Successful fundraising can be very challenging to do, though with the right know how you can easily step up what’s possible, and ensure that your fundraising is truly successful.
Whenever an event goes as planned, smoothly and easily, organisers are inspired to do more.
However, success is determined by many factors including:
- the number of fundraiser attendees
- the money raised
- the number of donors acquired
For new fundraising organisations, the entire process is not easy. You need people to execute your plan. You also require creation of a strategic fundraiser plan so you will know what you should do if faced with a problem. It also helps when your fundraising team has the right mindset, free from any anxiety and focused on the successful outcome intended for your event.
What is a successful fundraiser?
In determining the success of the event, it should start with how staff and volunteers are helping you organise the event. Are they responsive? Do they make an effort to provide their creative input? The success of the event is not determined after the event but before and during the fundraising event. There is only a little chance of succeeding in fundraising if volunteers are not cooperating. Failing to acquire donors will also reduce the chance of succeeding in fundraising.
Getting everyone aligned with your fundraising goals is incredibly important. Just having the management team knowing what is desired is OK, though the best, most successful events come when everyone knows what is needed, and how to measure success so everyone is moving together knowing exactly what the goal is.
How do I ensure successful fundraising?
There is more to a successful fundraiser than just reaching your fundraising target.
You want your volunteers to enjoy themselves, participants to feel inspired, and everything to run smoothly. These three tips can help you ensure that your host successful fundraising campaigns.
Success starts by providing quality training to new volunteers
Leaders cannot expect volunteers to know their role in an instant. They need to learn the ropes before you send them out on a mission.
They should understand the role they play. They should be aware of your mission, vision and objective. Hiring volunteers for the sake of adding people to the group without profiling them will only result in prioritising quantity over quality.
One top tip for success is to get your new fundraisers being mentored and trained by your top fundraisers.
It has been well established that success breeds success. By getting newer fundraisers trained, and motivated, by those who have the best track record will really help you to get the best from any events you are planning now or in the future. When people have confidence in what they are doing, and the best resources in terms of knowing how to do things, and how to respond to changes, communicate and all those other things that combine to create success, then success follows naturally.
Get fundraiser mindset right and every fundraiser will be a successful fundraiser!
Communicate regularly with your volunteers to assure success
Communicating with your volunteers or staff will also help you deal with problems that may serve as a deterrent to the success of your fundraising event.
Identify the obstacles that are stopping you from achieving your goals. Discuss with the team how you can overcome these problems. If time is one of the issues your volunteers are facing, ask them about the most convenient time they can volunteer.
Communication is well known to impact on organisational success.
The most successful organisations are the ones that communicate effectively. When people feel included, and have clear understanding of what is happening, then stronger rapport is built. People feel more valued, and as people feel more valued and listened to, they naturally produce better results. More successful results.
Which means that by having better communication, just that extra little bit of attention to your fundraisers, you will have a more successful fundraising event.
Use social media to boost success and get more attention
Never underestimate the power of social media as it can provide a great way to reach out to people who may be interested in supporting your organisation, but may not have the time to express their interest personally. Keep your page up to date so followers will know what is going on. Provide other options to donate so others will no longer have to make a trip to the bank to make a donation.
An additional benefit of leveraging social media for successful fundraising is that you build a stronger, more successful, online presence.
As your online presence gets stronger, you will naturally attract more attention, from both potential fundraisers and donors, as well as from the media.
One of the biggest challenges facing any fundraising organisation’s success, it attention. It does get easier as more people get to know the organisation, and see activity and results. Often this takes a lot of time, largely because most fundraising organisations get little attention. Though there are outliers that get a bit of media attention due to something unique, or good timing, and suddenly they become incredibly successful with what they are doing.
Using social media, getting your fundraisers interacting, posting, and sharing, helps to garner that success altering attention.
Most fundraising organisations only post content on the day of the event, which is OK. When you create a bigger buzz in advance, showing fundraisers and donors getting excited in the run up to the event, can really boost the opportunity for successful fundraising.
Successful fundraising comes from using all these success habits
A successful fundraising event is a determining factor in your efficiency as a leader. It shows how you are leading the team. There is no such thing as perfect fundraising. Even seasoned fundraisers encounter problems. This is why as a leader, you need to keep a strong and solid team that is ready to face obstacles and bounce back.
By leading in a way which installs these habits for successful fundraising you become able to achieve more with your organisation. More importantly, you become able to achieve those results more easily.
Fundraising need never be difficult.
Successful fundraising can be done incredibly easily.
All that’s needed is the right approach. Whether you are running a fun run event, with added colour explosion, or perhaps a slime spectacular, or even a cookie dough fundraiser, these tips on how to run successful fundraising events and campaigns hold true. Australian Fundraising has a wealth of successful fundraising experience, so when you know you want to achieve the best results from your fundraiser, get in contact with us. Leverage our special online fundraising platform to help reduce stress, and make fundraising go more smoothly. With help from Australian Fundraising your campaign can easily achieve more successful fundraising than is usually possible.
