Getting volunteers to fundraise for your nonprofit can be challenging, to say the least. It's typically the 'hot potato' committee - a few bold souls are great at it, and if you're lucky, your league, nonprofit, school, or congregation has a handful (or more) of these talented folks. If your group is like most of the ones I'm involved with - you have one or two people who reluctantly step into the fundraising role, but would rather have a volunteer spot on another committee.
We know fundraising is both an ongoing challenge and a critical component of any nonprofit's mission, especially in today's economy. At VolunteerSpot, we've learned, through our volunteer sign up tool, that people are usually happy to help if you ask them to do small bite-sized things, and make it SUPER EASY for them to participate. We believe the same holds true for fundraising. That's why we've partnered with two terrific online organizations that make it easy for ANY nonprofit community group to raise money online.
First Giving lets you create an online fundraising page with your nonprofit’s name and logo, and invite your supporters to email it to everyone they know. Their friends, family and colleagues can donate securely by credit card and first giving will send you donations and give you all the reports you need. Now your group, school, congregation or small nonprofit can have the same kind of fundrasing muscle as larger organizations. And it's free to get started (they charge a small processing fee.)
GivingPal lets you create a shopping link for your charity. Whenever your members want to shop online, if they do so through your link, your group gets up to 25% of sales! They have just about any online store of interest to your members including Amazon, Netflix, Office Depot, Lands End, Zappos and more. Nonprofits that register now could win a $25 gift card and a $25 donation.
We hope First Giving and GivingPal will make it easier for your group to meet it's fundraising goals. Check out our VolunteerSpot Resources page to view our other partners. Please let us know what you think and if you want us to help you find more resources like these in the future.
Great resources - thanks! You are right - I get the sense that noone (really) wants to be on our church fundraising committee, but we all want to raise good money for our programs.
Posted by: 3Ws | February 14, 2009 at 03:27 PM