Trends and ideas in digital fundraising
Author: Chris Trevorrow and Jigna Vyas Gosal
The Charity Digital online fundraising conference is an event we try to log onto each year, as we did in December 2024. There is usually an eclectic range of speakers to share ideas and highlight best practice. Here are some of our takeaways:
Crowdfunding
Successful crowdfunding involves a well organised, motivational campaign run over a relatively short period of time. It involves identifying a giving platform that best meets your requirements, drawing on your existing supporters to demonstrate a groundswell of support and creating a compelling story. Businesses may use equity based and reward-based crowdfunding but most not for profits focus on donation-based crowdfunding with the potential to add low value rewards to add an extra incentive to donors.
Sadie Jones is a social entrepreneur whose CIC SheBeasts provides fitness support for women who have experienced trauma. Sadie recently ran a crowdfunder on Just Giving over 60 days with a target of raising £10k to support the setting up of an academy. Sadie kicked her campaign off by engaging with her community supporters to raise an initial £2k and used this to demonstrate their high level of local engagement. She persuaded local gyms to donate vouchers that she could use as rewards to incentivise higher levels of donation. She also recorded the progress of volunteers who were engaged in a challenge to help develop an engaging story to maintain interest over the 60 days. SheBeasts achieved their target and were able to use it to secure matched funding and encourage higher levels of support from local businesses.
Taking a collaborative approach to fundraising
This panel session comprised organisations that had experience of working in partnership. By expanding their networks and by creating a memorandum of understanding, they had been able to amplify their message and increase levels of donor awareness of their causes.
The panellists emphasised the need to engage with a different mindset moving away from feeling they were competing for a finite resource ‘a scarcity mindset’ to a ‘growth mindset’. Working with other organisations can give access to a greater range of funding opportunities that may be outside the mission of an individual organisation. Collaboration can also enhance the appeal to a wider range of funders by demonstrating greater impact.
One of the panel, Green empowerment is a US based not for profit that partners with local organisations across the world to deliver renewable energy and safe clean water. It creates networks of local practitioners to champion community solutions that can benefit from shared training, knowledge and collective fundraising. They also highlight the benefits of developing short impact reports cobranded with their partners.
Using social media to convert followers into donors
This was an engaging presentation by Rachel Collinson author of The Giving Code. Rachel emphasised the need to create lasting relationships with donors tapping into what motivates them to give on a repeating basis. Rachel took to task social media campaigns that use guilt to provoke one-off responses using images of suffering. As an example, Rachel shared an image of a distraught woman cradling a child in front of a destroyed building. Her point was that the image didn’t tell the woman’s story, it evoked pity or even revulsion rather than empathy. Donors who feel empathy with a cause are more likely to want to help create meaningful change over a longer period.
Rachel went on to highlight the benefits of researching donor personas through surveys and interviews to understand the values that drive their philanthropy. SH Schwartz’s Theory of basic human values identifies 10 basic human values which he suggested respond to three universal human needs around biology, socialisation and survival. For example:
- Those with values tied to tradition, conformity and security are motivated by protecting their loved ones and fostering a sense of belonging.
- Those with values relating to universalism, benevolence and self-direction may be more interested in causes relating to social justice and having a sense of agency in improving the world.
- Those with values relating to power, achievement, stimulation and hedonism are motivated by how others see them, they are more transactional wanting something in return for any donation.
As an example, a charity seeking to protect children from online abuse identified that most of their donors came from group 1. However, their proposed campaign featured a distressed child and a message of overwhelming need that made the viewer feel guilty and powerless. The message was revised to engage the viewer in helping the charity overcome the problem by getting involved in showing their support for their work by donating but also by engaging with them on Facebook and getting involved in promoting a petition.
In addition to the conference Charity Digital also provide insightful articles on a wide range of digital topics, including Top fundraising trends for 2025
