What are you looking for?
Raising money online is the latest and greatest thing, and it’s not going away. Numerous ways exist to raise money online, each of which is a little or a lot bit different.
Here’s a breakdown of the major types of internet fundraising :
E-mail solicitation
E-mail solicitation follows a similar structure to direct mail fundraising, and it is probably the most successful type of online fundraising that exists. You build (or purchase) a list of people who know about (or should know about) your organization, and you e-mail them with a request for money.
Monthly giving
Encourage monthly giving programs through email, donate buttons, social media. A monthly giving program focuses on getting people to sign up to give every month automatically. The benefits of this model are enormous, because it gives you the opportunity to multiply any single gift by 12 and keep it going into the future.
Website donate button
If you have a website, you can have a donate button. Encourage people who visit your site to click on the button and make a gift.
Website pop-ups
You can create a pop-up ad on your website that asks people to donate. This is more advanced than the donate button, and can backfire if you set it up in a way that is really annoying. Annoyed people don’t donate, so you’ll want to test this one out extensively to make sure that it’s working the way you want it to.
Text-to-give
Send the right text message from your phone to the right number, and a donation will be made to an organization and added to your phone bill. This method has been used with great success by major national organizations, but does not necessarily work for small organizations. It’s expensive, the donation amounts are small, and people have short attention spans.
Social Media
Asking for donations through social media like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter is a growing trend. You need a compelling story that inspires people to not only give but share with their friends. So far, the best way to use social media is through crowd-funding.
Crowd Funding
Crowd funding is supported by web companies like GoFundMe.com, Kickstarter.com, and Indiegogo.com. You set up a ‘campaign’ that explains your need, and then share it through various social media platforms. The more people share it, the more donations you get. This is probably the primary way people use social media to raise funds.
- Read more about crowd funding here.
Memberships
Selling memberships is not necessarily a web-based method of raising money, but there are lots of web tools that can help selling and managing memberships to your organization. The key to selling memberships is to have an attractive package of benefits that people will use on a regular basis.
Looking for more articles on offertory collections? Try these:
- How will crowdfunding help me raise money?
- Should my website have a donate button?
- How can I encourage monthly giving?
- Should I use text-to-give for fundraising?
- How do website pop-ups raise money?
- How do I get new donors online?
- What can I do to convince online donors to give again(and again)?
Check out The Fundraiser’s Playbook for a full list of fundraising articles.
Would you like to learn more about raising money for Church and Ministry? Check out Letters From The Almoner, now available on Amazon.com.
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com, via Creative Commons License, no rights reserved.
