Have you ever been asked to attend a charity event, or to take part in charity fundraising? Did you feel obliged to attend because it was a friend who had invited you? Did you feel as though you were being asked to donate money that you felt would not be put to the best possible use, perhaps because you favour local charities to large national charities? Did you understand fully what your money would be used for?
If you are thinking about organising a charity event, just bear the above questions in mind when inviting people to join you. The key to having a successful charity fundraising event is to generate enthusiasm and passion in those whom you invite so that they will want to attend out of a desire to help. To do this you need to be able to explain in enough detail what it is you hope to achieve with the money raised, in a way that captures and keeps your audience’s attention.
Let’s say you want to raise money for an animal charity. The RSPCA is the obvious choice, since it is a national charity that pretty much everyone will have heard of. But what if your invitees feel that giving money to a national charity is like a drop in the ocean? People like to be able to see where their money is being spent and to see what a difference that money is making.
If it is an animal charity that you want to support then consider looking at the RSPCA Choices page: it has a list of various projects that require urgent funding. You can search for projects that:
- directly help certain animals (e.g. helping to rehome dogs), or that
- support the people involved in making the RSPCA function (such as Inspectors, through the Everyday Heroes campaign which seeks to raise money to train and employ Inspectors to help to rescue or help injured, abused or neglected animals)or that
- is in the greatest amount of need at present.
Visit the Choices page here: http://choices.rspca.org.uk/
You could even add your own project: perhaps there is a local RSPCA shelter that you feel would benefit from having new windows fitted, or new equipment, or just new bedding.
Once you have chosen your project you can create a webpage advertising your chosen cause and your planned event. You can share the page on your favourite social media site, and you can also use the Choices site to download and print other materials that will help to promote your event.
If it is a project that you feel strongly about and can talk about with your peers then you are more likely to be able to convince people that they want to help, rather than simply that they should help out of obligation to you. You can tell them what you hope to achieve and since the RSPCA will provide you with updates on the progress of your project (made by you and others who may be working to support that project) you can update all of those who helped by attending or supporting your event.
[note color=”#fce09c”]Feature Sponsored By
