I have been Protect the West Coast's Fundraising Manager for a year now. With no real prior hands-on NGO fundraising experience, apart from my Communications Manager role with PTWC, I was dropped in the deep end. Of course, I immediately discovered that raising sufficient funds for a non-profit to keep the lights on is an enormous challenge.
On one hand the 'ask' is easier as you are asking people to support a good cause. But on the other, you are competing with a cacophony of other similar causes, as well as the fact that times are tough and people don't have a lot of money to throw around.
While my media, marketing and sales experience in the private sector has naturally been of huge benefit and there is a strong overlap between comms and fundraising, non-profit fundraising is a different animal to commercial marketing, requiring fresh creative thinking to stand out from the crowd and solicit sufficient, ongoing support.
Our team have come up with a couple of new fundraising concepts that we will be testing in the coming weeks and months. I am gravitating towards and enjoying email as a communications and fundraising tool, so my focus will be on that aspect, but of course, we will also be promoting our campaigns on social media etc.
What do you think? Do you think this is a good approach or are there better ways to raise funds from the public? Any further advice would be much appreciated. This stuff is hard, but we are getting there!
Taking our cues from environmental NGOs that we admire, such as The Surfrider Foundation, Protect the West Coast is embarking on a series of weekly themed email and social media public fundraising campaigns.
Although we have secured some great corporate and private backing in recent months and our branded merch is ticking over nicely, like all NPOs we always still need more support to achieve our aims.
Every little bit counts, and this is where individual donations, no matter how small, can make a huge difference – especially if they are recurring.
'Buy us a (virtual) coffee every month' is the first of our new campaigns. By skipping the cost of a latte or cappuccino, we are appealing to our supporters to instead commit to R30 a month to help us Protect the West Coast.
Sign up now: https://bit.ly/3UL6rID
PS. The cup is not included, but we also hope to add this to our product range soon!
#nonprofit #fundraising #ptwc #NPO #westcoast #illegalmining
Sr. Director, Core Donor Fundraising and Operations at the American Red Cross
1wThanks The J.M. Smucker Co. for supporting the Red Cross and being there for families when disasters strike. #giveasnack