Fundraising Ideas You Never Thought of

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May 6, 2023
8-Minute Read
by Lori Shecter

This list of fundraising ideas will help your non-profit efforts grow…but only if you use them.  As a non-profit web design team, We Are Immediate is constantly searching for ideas +to help all non-profits reimagine their fundraising efforts.  If you implement this fundraising idea list, I guarantee the results will speak for themselves.

Double the Donation | Get increased donations on your website through corporate matching

Double the donation is a unique tool you integrate with your donation page.  Here’s how it works – Double the Donation has a database of over 26,000 companies that will match your donors’ donations.  Usually, this process is very complex, but they make it EASY for a donor to find out if their company is matching and seamlessly take them through the process.  They have a free trial and to me, this is an absolute no-brainer.

Donor Search | Find  high net-worth individuals and company perfect targets

Donor Search is a robust database that helps you find the companies and individuals that you need to target and build relationships with.  Yes, it comes at a cost, but if that cost can help you increase your donations and corporate sponsorships by 25%, 15% or even 5% isn’t it worth it?  They too, have a free trial and I highly recommend at least demoing their product and getting the free trial.  However, please note that using this software is time-consuming and works best if you have a development person on your staff to devote some time

Your email list | Build it

Apollo.IO is an email database that gives you 100 FREE leads per month and their corporate email addresses.  The best way to use this list is to know who you want to reach and search for them in this database.  That can mean the person in charge of sponsorships or cause-related marketing.

Rocket Reach: A similar tool to Apollo.IO.  Scrapes the emails from Linked In and allows 10 leads a month.  I know that this might sound creepy, but the cat got out of the bag the minute you put your email address into ANY social platform.  No, Linked In isn’t selling your name, data scraping tools are.

Yesware | for great email open rates

I know everyone loves the pictures and beautiful templates that MailChimp, Constant Contact, and others offer.  However, many times your email is dropping right into the promotion tab of Gmail ( which has over 43% of the market share.) Yesware integrates with Gmail and Outlook, and to the ordinary in-box, looks like an email coming directly from you, increasing open and click rates.  The best emails are opened ones!

WordTune | Write your best content

Everyone is talking about ChatGBT.  And if you are not talking about it, you should be.  ChatGBT does help to get the ball started in terms of content however, it sounds very stale.  WordTune is my favorite tool for rewriting content and making it sound more powerful.

Rewritten with WordTune

ChatGBT has become a hot topic. At the very least, it should be on your radar. Though ChatGBT helps get the content rolling, it sounds dry and lacks personality.  Wordtune creates more dynamic content by using more descriptive words.

Storytelling | Your best conversion metric

If you don’t tell your story, and tell it in a compelling fashion, you won’t convince me or others to donate.  These stories should be on your website in multiple areas as well as on your social media.  Your emails should have descriptions of them as well as links to your website.

  • Spend time getting testimonials from clients.  Video works best, but imagery works too.
  • Success stories of how you’ve changed someone’s life.  That can include before and after examples.
  • Building, changing, and creating new programs.  Did you just renovate your space, create a new anti-violence program, or add new staff?  What new things have you created that you can promote?
  • Impact numbers.  Change them monthly so that each time a potential donor comes to your website they are shocked and awed by the amount of impact your organization has.

SEO:  The new marketing tool

It’s not new, but so many people have spent so much time chasing Facebook and other social media metrics, that they haven’t spent enough time on their own social tool…their website.  What have you done to ensure that your website is ranking on page 1 o 2 of Google?  We Are Immediate works very hard at SEO – after all, you found this article, didn’t you?  4 quick tips:

  • Write 2 to 3 articles a week on the success of your non-profit
  • Use Yoast SEO for making sure your content is Google optimized
  • Use a free tool like SEMRush to track your keyword rankings
  • Make sure you have Google Search tools and that your site map is installed
  • Read our SEO article for non-profits

Donation Pages:  Best practices

We’ve written loads about donation page best practices but here are short must have:

  • Make it easy to use
  • Have stories about your impact
  • Have impact statistics
  • Link to your donation page from multiple areas of your website
  • Make it mobile!

A few of our favorites (that we designed)

RYR1 |EWA | FDConline | CCLR | SSSEVA

In summary, I hope this list of Fundraising Ideas was helpful and easy to implement.  I recommend making a checklist and trying to do one of these fundraising ideas once a week or better yet, once a month.

Need help with your non-profit website?  Click here to check out our services and get an estimate for your non-profit.

Have questions? Drop us a line.





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