Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, many charities have been forced to push forward their engagement with digital fundraising. For some charities, embracing digital methods has led to greater fundraising success than they expected (see our case study of The Rose Playhouse). 

Still, for some organisations we know that digital fundraising can often feel like a dark art.  There is also a fair amount of jargon involved. If you feel like you haven’t quite got a hold of some basic key terms, you’re not alone - this helpful guide produced by Charity Digital might help. 

There are several methods of digital fundraising for organisations to try from crowdfunding, match funding schemes, charity auctions, contactless donations and many more.  It’s a treasure trove!

With all of these options it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and to lose sight of the things you already know. The below examples are intended to bring to light some of the more common methods of digital fundraising, with the aim to help you think through how you could apply these to your organisation. 

1.Facebook Birthday Fundraiser

You will have probably seen someone on Facebook using their birthday to fundraise for charity. In fact, in September 2019, Facebook announced that it had raised $2 billion for good causes around the world since their Giving Tools launched in 2015. Though simple, this method of digital fundraising carries several hallmarks of an effective tool: it is user-friendly, well-known, and personal. Another major pro of this type of fundraising is that there are no administrative or processing fees, meaning that 100% of profits go to your charity.

Clearly there is a lot of potential income for charities to access here – yet, evidence shows that less than 1% of Facebook users have set up a Birthday fundraiser. 

So, how can your organisation tap into this funding stream? The good thing is that Facebook will do a large amount of the ‘ask’ for you – the social networking site automatically prompts users a week or two before their birthday to set up a birthday fundraiser. However, there are over 750,000 organisations to choose from, and the larger and more well-known charities are likely to be the ones at the top of the list. 

Therefore, the key challenge is to think about how you are positioning your charity in the minds of your audience. It might be worth writing a post on your Facebook profile encouraging your followers to select your organisation for the birthday fundraiser challenge and ‘pinning’ it to the top of your page. Once you start getting one or two Facebook birthday fundraisers, you could also spotlight your donors on your Facebook page, celebrating their efforts and giving you the opportunity to emphasise how donations will make a difference. 

Don’t forget to include information about how to set up a Facebook birthday fundraiser on your website - see this example on the Make-A-Wish Foundation’s website for a template on how to do this. 

2. The Big Give Christmas Challenge

The Big Give is the UK’s #1 match funding platform. A registered charity, it has raised over £160m for good causes through the power of match funding. 

The main challenge they run is the Christmas Challenge. The principle is simple: for seven days, it offers supporters of participating charities the opportunity to have their donation doubled – made possible through Big Give Champion funds from philanthropists. Charities can apply to take part in the Christmas Challenge between mid-May and early July for only a small Processing Fee. 

In December 2021, one of the participating charities was Liberty Choir UK, a small charity bringing singing to prison settings. They managed to surpass their target of £40,000 and raise £46,058. This is a great example of how partnership working can lead to greater digital fundraising success. 

3.Virtual Fundraising Events 

Simple sporting challenges are great at getting people involved in fundraising (remember the #RunForHeroes challenge for NHS Charities Together?). Last year, the Natural History Museum set up a virtual running event on the 31st August, encouraging participants to raise money to support the Museum’s work. What was particularly unique about this event though was that it challenged runners to draw a route shaped like an animal, calling it a ‘Virtual Race for Nature’. Participants could track their run on popular apps like Strava or Map My Run and easily share their animal shaped success from there. 

This is a great example of how community fundraising can be digitalised and personalised to your organisation with a creative twist. 

Conclusion

If you haven’t engaged with digital fundraising before, choosing one of the above methods is a great place to start. However, as with all fundraising, it is important to keep your strategy consistent. You will need to think about how to maintain your chosen digital fundraising method with the resources and skills you have available. For example, Facebook fundraisers are more effective if your organisation is generally more engaged on the platform. 

If your organisation wants to build its digital fundraising capacity then sign up here to our new digital fundraising training programme in partnership with Lightful.

How did you get started with digital fundraising? Tell us more via Twitter @artsfundraising