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Raising Funds Online Through Your Website

By: Tracy Whitelaw - Updated: 7 Jan 2017 | comments*Discuss
 
Online Fundraising Online Charities

One of the easiest and quickest ways of fundraising can be utilising your own website or simply surfing the web. There are a variety of emerging new ways to fundraise online, as well as some of the more traditional methods. Whether you’re working alone or for a company, contributing towards fundraising online can be a very rewarding and straight forward process. There are a variety of different ways to do this, each bringing their own rewards.

Using Existing Websites to Fundraise

If you want a very straightforward approach to fundraising online, you can simply search for an existing charity and donate to their cause. You can look up the charity by name on any search engine or you could find some websites that specifically deal with helping out charities. Some of the best are outlined below:

  • www.justgiving.com
  • www.networkforgood.org
  • www.firstgiving.com

All three of these organisations are committed to providing links to charities online that you can support. By visiting their pages it makes it very easy to simply choose the charity that you want to donate to and you can either donate through the website, organise events to raise money for a certain charity or set up your own fundraising website on their behalf. If you do decide to set up your own free fundraising page through one of these websites, you can start collecting donations immediately and they can claim Gift Aid automatically. You can completely personalise your site with your own information, photos and messages. This means that although you’re helping out a charity, you’re actually creating a page that you can share with friends too. Some of the largest charities allow you to help them out in this way. Whether you’re interested in raising funds for animals, children, disabled people, elderly, human rights, medical or any other kind of charity, you’re able to help through sites such as those mentioned above. The great thing about this kind of fundraising is that friends can look you up by name and find your fundraising page and donate directly to it. If you’d rather go directly to a charity website and fundraise that way, it can be as simple as looking up their website and clicking on a donate button. Many of them will also allow you to embed this button on your own website so that anyone who visits your personal page can help out your chosen charity too.

Accepting Donations Online

If you decide to accept credit card donations online for your fundraising drive, you’ll need to ensure you’re fully set up to do so. There are a variety of different ways that you can do this. If you have a donation button, then make sure that it’s an easy process for any giver to make a gift of money. Usually no more than four steps is about right to get someone to donate to your cause. These steps tend to be – donation amount, donor information, verification and then a follow up thank you. There are a variety of different systems that you can use to collect money online so check which one will be best for you. Many people now choose to use Paypal as it accepts currency in any form and can be deposited straight into your bank account when you say so. Also, it’s a reliable way of exchanging money and many people trust it. As someone who is collecting money for a fundraising drive, it’s important to know that people who do want to donate from your website feel comfortable doing so. There are other alternatives to paypal, but it is the most widely known and accepted.

Other Ways of Fundraising Online

If you have your own website you can get involved in an affiliate scheme to try and raise some much needed funds. What this basically means is that a company will arrange with you to pay a fee for any traffic that you send to their site. Affiliates post links to the companies website and are paid a certain amount per person who transfers from their page to the company page. This doesn’t take much to set up and can be as easy as adding a link into your website. The commissions that are earned can be very good and can be donated directly to your charity cause. Dependent on which company you affiliate with, the fees earned can be vastly different. Always check first also whether you’re linking to a reliable site.

Using Email as a Fundraising Tool

Many people are hesitant about using email as a form of fundraising. This tends to stem from the notion that many people see unwanted emails as spam and therefore a nuisance. One of the most important ways to approach email fundraising is to try to target people who are already interested in your cause. Keep a contacts list of supporters or previous donors as well as a list of anyone who has signed up for information on your fundraising. This way you can keep them up to date with news via a regular newsletter and also target them for fundraising. If you have a mailing list database then your job will be easy when it comes to mass mailing requests for donations. Try collecting individual email addresses when you hold fundraising events. That way you know that everyone on your list is happy to be involved with your cause in some respect and you’re not causing a nuisance by emailing them.

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