Step by Step Guide to Fundraising

If a campaign must succeed, it must be backed with a very thoughtful plan. It’s not enough to just start a fundraising campaign; the fundraiser must be deliberate. In this resource are very important steps a fundraiser should include in their plan towards launching a fundraiser and ultimately succeeding.

Step One:

Start by building a team

Crowding is not simply about creating a fundraiser; it requires on-going and deliberate work, and success cannot easily be achieved by doing it alone, so one must first assemble a team of people to make the most of the fundraising experience. Take advantage of the good relationships you have; family, friends and colleagues. These people can be an effective team that would lay the foundation for the larger community that would eventually emerge to help you intensify your message by becoming your public relations advocates; posting your fundraiser to social media, contacting their friends and families via all available channels include physical channels, like events and social gatherings; encouraging them to support in promoting your fundraising campaign, and ultimately grow your fundraiser to reach its desired goal.

Giveyourbit offer tools to enhance your fundraising team. Visitors that come to your page are able to become supporters by signing up. This gives them access to a dashboard from where they can help to promote your fundraiser; invite their friends and share notifications with the fundraising team leads that should be ready to respond to enquiries and to constantly provide updates to the campaign page.

Step Two:

Grow your community

At Giveyourbit, we understand that the unique value of Crowdfunding is not money - it is community, so always have it in mind that the crowd in Crowdfunding cannot be underrated. The success of your campaign will largely be dependent on the rallying of fans and arousing of interests in your fundraising campaign. Family, friend and strangers for that matter, are all useful to not just donating to your campaign, but also to joining you in getting the word out there and ensuring that every contact they make translates to support; either by way of donations or by way of promoting the fundraiser further.

Giveyourbit offers tools to grow your community for the benefit of your campaign. Visitors to your page can share your fundraiser to multiple social networks, and can tap on the ‘Become a Supporter’ button on your page to sign up to a dashboard from where they can invite their friends by email and by phone. Visitors can also join the conversation about your fundraiser right on your fundraiser page; being able to share comments using their Facebook account. They can choose to share their comment activity with their friends (and friends of their friends) on Facebook as well. And this feature includes built-in moderation tools. Visitors to your page can also tap on the tweet button to easily share your fundraiser with their followers on Twitter.

Use emailing to expand your reach

Giveyourbit offers a number of tools, but ensure to use every available tool within and outside the platform to promote your fundraiser. Do not take for granted the value that emailing can provide towards garnering the needed supporters to make your campaign a success. Unlike social media, email allows you to calculate the number of prospective supporters reached, and your email message can include a request for reply, so you know exactly how many recipients of your mail made an effort on your behalf.

Note that the first week of launching your campaign is critical to the success of your fundraiser; critical work is required to build engagement and capture your audience.

Step Three:

Establish your social media presence

Social media is certainly powerful in today’s world where once a message resonates with a good number of people; it has the potential to go viral. Social media is therefore critical to the success of your campaign, particularly with a platform like Giveyourbit where there are available tools to empower your supporters to spread the word about your campaign throughout multiple digital channels. Social media has the potential to strengthen and drive awareness for your campaign, and thus the opportunity it offers cannot be underrated.

Step Four:

Take advantage of offline activities

Your online activities would do a lot of justice to your fundraising campaign, but be sure that if you take adequate advantage of offline opportunities, they would be a massive boost to the extensiveness of your online achievement. You would therefore do well by contacting acquaintances from your school alumni network, neighbours, colleagues from local organizations like churches and mosques, civil society organizations, conference and events centres etc. The goal is to network with as large a community as possible to be a driving force for your campaign towards achieving success.

Step Five:

Constantly update you growing supporters

If people have believed in your cause and have offered their support to amplify your campaign message and have donated to fundraiser, it is only proper to carry them along on your journey to actualizing your goal. Letting them feel a sense of relationship is critical to their continued support and faith in the success of your campaign. Responding to inquiries, answering questions and requesting feedbacks, showing thankfulness and ultimately promoting dialogue will go a long way to sustaining a profitable relationship with your supporters.

Giveyourbit offers relevant tools for you and your fundraising team leads to champion this dialogue by being able to share notifications with supporters and provide constant case updates on your fundraiser page using texts, photos and videos. Videos can be very compelling, and thus they are a sure way to carry your supporters along and make them feel a part of your journey. Ensure to let them know about every occurrence, every progress and every outcome, as we cannot overemphasize the importance of staying in touch and nurturing the relationship with members of your growing community.