constituent relationship management (CRM) systems and outreach tools,” says Janna Finch of Software Advice, the author of the study.

Why invest in that kind of tool? The paradox is that the more high-tech systems let you keep in touch with your donors and supporters in a more personal way. As Finch explains:

CRMs let nonprofit staff track information beyond a supporter’s name, address and contribution amount, including specific interests, professional experience, relationships, participation in activities, and more. Leveraging this knowledge, fundraisers can create a personalized message that targets a group of supporters that is more likely to turn a fence-sitter into an active donor, advocate or volunteer.

The Power of Personalized Asks

It’s a sad truth that big corporations like pharmacy chains and health insurance companies treat me more personally than the causes I support. Part of the answer is to invest in tools that will let you, the nonprofit, track your relationship with me, the donor, and let me know you care.

Quoting Janna Finch of Software Advice again:

“Here’s a comparison to illustrate the power of personalization. The first is a sample of a generic ask letter sent to all supporters; the second is personalized and targeted to past donors who are also teachers working in a school district the organization serves.”

Generic: Once again, we’re holding our annual drive to collect contributions to supply underprivileged students with school supplies for the upcoming school year. Since our organization relies on the generosity of individuals such as yourself, would you consider a donation to our cause?

Personalized: As a teacher, you are undoubtedly aware of how having the necessary school supplies impacts a student’s educational experience. Thanks to your $100.00 donation last year, 23 underprivileged students in your school district started the year fully-stocked with supplies. Would you consider another donation this year to ensure every student has all the supplies he or she needs?

Neither of these is the ideal appeal letter–but the personalized one will win every time. And you can only write the personalized letter if the data are ready to hand. A CRM tool will help you let the donor know he or she is not just a number to you.

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