Fundraising tips

The St Joseph’s Thame Building Fund has been running for over 18 months, and this blog has been going for about six months. Along the way we’ve learned quite a bit about fundraising – especially for a small, local charity like ours.

I thought it might be useful to share some thoughts on our approach that might be of wider interest.

1. Set a (realistic) target

We have a very specific long-term target for our fundraising, but even if you are running an ongoing fundraising effort it’s important to set measurable goals. We set up a project plan for our target in Excel, which breaks down by month what we need to achieve. We used some historical data, plus some educated estimates about future events to build our plan. We now measure our performance against it every month. The satisfaction of hitting your targets is fantastic!

We also link our fundraising targets to a calendar of events so we make sure we don’t miss any fundraising opportunities.

2. Market yourself and communicate with your contributors

We spend quite a while making sure we market ourselves so that people know what we were doing and why we were doing it. This blog is part of that effort, and apart from the time it takes to update, it’s totally free, provided and hosted by WordPress.

We send a regular newsletter to the school’s parents, and have tried out some ‘alternative’ marketing efforts like our Moo reminder cards. We have set up a fundraising ‘wall’ and a ‘thermometer’ in the school hall which are regularly updated with our progress. We also ran a logo competition, which was an inexpensive way of raising our profile – and also gave us a ‘brand identity’ that we can use on all our communication.

Never stop thinking about how your charity can position itself in the local community – and never stop communicating with the people who support you.

3. Look for opportunities to extend your contributor-base

We’ve got a lot of money to raise, and we’re a relatively small school. While a lot of our fundraising comes through the parents, we also need to extend opportunities for others to contribute. Local businesses have offered great support – and we do our best to thank them publicly for their contributions.

We can also extend our fundraising through events like the CPM Thame 10K, which allows us to ask for sponsorship from our work colleagues, friends and family – a much wider group.

It’s also well worth looking for fundraising opportunities that don’t directly cost your contributors. For example, the Easyfundraising site makes a donation every time you shop online – but it doesn’t cost you a penny.

4. You can’t fill up a bucket with footballs

It’s easy just to focus on large, organised fundraising events, like our successful cookery demonstration. But it’s also important to have a set of ongoing, smaller events that over time will add up to a significant contribution. Easyfundraising is a good example of this, as are collection tins, direct debits etc.

You can’t fill up a bucket with just footballs – you also need some tennis balls, some ping-pong balls and some marbles!

Anyway, just some fairly random thoughts on our own experience. The main things are to be organised, be open and be tenacious!