As we gear up for the festive season, we are celebrating the Dec days of Christmas, as well as the best in digital achievement, with Dec days of ’Best Of’ lists. Covering everything related to the charity tech sector, join us every day for new ’Best Of’ lists.
Digital fundraising campaigns reached new heights in 2019 - here are ten outstanding campaigns that ran during the year: Movember’ TikTok video campaign: The men’s’ health charity has been moving away from its reliance on November moustache growing fundraising efforts in recent times, but showing off facial hair is still at the core of its activities. This year Movember teamed up with short-form video platform TiKTok, encouraging supporters to make videos of themselves showing off their moustaches or talking about what the charity means to them. TikTok agreed to donate £1 up to a maximum of £10,000 for each video using the hashtag #Movember.
Cancer Research UK’s Alexa virtual quiz Running a quiz is a proven fundraising technique, but many charity supporters are put off by the fact that they have to source questions and host the event. Cancer Research UKI’s Stand Up To Cancer Quiz initiative neatly sidesteps these issues by using comedian Joe Lycett as a digital quizmaster within an app which runs on any Amazon Echo device. This enables supporters to concentrate on the fundraising aspect of the event.
WWF UK’s tribute fund website WWF UK’s online tribute fund website allows supporters to set up a fundraising page in tribute to a loved one. The campaign was launched in response to enquiries from WWF UK members asking how they could make donations in memory of a friend or family member. The site encourages users to share tribute pages and fundraising progress through their social media accounts.
Oasis Partnership’s online celebrity auction Charities often receive items to be auctioned off or used as prizes, but raising the maximum amount of funds from these items is often a problem. Buckinghamshire mental health charity Oasis Partnership solved the problem of turning exclusive photographs of music celebrities including Ed Sheeran and Stormzy into cash by running an online celebrity auction using the Donate digital fundraising platform.
Christian Aid’s virtual gift shop The charity offers a range of virtual gifts in its Charity Gifts shop, and this year it focused on combatting the effects of gender inequality. The virtual gifts on offer included a £40 weaving loom for a woman in Afghanistan, a £28 emergency shelter for her family, and a £93 child-friendly space to help children in refugee camps feel safe. Every online purchase acts as a donation to the work of Christian Aid and its local partners.
Project Waterfall’s UK Coffee Week tap to pay campaign The UK Coffee Week digital fundraising campaign saw thousands of coffee shops and foodservice outlets let their contactless card readers take fixed £3 donations without any interaction on the part of the retailer. This meant that coffee drinkers and other shoppers who do not carry cash could make a contactless donation to the charity - which brings clean water, sanitation and education to coffee-growing communities across the world - in the same way that they tap to pay to buy their morning coffee.
Unicef’s Cryptocurrency Fund UN children’s charity Unicef’s Cryptocurrency Fund allows it to take donations from anywhere in the world using the Bitcoin and Ether cryptocurrencies. A problem in the past with donations made in cryptocurrencies is that the value can be very volatile, but Unicef’s fund will hold and disburse donations in the same cryptocurrency, and initiatives funded through it will sign contracts in cryptocurrency as well.
WaterAid’s Access Denied to Clean Water interactive site WaterAid’s "360 degree interactive digital experience‚Äù allows potential supporters to view short films, photos, and text while they follow members of a Madagascan family as they collect water, prepare food, and dig a well. The campaign, which hopes to raise £2m, aims to increase engagement by offering supporters the opportunity to see why their money is needed and how it is used to help the people in the communities where WaterAid works.
Prostate Cancer UK’s upgraded donation system Not strictly a digital fundraising campaign per se, the charity’s overhauled digital giving and payment system allowed it to increase its online donation income by a third. After identifying that a quarter of all its regular donations and about one-third of one-off gifts were made through digital wallets, the company upgraded is online payment capabilities to include Google Pay, Apple Pay, and PayPal.
Tiny Tickers Giving Tuesday appeal Tiny Tickers is a relatively small charity, but its Facebook fundraiser combined with its text donation platform and online donation platform found success by tying an online donation drive to the Giving Tuesday event which took place in early December. In part thanks to the awareness it garnered through Giving Tuesday, the charity raised three times more than it had hoped for through its digital fundraising activities.