Community Support for Fundraising
Your local community can provide a strong foundation of motivated individuals and organisations who can contribute to your fundraising efforts with money, skills, time, and other resources. Involving people from the broader community in your fundraising efforts helps to build trust and create a sense of ownership amongst wider community groups. It may inspire more donations and can boost the impact of your fundraising efforts.
Here we’ll look at how you can gain the support and involvement of your community.
Building Relationships Within Your Community
Begin by deciding which members of your community you plan to involve and create a plan of events.
Who to Involve in Your Fundraising Efforts
Before you reach out to community members to engage them in your fundraising, decide who you want to involve. Consider:
- Your congregation
- Your organisation’s leaders
- Affiliated committees and ministries
- Other religious organisations, including churches of other faiths
- Individuals who aren’t part of your congregation, with shared values, who may be open to volunteering
- Local businesses
- Charitable organisations with similar goals
- Local schools
- Other community groups, like Rotary Clubs, youth clubs, and community action groups
- Online individuals and groups who aren’t geographically local, but who would resonate with your organisation’s goals and activities
Engaging with Community Members Regularly
When it comes to reaching out to your surrounding community, rather than planning one-off points of contact, you should aim for regular events and multiple ways to stay in touch. By consistently engaging with community members, your organisation can build relationships and deepen connections. You can also foster a climate of support and involvement, and inspire continued commitment to your fundraising efforts.
To keep in regular contact with community members, hold a range of regular events, such as:
- Community-centric fundraising events, like fêtes, festivals, and jumble sales
- Visits and outings
- Opportunities for community volunteering
- Educational and spiritual enrichment programs
You can also encourage the formation of related clubs, like choirs and hobby groups, as well as offering small group settings for personal connections and discussions. You should also use social media to post regular updates and to engage with followers.
Organising Community-Centric Fundraising Events
Community-centric fundraising events can help your organisation raise donations at the same time as you strengthen community ties. Examples of community-based events you might like to consider for your organisation include:
- Community fêtes, festivals, jumble sales, and other events that bring in the wider community and allow them to participate.
- Community service days where volunteers come together for a specific cause or project, like cleaning up a park or painting a community centre.
- Educational workshops run by community members and groups where they can share their skills and expertise.
- Charity runs or walks.
- Community concerts, talent show, or variety nights.
Effective Communication Strategies
Share your organisation’s mission, communicate with transparency, and use social media to engage your broader community.
Sharing your Fundraising Goals and Progress
When communicating with your community, share your fundraising goals openly. You should update the community with the progress being made towards your goals, and how the funds you raise will be spent. Transparency is crucial for building trust and support within your community. It builds credibility and demonstrates your commitment to openness, honesty, and accountability.
Using Social Media for Continued Community Engagement
Social media offers effective ways to engage with your community, helping to raise awareness and promote your fundraising activities. The broad reach of social media, alongside its capacity to inspire and support real-life interactions and conversations, makes it a vital tool for conducting ongoing community engagement.
To make the most effective use of social media:
- Focus on a small number of social media platforms rather than spreading your resources too thinly across many.
- Pick social media platforms that your congregation and your target community groups are active on.
- Post engaging content with a focus on telling stories and using eye-catching visuals.
- Interact with your followers, ask questions and respond to answers, and encourage conversations to foster a sense of mutual interaction and belonging.
Partnering with Local Businesses
Developing long-term relationships with suitable local businesses can give you access to funding, resources, and talent that can help to dramatically enhance your fundraising.
Benefits of Local Partnerships with Businesses
Partnerships with local businesses can significantly boost your organisation’s fundraising efforts. They can help improve reach and exposure, which may result in greater financial contributions. These relationships allow you to tap into pools of expertise and resources that wouldn’t usually be available to your organisation. Working with local businesses also opens opportunities for joint endeavours and collaborative marketing initiatives.
Approaching and Securing Business Partnerships
Combine warmth and friendliness with a strategic approach to identifying and agreeing on business opportunities. Consider the following steps as a plan of action:
- Identify potential business partners in your community.
- Research those partners to better understand their mission, values, and needs.
- Develop a clear and compelling value proposition that outlines the benefits a partnership with your organisation can offer to both parties, such as opportunities for advertising, positive public relations, or joint product ranges.
- Make an initial connection, whether via email, a phone call, or at a networking event. Introduce yourself and your organisation and express your interest in exploring a potential partnership.
- Arrange a meeting or presentation to discuss the partnership opportunity in more detail.
- Tailor the partnership proposal based on your research and initial conversations.
- Negotiate and formalise the details of the partnership, with a clear definition of responsibilities, roles, and expected outcomes.
- Cultivate and nurture the relationship to try and maintain an ongoing cooperative venture.
Using easyfundraising as a Community Engagement Tool
We’re an online fundraising platform that can help you raise donations and engage with your supporters and wider community.
When people sign up with us, they can donate to charitable causes with their online shopping, without it costing them any extra. All they need to do is shop at one of our 7,500+ partner retailers. When they do, the retailer will donate some of what they spend to their chosen cause. We give people a way to support charities that involves no extra cost to them.
If you register your organisation with us as one of our good causes, your congregation and members of your community can select you as their chosen cause. This means they can donate to you as they shop online.
To turn easyfundraising into a way of raising regular donations for your organisation, you can suggest to your supporters that they join us and pick you as their charitable cause. We’ll also provide you with a host of tools to help you promote your easyfundraising cause page, including pre-written email templates, social media posts and WhatsApp messages.
The Power of Community Support
Gaining widespread and committed support from your community for your fundraising will have a significant impact on its overall success and the donations you raise. Community support broadens your reach and grants you access to expertise and resources. By fostering relations with people from across your local community, you can create a sense of unity, purpose, and shared responsibility. This in turn can strengthening your organisation’s capacity to fulfil its mission and vision.