There are plenty of traditional fundraising methods for charities, all of which have proved effective over the years at filling the coffers. These can include leaflet drops, local small ads, and mailshots, as well as radio and television advertising. These work particularly well if you have a local charity, and people can see the results with their own eyes.
If you run a national charity, however, or you are looking to expand your fundraising efforts beyond your immediate area, you need to look online. This can certainly take things to the next level, but might seem like too big a job to tackle. Rather than not starting at all, there are three areas you can use as a foundation and build from there.
Build or Upgrade Your Website
As a charity, you might already have a website. If you haven’t, then this is the first task you need to tackle, as it serves several purposes. You need a welcoming place for people to make donations and display the results of your work for those that can’t see them in person. This job could be done by yourself, but the chances are that you will get better results using a professional agency that can set things up properly from day one, and maintain the site going forward.
Poorly managed or slow-loading sites are likely to affect the number of donations, so it is important to get this exactly right. Before sending any traffic to it, you need to get it tested, get feedback on what people think, and also find out what would be likely to encourage them to donate more.
PPC Advertising
With your website in place, it’s time to send traffic to it, in as big a volume as you can manage. One way of getting the ball rolling here is to use pay-per-click advertising, which you will no doubt have seen on other websites, social media, and search engine results. Some factors are specific to charity advertising, however, so it might be much more advantageous to find a charity PPC agency, rather than a general one, or try to do it yourself.
By getting specialists on board, you are likely to get far better results than using trial and error with can be a waste of time, and, if you don’t go about it the right way, money as well. PPC advertising can act as traffic on tap for split testing landing pages or checking to see which keywords get the best response.
Website Content
While PPC is instant, using website content can be a much slower process to get traffic. By filling your site with content applicable to your charity, you can be found organically in search engines. This can provide valuable information to potential donors, that could help seal the deal when it comes to their donation.
To Wrap Things Up
Traditional fundraising methods are constantly used as they are proven to get results. If you want to take things out of your local area, or up to the next level, you will need to look online for much larger solutions. You can get instant results from PPC campaigns, but you need to ensure your website is fit for purpose first, and as time goes on, fill it with useful content that could get you extra clicks from organic results.