Improve fundraising in 25 minutes a day

Fundraising is a challenge for all charities, but some simple actionable tips can help superdrive your digital fundraising. 

 

 

Why 25 minutes a day?

 

The Pomodoro Method is a popular productivity tool that involves spending 25 focused minutes on a specific task before taking a five minute break and repeating the process. In a world full of distractions, you can achieve a lot in 25 minutes when you focus only on the task at hand. 

 

 

Ten ways to improve your digital fundraising

 

Each of these top ten tips can be done using the Pomodoro Method and each promises to improve your digital fundraising efforts.

 

 

Create two personas

 

Personas can help you better understand your audience and create more targeted marketing aimed at the people you think will donate. Your personas will be largely based on assumptions, but should also include as much real life evidence as possible. Aim to make them as detailed and specific as you can. 

 

Further information on building digital marketing personas.

 

 

Do a simple review of your analytics

 

Analytics can be scary, but they don’t need to be! Often the high-level information can give you some really valuable insights. Take a look at your most or least engaged posts, who your main audience is, or which buttons people are clicking on in your newsletters.

 

Use a simple regular review process to look at:

• What worked well 
• What didn’t work well
• What have we learnt.

Do this regularly and you will quickly build up a bank of information that can help you to create better content. 

 

 

Run a short creativity session 

 

Bring some colleagues from different departments or areas of your charity together and deliver a short creativity session. It’s amazing the ideas you can come up with in a short space of time. Spend five minutes on each of these activities to gather ideas for content you could create in the coming months:

• Come up with some new content ideas to promote your organisation, share a key campaign or target audience, and run through key content types 
• Ask people to come up with content ideas on their own (this could be done on Post-its or a Mural board)
• In groups of two or three share ideas and ask ’yes and...’ to build on the ideas.
• Ask them to share their favourite ideas with the group
• Get them to vote for their top three favourite ideas and decide on a few you will take forward

 

Create a reel for Instagram or TikTok

 

Reels can be scary and seem time-consuming, but they don’t have to be. Use your phone to create a short reel that is informative, shocking, funny and/or relatable. Follow trends or use popular music and share a story or interesting fact about your charity or beneficiaries. 

 

Don’t overthink it – just give it a go! 

 

 

Promote birthday fundraisers on Facebook

 

Create a post on Facebook and add information to your newsletter about birthday fundraisers and how people can get involved. If you’ve already had some people do Facebook fundraisers, share some examples to encourage others. Include some simple tips on how people can create a birthday fundraiser and how it helps your charity. 

 

 

Create three new posts using one story

 

Stories are essential for digital fundraising. People want to know what or who their donation is helping. Personal stories can help win over hearts and minds, whilst also making what you do relatable and understandable. Think about how you can make your stories memorable and try different ways of sharing your story on different platforms. 

 

 

Thank your current donors 

 

People who have already donated to your charity are more likely to donate to you again. Make sure you thank your current donors – this could include sharing some of the projects their money could have been spent on. Thanking donors publicly can also encourage others to donate too. 

 

Thank your fundraisers in a social media post or your newsletter. 

 

 

Stop asking for money

 

Sorry, what?! Yes you read that correctly. Digital fundraising is not all about transactions. It should be about sharing the work you do and building relationships. This comes first, before asking for money. Instead of creating a post to ask for donations, try some of these actions instead: 

• Make sure your website is easy to find on your social media pages and newsletter
• Encourage sign ups to your newsletter and make sure it’s an easy process
• Create a post sharing why your organisation exists and how you spend donations

 

Sign-up to Easy Fundraising 

 

Register your charity on different websites that enable free donations to your organisation. Registering is easy and once it’s done, you can create a post encouraging others to choose you as their charity of choice when shopping through Easy Fundraising, Amazon Smile, The Giving Machine and others. 

 

 

Try The Coffee Strategy

 

Social media is called SOCIAL media for a reason. Take some time while you’re drinking your tea or coffee to engage online. Facebook has recently made it easier to engage as a page too. Follow this simple process:

• Find relevant hashtags, people, organisations or keywords that are relevant to your organisation 
• Find a post that’s interesting where you could add to the conversation
• Leave a comment/reply
• Find another post and do the same
• Repeat until you’ve finished your coffee!

Spend 25 focused minutes on each of these digital fundraising activities over a couple of weeks and see what benefits you see for your charity’s digital fundraising.

 

Check out our podcast exploring the latest digital fundraising trends: