Tips and Best Practices - Donation Campaign

Make your campaign as visually appealing as possible, so that people will want to share it with their friends and family. Embed a video story about how the funds will be used, and/or a tug-at-the-heartstrings ask by a beloved community member.

Promote, promote, promote!  Pin your campaign link to the top of your social media feeds, create a hashtag for it, and encourage your supporters to share it widely. Invite your supporters to give and follow up with updates on how much you’ve raised and how much you still need to meet your goal.

If your subscription includes Text to Give, consider enabling that feature to make giving even easier for your supporters.

Increase the power of donations by offering a recurring option. If you offer a $10/month option, rather than a $100 flat option, most people who would have donated $100 will go that route, netting you an additional $20/donor.

Include a progress tracker with an achievable goal on your campaign page, so that your supporters can watch their donations make a difference.

Consider creating your campaign on its own site, rather than on your annual auction site. Not only does this make it easy to track campaign revenue separately, it also creates a distinction between your fundraisers for your supporters. 

If you do use your auction site for a donation campaign, be aware that, unless the donor is logged into your auction site on their guest or online bidder account, their donation will not end up in their auction night cart. Logging in is not required for campaign donations and donations are typically paid for at the time they are made.

While most subscription levels allow you to host up to 20 fundraising campaigns on a site, remember that donations to multiple campaigns create multiple shopping carts and multiple check-out points for the same donor. Consider whether it would make sense (and be easier for your supporters) to combine donation items into a single campaign.