Fundraising Ideas with Direct Donations

It is very important to make it easy to accept donations from your home page.  When choosing a third party donation processing company make sure that they make it easy and friendly for your visitors to do so.  Do a search and see whom other nonprofits are using and write to their webmaster to find out if they are happy with the processing company.  

Many organizations use PayPal to solicit donations.  The good thing about PayPal is that most people are familiar with this company and probably already have a PayPal account. 

Paypal has a donations service that you can sign up for and add a button like this: 

A Very Cool Free Tool:  Donation Booster

There is a very cool tool that you can download for free that can help with the donation process.  It is Donation Booster.  Donation Booster will ad an interactive donation meter.  So when someone donates money the meter actually moves up...  This might encourage people to donate more money.  I think that this would be especially useful for raising money for certain projects.  For example, if you are a school and need a play set you can set up one of these meters with the goal of the price of the play set and advertise the meter to all the family and friends.  The kids can check every day to see how high the meter got and closer they are to getting a new play set.

Here are some other third party companies to consider:

www.networkforgood.org

www.egrants.org

www.4charity.com offers tools designed to make online giving and donor communication easy and effective.

Here is how www.hopalong.org, an animal rescue organization, solicits donations:   

www.hopalong.org/donations.html

• Sending donations "In memory of .." a cherished four-legged or two-legged friend
• Donating Used Cars
• Adding "A Donation to Hopalong" to a wedding registry!
• Making a monetary donation and having your employer match or double-match the contribution.
• School kids in Oakland have raised money for Hopalong from bake sales or dog-walks
• Buying an extra can or bag of pet food and bestowing it in bins Hopalong has at various locations.
• Responding to our requests for help when we rescue a loving animal that has survived a terrible ordeal and needs special help.
• You can make direct donations to Hopalong through the Guidestar organization. Make a secure donation today using your credit card!

Another site that offers other creative ways for giving money is The Boon County Community Foundation:  www.bccn.boone.in.us/cf/gifts.html

Amazon Honor System - The good thing about using Amazon is that most people already have an account with them so they can pay  using the one click method.  However, they charge 15% of the donation which is much more than paypal 

Offer a free gift with the donation:

It is always nice to offer a "free gift" with a donation.  Again, you must be creative and think about something that your members will value.  Here is a cool idea:

Birthday Bios is a software that produces "The Day You Were Born" Information pages.  You can print them or send them as an email.

This software is a great way to send a thank you to your supporters on their birthdays.  Another idea is to have people fill out their birthday info when they donate money and send them this page as a thank you with an extra bonus.  

Another idea for this software is to use it as a fundraiser.  Simply sell birthday bios from your site for (a donation of) $5-$10.

Taking this a step further (this is sounding like an interesting business too!) you can offers packages whereas you offer to mail (either physical or email) the document to the supporters whole list of family and friends for the whole year!   This would be something cool for someone who forgets to send bday cards (like me!).  

Other give-a-way product ideas:

Check out my section on this site for "selling products"... It talks about making your own information products that are perfect as bonuses. 

I'm always finding cool new ways to fundraise. Sign up for my newsletter and keep informed.

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