New year, new opportunities to give
Howard Lake | 13 January 2004 | News
Festivals and seasonal holidays are easy and useful hooks on which to hang a fundraising appeal, especially online.
Justgiving.com, the online donations service for charities, has made use of the New Year by encouraging its users to turn their New Year resolutions into sponsored activities in aid of their favourite charities.
Christmas is the popular season for charities to launch an appeal in, but there are plenty of other opportunities. Bonfire Night, Valentine’s Day, April Fool’s Day, patron saints’ days – all afford an opportunity for some charities to make a fundraising appeal. Justgiving’s campaign demonstrates that New Year’s Day is just as good a holiday or festival to embrace for fundraising.
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Their e-mail message, accompanied by a pair of steaming and well-used trainers, reads: “Have you been overindulging? It’s time to sort yourself out. Get friends and family to sponsor you to stick to your New Year’s Resolutions and there will be no excuse left… To find out how easy it is to set up your own web page so you can raise money for a good cause while doing yourself good too, just click the button below.”
It’s too late of course to plan a New Year’s fundraising campaign for 2004, but we’ve given you almost 12 months to think about next year’s campaign.
One idea is to emulate The Legacy Promotion which, just before Christmas, encouraged charity supporters to make a New Year’s resolution to leave a legacy in their will.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.