Whether your school has a foundation or if you’re just looking to raise money to fund a specific project, fundraising doesn’t have to be hard. It also doesn’t have to be your typical donut, candle or candy-selling fundraiser either. When it comes to raising money for your school, especially in the middle of a pandemic, online fundraising should be on your radar. Here are some online fundraising ideas for your school that won’t require the labor or time that selling physical items requires.
Donate buttons
First, and maybe one of the easiest ways to online fundraise, is to make sure you are utilizing the ‘Donate” buttons on social media. Because of Facebook’s eligibility requirements, this route would work best for private schools, but it could also work for a public school if you have a school foundation already in place. To activate your donate button for Facebook, the first thing you need to do is make sure that your page is set up as not only a school, but a nonprofit organization. If you can’t remember how your page was set up, that information can be found in the ‘Categories’ section when you click on ‘Edit Page Info.”
Once you have your page categorized as a nonprofit organization, you are ready to sign up for Facebook’s charitable giving tools. This process will also make your page eligible for Instagram’s donate button, as well. With these buttons on your social media profiles at all times, people can give freely when they are ready.
Monthly giving campaign
Throughout the year, getting your students’ parents involved can be done by implementing some monthly giving campaign ideas. You don’t have to solicit donations from them every month, unless you choose to, but picking specific months that make sense for your school could be beneficial. It could be the month of your school’s anniversary each year or it could be a simple holiday giving campaign. To collect donations, try using a free online fundraising website like Donate Kindly. There is a small processing fee, but otherwise, it is completely free to use. It even offers a feature to embed a donation form on your website.
As an incentive for parents and others to give, consider creating a type of donor or booster club. Develop rules for being in the donor club and consider offering exclusive school merchandise as a reward for recurring gifts. You could also give them special seating at sporting events or exclusive access only available at certain giving levels. Whatever you decide, it will be sure to get them excited about giving.
Competition fundraising
We all love a little friendly competition, so why not create a competition to encourage donations to your school? The competition could be between the school’s in your district, specific grade levels, or even between parents of current students and parents of alumni. Using one of the methods mentioned above, get your donors to leave a note with which team they are donating on behalf of. Then, each day at a specific time, you can update everyone with who is in the lead through social media. In the end, there will be a winner based on the amount of money raised, but you’re the real winner because you just raised much-needed funds for your school with simple online fundraising.
No matter how you decide to fundraise for your school, here are a couple things you should remember: be specific about what the funds will be used for and be transparent about the amount of funds raised. People are more likely to give when they know exactly where the money will be going. Allowing donors to know how much money is being raised will get them excited, as well, about reaching your specific goal.
