Do you want to fundraise for your non profit or charity? With the technology available today, it is easier than ever to quickly create a fully branded fundraising campaign for your charity or non profit organization. We have created a step by step process to help you get your fundraiser up and running fast.
1. Using the right technology
Search for the right technology that you want to use for your fundraiser. Not all technology is paid, but when it comes to running a successful, fully branded campaign, you want to be sure that you will receive all of the necessary functionality such as:
- Exporting donor data.
- Host the campaign on any website.
- Label it as your own.
- Capability to manipulate the functionality of the campaign.
- Support.
When it comes to using technology, you get what you pay for, if you use free fundraising software, do not be surprised when something goes wrong with your campaign or if you receive limited functionality. Choosing a legitimate product that can provide you with real-time support is far more valuable than saving a few dollars. This way you can save time and money from potential disasters along the way.
Make sure you have a set of requirements. Your requirements should have a list of the features needed and the user journey established. Create a list or excel sheet with all of the necessary features needed for your particular solution. Once the list is complete, send a request to the fundraising products that are of interest, to easily compare the differences. This is usually the best way to asses which technology fits your needs the most. In addition, choose a product that allows access to the front end source code. Access to the front end source code can save lots of time, and money in the long run, and will elaborate further on this point later in the article.
2. Connect the payment gateway
Once you have chosen the technology, you will have to process the payments for the fundraiser. Many fundraising campaigns may require for particular criteria when it comes to processing payments. It is best to connect the payment gateway and make several test donations to the campaign before accepting real donations. A good, and safe payment gateway to use for fundraising whether you are a non profit or charity, is Stripe. There are low transaction fees and can be accessible to most countries and regions.
3. Add the content
Once you have chosen the technology, and connected your payment gateway to your bank account, next, is the most time consuming step, adding the content to your fundraiser. You should have access to the front end source code, to manipulate the User Interface (UI) to your standards. You will be restricted by the default UI and features from the product if you do not have access to the front end source code. A great advantage of having access to the front end code is that you can hire a developer if you are having issues with manipulating the default UI.
It is best practice to create all of the content, and have all of the images/videos ready before adding the content to the campaign. This can shave a lot of the time by simply copying and pasting the content.
4. Launch the fundraiser
Once the campaign is all set up, the next step is to launch the campaign. Before launching the campaign, however, it is recommended to do a prelaunch campaign. The idea is that you want to gain a certain amount of pledges or donations on your first day. This will then get more potential backers excited and can help prove that the campaign is more trustworthy. This strategy can be done using a prelaunch landing page, or other data gathering techniques. Each strategy will be different depending on the type of campaign. Below is a video explaining the process in more detail: