Help with Charitable Fundraising

Fundraising is the main reason for most charities' existence. They may be wanting to raise awareness of an issue or put things in place for people who are less fortunate than ourselves, or all manner of causes, but nearly all of those things need money to make them happen.

Who Are You Fundraising For?

You might be thinking of raising money from the community for an existing charity or setting up a charity yourself and raising money for that. In both cases the methods are the same but with setting up a charity yourself there are quite a few more things that you need to do first.

Raising funds for a charity you are running or founding yourself means that you will need to register the charity and use its registration number on any material that you produce. You then need to open bank accounts and savings accounts to handle the money, and it's a good idea to make sure that cheque books need two signatures before they will be honoured as a safeguard against fraudulent withdrawals.

Licences For Charity Street Collections And Sales

There are certain charitable fundraising events that you can't just do off your own bat, regardless of whether other are on behalf of another charity or your own. Street collections are one example, you need to apply to the local or regional council for a Street Collection Licence. Note also that many councils will only allow each charity to have one street collection per year and won’t allow more than one charity collection on any given day.

It's important to note that these rules also extend to sales on behalf of a charity, perhaps jumble sales or bring and buy sales, which are held anywhere that is open to the public. There is a common misapprehension that this only applies to publicly-owned properties but this is not the case. The regulations do not stipulate anything about ownership, it is purely about access. So a jumble sale in a church hall on behalf of a charity needs a licence just as much standing on a street corner jangling a collection tin.

Sponsored Activities For Charity Fundraising In The Community

There are literally thousands of ideas for charitable fundraising through sponsored activities and it gets hard to think of new ones. But often the amount of money raised is often more about the publicity done in the community before and during the activity than the originality of the activity being sponsored.

Another fundraising idea that usually goes down well in any community is to hold some sort of entertainment. It could be as small and informal as a pub quiz night or a full blown festival in a forgiving farmers' field and there's lot's of ideas in between. 'It's a Knock-Out' type events often go down well with youngsters and auctions of promises are popular with adults with larger pockets.

Raising Money Over The Internet

The internet can be a great help with fundraising for a charity. There are plenty of ideas out there; just tapping 'fundraising ideas' into a search engine will deliver literally thousands of pages.

The second helpful element of the internet is that you can raise money by having a website with affiliate links and adverts so that people clicking through will earn money for the site, or by having a 'donate now' button. It's imperative that you are up front about doing this otherwise people may think you are trying to con them. Use social networking sites to garner publicity and create an online community that drives traffic to yours site to raise more money.

Guard The Reputation Of Your Charity Closely

Some words of caution though; make sure you stay on top of the accounting and are up front about what's happening to the money you raise, because it doesn't take much for a community to lose faith in a charity. Once that happens, it's very hard to get it back.

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