REMOTE AND DIGITAL FUNDRAISING – IDEAS AND INSPIRATION

COVID continues to throw a curveball on our fundraising plans… but with a little smart thinking and a lot of enthusiasm, there are some awesome ideas out there to keep you on track, along your fundraising journey. Your charity really appreciates all the hard work you have committed to, and the team at Soulful Concepts remain committed to helping you to reach and exceed your fundraising goals! 

We want YOU to continue to feel empowered through the support you provide for your charity.  Social distancing and lockdowns don’t have to foil your fundraising fun!  There are many unique ways you can continue to connect with family, friends and work colleagues; raise morale and moulah at the same time.

Here are a few ideas we’ve come up with:

• Karaoke night / competition: stay at home with SingStar and Zoom your friends in to make a night of it. Charge a ticket price to join.
• Keep the kids entertained: are any of your friends isolating at home with their kids?  Could you help with babysitting / entertaining the little ones?  If you’re handy with crafting, storytelling, singing or pretty much anything that might keep some children distracted for a while – why not pull together an hour or two of entertainment and sell tickets for parents who could do with the help. *Lockdown restrictions dependent.
• MAKE your money: get your hands busy by making things whilst you’re at home.  Knit some scarves or hats, sew some calico shopping bags, screen print some t-shirts, create hand-painted greeting cards, artwork, cross-stitch, clay mugs, make jam – there’s a mass of ways to keep your hands busy during this idle time then sell your hand-crafted goods to family, friends, online or at local markets when you can.
• Read-a-thon: you can do this alone or encourage others to get involved with you.  You can either commit to reading a certain number of books by a certain date and have people sponsor you for this.  Or ask people to commit to a certain $ amount for every book you read, then notify your networks as you make your way through them all.  Are you in a book club?  Get them on board with donating their time and efforts to your cause too!
• Raffle: acquire items in any number of ways – perhaps you’re giving your house a clearout and have some awesome stuff to sell, perhaps some local businesses who might be suffering would be happy to provide discount vouchers, perhaps people will be really hungry for Amazon prime vouchers.  Providing people are okay with potentially waiting to receive their prizes, a good old-fashioned raffle is still a really engaging way to fundraise.
• Shave your beard or head: do you or someone you know have a big, bushy beard?  Why not shave it off for a good cause?  Get people sponsoring you, then hold a virtual event where they can watch the shave live.
• Video games competition: if you have friends who love to play video games, why not make a competition of it? Charge a donation entry fee to join, and make sure you have a prize for the winner. 
• Virtual classes: can you cook? Sing? Dance? Teach yoga? Teach recorder?  Why not host a virtual class in something that you know you can do well using Skype or Zoom? Invite your networks to attend for a specified $ amount and share the love.
• Virtual parties: social isolation doesn’t have to mean total isolation.  Arrange a dance-a-long, sing-a-long, Friday night drinks and ask for a ‘cover charge’ for organising it.  Surely lots of people will appreciate the interaction. 
• Virtual Movie night: With virtual movie nights, you can give your members and donors something they’re sure to love while doing good for your organization. Since the beginning of the pandemic, there are a few platforms that help organisations set up virtual movie nights like Teleparty (formerly Netflix Party) or Kosmi (not attached to any one streaming service) that make it simple to send a link inviting event registrants to the virtual movie theater once you’ve started it. Ask for a donation to be part of the fun.
• Virtual Trivia night: While it’s hard to replicate the fun atmosphere of a trivia night with friends at your local pub, that hasn’t stopped thousands of people from getting a team together and having a virtual good time sharing knowledge and winning some great prizes. And you don’t need to get super fancy with organising your virtual trivia event. It’s as simple as setting up a webinar or event in your video conference platform of choice (again, Zoom seems to be the virtual event go-to tool), coming up with a set of questions, then having people register as a team and setting a donation amount to attend.  You can make the event extra fun by offering prizes to the winners. 
• Walk around your home: did you hear about the man in China who ran a marathon around his apartment?  You could take a leaf out of his book and commit to walking the full length of the trek around your own home (or local area) too.  Your Welcome Pack outlines how many kilometres you are going to be walking each day whilst you’re on the trek, and you can replicate these distances at home using an app like Strava to track your distances.
• Un-Gala: Introducing the “un-gala” — same attendees, same cause, same fundraising revenue, but without the hassle of planning an enormous event. An un-gala is the exact opposite of a gala. People simply buy tickets to stay home and not go to an event (you’d be surprised how many people actually prefer that). Organising an un-gala could not be simpler; Set up registrations and promote your event. That’s pretty much it — how the attendees choose to spend their time on the day of the event is entirely up to them. You could take it to the next level too and encourage everyone attending, to buy the same cheese and wine, or snack foods at the shops. Then you will all feel like you are sitting down together.

We’d love to know if you have any more to share too!