A Few Fundraising Ideas

One of my many jobs is working for a homeless services agency in Pasadena. After our last development staff meeting, in which we all seemed down regarding the financial outlook for the coming year, I did some thinking. The following are a few of the thoughts I have been playing around with in my head on ways to potentially increase revenue and awareness, even if it just helps ever-so slightly. Some of these thoughts aren’t completely fleshed out and are merely extensions of some things we already do, but I wanted to share them. Send any additional thoughts my way. I’d appreciate them.

More grassroots fundraising

• Firstgiving – We already have an account with them that we use for our Bowl-A-Thon. For no additional cost we allow individuals to create their own fundraisers, we just need to promote it.
• Facebook – We have a Facebook page that we update occasionally. It wouldn’t take much work to encourage staff to create their own profiles and promote the heck out of us to friends and family.
• Encourage participation in outside events such as marathons, etc.
• Promote our services and provide our wish list to local churches and businesses during Hunger and Homelessness Awareness week in November, and year round.

Additional resources for driving new, and repeat, visitors to our website

• Create a weekly blog featuring program updates, client success stories, an update from the Executive Director, etc.
• Place client success stories in a more prominent place on the website to show that we are making a difference
• Start an e-Newsletter
• Use Google Adwords

Increase size of donation link on website so that it is more visible