Guest Post by: Deborah de Castro
In today’s economic environment, it is easy to understand why many donors have had to cut back on their giving. The instability in the work place and the shift of constant economic changes, often in the blink of an eye, has created a challenge for many non-profits.
As I see it, here is the current funding challenge: How can you raise money to meet the long-range needs of the organization, while dealing with the present need to fill the gaps in this year’s budget deficit? Many organizations have found that e-fundraising methods are filling the gaps, by allowing new donors to get involved and providing added incentives for current donors to keep giving.
The method known as e-fundraising is becoming a vital part of survival for many organizations. A non-profit can choose to use one or many channels together at once to reach their desired e-fundraising goal. Today, I want to present you with a list of common tactics non-profits are using to raise money online. You may decide to use some, all, or none of these in your e-fundraising mix, but I hope they will give you a good picture of some strategies that are successfully being employed:
Online Giving/Online Donation – This is the most common e-fundraising format – using a website to receive donations. (PayPal, e-Transfer, Giftworks, Active Giving, stand-along merchant accounts)
Reverse SMS Billing – Using mobile to text in a donation, as was seen in the telethons held around the Southeast Asian tsunami and the tragedy in Haiti. (Mobile Giving, Tex2Help)
Event Web Pages – This method involves setting up a page specific for a fundraising event or campaign. These pages can be fan pages, cause pages, specific event fundraising pages, etc.
Appeals Through Social Networking– Many non non-profits are successful using social network channels to encourage their audience to join the cause, raise money and spread the word. (Common methods include blogs, viral email campaigns, Twitter, Facebook, and more).
Affiliate Fundraising – Affiliate fundraising utilizes a network of online stores to pay you when a product is sold through browser clicks or an application installed that recognizes the purchase & identifies your organization to that purchase. (PPC pay per GoodSearch, Savendonate, and others) This provides a solution for supporters to provide donations without any cost to them.
For more information on how to raise money online, check out: Fundraising on the Internet.
This guest post written by Deborah de Castro, founder of SaveNDonate, a site that offers affiliate fundraising programs for non-profits worldwide.
