Now today, what I'm going to talk about is tips to run an online fundraiser on a super low budget. We help some of our clients run their online fundraisers and obviously they have a budget because they can hire somebody like us. And then there are others where we advise them and we help them put something together they can spin out quickly. Now some of these tricks are marketing tricks and others of them are just really inexpensive ways to get the functionality you need to run an online fundraiser. So I'm going to tell you some of the tricks we use to help them get that done without breaking the bank.
So my tips today fall into two buckets. The first bucket is cost-effective marketing tips. And then the second bucket is functionality tips. Cost-effective platforms are ways that you can run your event online. And really, all of these things make me really excited because if you know me, you know I love a deal. I love shopping at thrift stores, second-hand stores, garage sale, and finding the diamond in the rough. So in my business, I'm always trying to find these awesome services people are literally giving away for free so I can pass them along to my clients.
I'm going to start with marketing. I'm going to give you three marketing tips right now:
We're going to start with the first one, which is to lean into your current assets. Marketing assets are any of the things you have access to within your organization that allow you to build reach. They allow you to connect with people and contact them and make friends, build relationships.
There are so many different assets we have that we don't even think about. When we are planning an event and we don't have a lot of money to put into it, we need to use the assets we already have. So for example, if you have a great Facebook following, a list of mailing addresses, phone numbers, or email addresses, those are things you would use in your marketing to promote your event. Building new assets takes time and time is money, so you're going to use the things you have.
One of the things I really want to encourage you to do is think through how you could build those assets into more assets while you're doing this fundraiser. For example, let's say all you have are phone numbers of your donors. A phone number means you’re going to be calling people, now as you have these conversations with them about donating or your event, you can also ask them:
All those things can be cross-promoted from one to another.
I know you feel like because you're doing this online, you have to have online marketing assets to do it, but the reality is you don't. You can use the assets you have and ask people to go online and give. If you have to—I'm not even kidding—you can sit with them step by step on the phone, you can get into a zoom meeting with them and you can show them how to give. You don't have to have online marketing assets to run an online giving campaign, you need to use the ones that you have if you have a limited budget and you don't have time to build it up.
The second thing we're going to do is find some free creative assets. One of my favorite online services is Canva. I was actually just in Canva today, building the little pictures I put up for my Facebook Lives. And if you don't know about my Facebook Lives, we're doing a series of Facebook Lives where I'm interviewing people who have run successful online fundraisers. They're really fun. So whenever I go to make my little Facebook Live graphic, I use Canva. Canva is an online image editor or graphic design tool. It even has an app. There's a free plan so you can start off there. The free plan has different templates for anything from posters to Facebook posts. There are so many cool templates out there, you can change the colors, you can put in new pictures. They even have these nice templates for your text, so if you're not sure how you want to format the words, you can look through this library of ways to format your text and then you just click on it and drag it over onto your canvas and edit the words in there.
Canva helps you can make things look very professional and it’s free. Whenever you're done with it, you just download it and then use it for whatever you're going to do. Canva is a super awesome way to be able to create very professional graphics and use them to promote Your Online fundraiser. Use Canva templates for your creative assets.
The third marketing trick that is totally free is a MailChimp account. Email Marketing is one of the highest converting mediums, if not the highest converting medium for any of my clients that are doing online fundraising. Obviously picking up the phone and asking people in person converts way higher than email. However, the personal ask you can create in an email is priceless. It's not just some Facebook posts you made to everybody, email makes them feel like they're being spoken to individually. You can personalize the emails using MailChimp by putting in their first name at the beginning or putting it in the subject line. The free Mailchimp account can do so many different things.
An email list up to 2,500 subscribers is completely free on MailChimp. You just upload your list, make your email and send it. MailChimp even has free templates in there too! You can use those and make sure your campaign looks professional and polished. It's a super great service, we use it for all of our clients. Most of our clients use a free account because they don't need more than 2,500 subscribers. So the third tip is set up that free MailChimp account!
For a fully-formatted article version of this podcast, head over to our website: https://mayecreate.com/blog/tips-to-run-an-online-fundraiser-on-a-super-low-budget/
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