This winter we are encouraging people to ‘Donate Local’, supporting the charities and community projects in their area that they can really connect with. Covid-19 might have temporarily limited in-person fundraising or events, but it doesn’t mean all is lost.

Following on from our blog earlier this year on making virtual fundraising a reality, here are some tips to help you gather more online donations:

• Make sure people know about you: This may seem obvious, but the more you can make your presence known the better. Do you ever get mentioned in local newsletters or have posters on noticeboards? Do you encourage your known supporters or people you work with to tell people about you? Do you have a website or are you on social media and interacting with the groups for your area? We will have some social media training in the new year to help with this, keep an eye on our events calendar and enews for dates.
• Register on a community directory: North Yorkshire Connect is a free database for voluntary and community groups in North Yorkshire to register themselves and their activities, making it easy for people searching for things to do to find them. If you are based outside of North Yorkshire you can find directories in South and West Yorkshire, such as Rotherham Connect to Support, Live Well Barnsley and the Sheffield Directory.
• Register on online donation platforms: Local Giving, Just Giving and Virgin Money are donation platforms where you can register your charity for people to choose to donate or fundraise for you. However, each one has different conditions in terms of commission taken and if you have to pay a monthly fee to be registered, so it’s worth seeing which one suits you best.
• Sign up to online shopping sites: Amazon Smile and Easy Fundraising are online shopping portals where people can access their regular sites through these, and their nominated charity receives money for every pound spent, without it costing the purchaser or the charity anything! They are free to sign up to and when you do they will email you a link or some wording that you can share with your networks to promote yourselves.
• Other digital sources: If you have a website you can have a clear call to action on there with how people can donate to you, it may be though an external online site like those above, or you may have a function built into yours. It may be that you promote legacy giving to your charity, or ask people to donate in another way, but if it’s not clear on your website, people won’t know! Charity Digital also has this handy guide to donations via social media channels.
• Keep it going: Continue to let people know about the impact donations have on your work, whether that’s through letters or emails to known supporters, phoning into local radio shows if they are covering a relevant topic, or shouting about it on social media.

If you want to know how to make more of virtual fundraising, you can sign up to our training course in January.

You can also find useful resources on fundraising and finances on our Community Support North Yorkshire website

If you are happy to share the impact donations have on your organisation and the difference they can make, please contact us.