Fundraising Ideas
Howard Lake | 4 May 2012
Fundraising Ideas | Different fundraising channels
Since the 1970s charities have become much more sophisticated in how they fundraise, and employ a range of fundraising channels and tools. For example, direct marketing is still the workhorse of many charities’ voluntary income, but various fundraising and commercial ideas have been applied to make it very sophisticated. A/B testing, list-swapping, segmentation and data overlays are just some common practices nowadays.
Charities now will often use a mix of direct marketing, events, grants, legacies, major gifts, digital, telephone and local or community fundraising to generate ongoing income. In so doing, they often outsource some of these activities to specialist agencies.
Business ideas for fundraising
Charities also adopt and adapt ideas and practices from the commercial sector. Oxfam’s national network of charity shops, emulated by many other charities now, is run as a separate trading company, which donates its profits to the charity.
Many charities generate income by selling their services to government agencies under contract to run and implement projects.
Many digital business ideas have been adapted for and by charities. Ideas such as affiliate marketing, rounding up donations as micro-donations, and online shopping are all now popular with many charities.
The idea of fundraising from mobile phones is also being tested by many charities now, whether it is in the form of SMS text giving, regular donations from the donor’s phone bill, or NFC (near field communication) or swiping your phone for contactless donations.
Some of these fundraising innovative ideas have been generated from within charity but an ever growing number are being conceived and made available as services by those outside the sector such as marketing, telecoms, and data experts and philanthropy enterpreneurs.
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.