Charities show recovery and resilience by pivoting to digital fundraising

Fundraising has been turned upside down by people staying in and spending more time online. While many charities have faced a dramatic decline of in-person fundraising opportunities, hope is on the horizon as charity leaders use digital to replace cancelled events.

With a shift from in-person events to a virtual setting, charities have shown that digital fundraising can be successful. We examine how charities have improved their resilience and launched some of the most impactful digital fundraising events.

Charity shops ride the digital wave to offer new services

The past few months have underlined the popularity of online shopping. With stores opening once again, charity shops have had time to increase resilience and have pivoted to take advantage of tech. Gripping firmly onto the online shopping trend, charity shops are now using tech to increase fundraising recovery efforts.

British Heart Foundation has been busy implementing new digital fundraising. Taking note of the shift to online shopping, the charity shop has also diversified where its items are listed, taking advantage of new channels and audiences.

“BHF already has a big eBay operation where we sell high-value and unusual items, 50 of our stores list products on Gumtree and a lot of others use social media. It’s going to become increasingly important that our shops list and dispatch stuff directly online. There are a number of different channels like Depop and Instagram we’ll probably be using a lot more.”

 

Mike Taylor, Commercial Director at British Heart Foundation

For BHF, the first lockdown experience enhanced the charity’s ability to digitally fundraise and shored up resilience for the future, which presumably prepared them well for the second lockdown and beyond.

Charity uses online streaming for subscription-based fundraising

Not missing a beat, charities have embraced digital streaming technology. While charities like Comic Relief have focused on online videogaming, Storyhouse in Chester has also played to its strength in entertainment.

Prior to the lockdown, Storyhouse, the charity managing the cultural centre, typically had around one million visitors per year. The huge number of physical visitors generated around £750,000, equivalent to the vast majority of its trading income.

As an organisation particularly vulnerable to lockdown, the charity has proved its resilience by launching its new campaign New Story Campaign. The digital fundraising campaign includes a £4 subscription to streaming services for UK theatres. The offering is unique in that theatre productions previously enjoyed on stage can be brought into the home.

“We are one of over 500 registered charities that run theatres. Two thirds of them expect to be out of business by Christmas. It’s easy to see why. – putting theatre on a stage right now is impossible. That’s not going to be our future – we are resilient, we’ll come back stronger.”

 

• Storyhouse CEO Andrew Bentley