New and amazing tech tools for digital fundraising are popping up from the sudden need to adapt to social distancing as the new norm. Here are 8 great resources and guides that might give you some new ideas of how to change up your events, programs, and tactics. They can likely help you streamline your systems both now and into the future as well!
1. GiveGab Platform and Resources
GiveGab has a range of fees for different nonprofit or school solutions to streamline online giving. This could be a great time to host a “giving day” or even a “giving month” for a particular cause. Even if you don’t want to (or can’t) pay for a service like GiveGab, their site has some very good ideas of the types of fundraisers that would be received well right now and into a new future of social distancing.
Right now, for COVID support, they are offering 2 completely free services.
- P2P Fundraising Suite, free through June 30, 2020, for schools and nonprofits. Activate your network to fundraise for you. (See our article on peer-to-peer fundraising for more help here!)
- Free Community Giving Platform for foundations, to set up campaigns to attract giving for nonprofits in need. This is free through December 2020.
2. GoFundMe Campaigns
GoFundMe is always free for users to set up a giving campaign. In their blog they have some very good free advice posted to help people with setting up a coronavirus relief campaign if they or someone they know is in need. Specifically, they have advice for:
- Single parents.
- Small businesses.
- Low income families.
- Seniors.
- Emergency medical treatment costs.
- Creating care packages with supplies.
3. Bloomerang List of Case Studies
Bloomerang has set up a list of very helpful resources. In particular, they highlight case studies of successful fundraisers during the coronavirus pandemic.
For example, they posted an interview with a charity, Peace Community Center, who transformed an in-person event to a virtual email fundraiser and brought in $118,000! The video is a brief summary on how exactly to do that.
4. World Economic Forum Case Studies of Successful Fundraisers
If you are looking for stories from around the world, World Economic Forum has some great successes posted on their blog. A British War veteran raised $15 million from his garden. He walked 100 laps in his yard before his 100th birthday and piled up the sponsors!
5. Facebook Contingency Plan Group
This private group on Facebook will let in any charity looking for advice or a place to share stories on adapting to social distancing. Sometimes just having a conversation or being part of a group of peers helps tremendously when trying to adapt to new circumstances.
6. DonorPerfect Fundraising Kit
DonorPerfect has a whole kit of resources for fundraising during COVID. They can easily be applied forward to #GivingTuesday after Thanksgiving. They might simply give you some ideas of how to create urgency around your pitch or planned appeal as well.
Also read: 5 Basics to Begin Donor Segmentation
7. Instagram and TikTok Click-Through Donations
Both of these popular social media tools have set up ways for users to simply click through on posts they like to donate to people in need. This means that they can give right through the app itself to your cause if you post an account and get a campaign going! Users are much more likely to give to a charity if they don’t have to leave the program they are in and hunt down your giving page online.
8. 70 Free Resources!!
Tech Networks of Boston put together a great infographic on loads of free tools for streamlining your nonprofit systems. A lot of these could help you manage your fundraising team more effectively from a distance. They can also help you get your donors together and evolve over to more online events. They cover all in one tools for office management and coordination, security, productivity, management, and lots of other helpful topics!
What can really help your communication is different visual representation and graphics tools. You don’t need to pay out huge sums to marketing and digital graphics experts to get some top-notch graphs and charts anymore! And with online information overload, you do need to make sure your impact pops out in a simple yet engaging way.
- Infogram takes your data and makes interactive charts and visualizations. They are not “free” but do claim to give special rates to nonprofits.
- Tableau is another interesting choice, and they do give out free advice and tools to qualifying nonprofits.
It’s never easy to adapt, especially when circumstances are sudden. The good thing, however, about being forced to evolve to social distancing as the new norm, is that we can innovate great ways to do so, together as a nonprofit community. In doing so, we can streamline and improve fundraising not just for these particular circumstances, but also hopefully long into the future.