How to Create a Successful Hashtag for Your Fundraiser
Whatever cause you are supporting through GoFundMe, sharing your fundraiser on social media is key to getting the word out. An important step in this process is coming up with a fundraiser hashtag that is unique, memorable and effective in bringing visibility to your cause. From Facebook and X to TikTok and Instagram, every major social media platform uses hashtags to categorize content and let users find what they are looking for. So, knowing how to create a hashtag that stands out is central to your fundraiser’s success.
Whether you’re well-versed in social media or just starting out, creating the perfect hashtag is an important step in any crowdfunding journey. It will allow other social media users to easily follow your story and make a donation if it resonates with them. Following these four simple steps can help you to create a hashtag that raises awareness for your cause, boosts donations, and helps you to #crush your fundraising goals.
Why Use a Hashtag for Your Fundraiser?
Many people struggle with asking for help with money, even when it’s for a worthy or charitable cause. By taking to social media and using a fundraising hashtag to communicate your story, you can easily share your mission with friends, family and an audience from across the world—without having to constantly ask for donations in person. A powerful hashtag can also capitalize on trends and even make your fundraiser go viral, ensuring that your chosen cause receives the maximum amount of attention.
If you’re still not convinced of just how important a fundraising hashtag can be, you may be interested to hear that there’s plenty of data to back these theories up. Research shows that X posts which include hashtags receive twice as much engagement as those that don’t, and are 55% more likely to be shared by other users. When it comes to Instagram, posts with at least one hashtag receive an average of 12.6% more engagement than those without.
How to Create a Fundraising Hashtag that Inspires Donations: 4 Simple Steps
Hashtags and social media go hand in hand—it’s nearly impossible to have one without the other. And when it comes to selecting hashtag ideas that represent your crowdfunding story, it’s important to practice some careful consideration. Choosing the right hashtag can make a huge difference to the amount of visibility that your fundraiser receives, while giving your fundraiser a strong identity and boosting engagement from other users.
As experts in online crowdfunding, we’re here to help you create a winning fundraiser hashtag that’s memorable, unique and relevant to your chosen cause. So, if you’re not sure where to start—follow these four steps to creating an effective hashtag for social media fundraising.
1. Choose the Right Platform
Creating a successful fundraising hashtag starts with choosing the right social media platform. You’ll want to share your hashtag on a platform where the majority of your audience is already active. Most major social media platforms allow for hashtags to be used, but they were born on X (formerly Twitter). X allows you to search for specific hashtags, and highlights trending topics that are particularly popular at a given time.
Other platforms like Instagram and Facebook also allow you to search for individual hashtags, while TikTok is popular for hashtag challenges and can boost your fundraiser’s visibility through its trend-friendly algorithm. Most of today’s social media platforms offer similar hashtag features, so it’s always best to start on the platform where you think you’ll have the best success. Ask friends, family and your wider community which platform they use most frequently, or try searching for similar topics to see where other fundraisers have enjoyed the most success.
2. Start Brainstorming
Once you’ve found the perfect social media platform, it’s time to start brainstorming creative fundraising ideas for your hashtag. You’ll firstly need to create a simple and memorable fundraiser title that includes your hashtag and is designed to grab people’s attention. Start by thinking about the key words that you definitely want to include, while keeping in mind that your hashtag needs to be unique and easy to understand. According to X’s official guidelines, you should use a maximum of two different hashtags and boost clarity by capitalizing the first letter of each word.
It’s also important to consider the characters that are supported in hashtags. Numbers and capital letters are encouraged, but symbols and punctuation marks are not. Keep your hashtag short, sweet and simple to give it the best chance of resonating with your audience and encouraging them to support your chosen cause.
3. Research Your Hashtag
You’ll need to ensure that your fundraising hashtag is completely unique, and hasn’t been used by another crowdfunding fundraiser in the past. Once you’ve spent some time brainstorming and have come up with a few winning ideas, start searching on different platforms to find out if your hashtag has been used before. If it has, try making tweaks or using an online tool like All-Hashtag to generate unique ideas by entering relevant words.
Alongside your unique fundraiser hashtag, it can be helpful to include more general hashtags that give you a better chance of reaching a wider audience. Hashtags like ‘#Homelessness’ or ‘#CancerFundraising’ are good examples of broader hashtags that your target audience is likely to be searching for. However, don’t forget to also include one or two original hashtags that will allow your fundraiser to stand out.
4. Use Your Hashtag to Promote Your Cause
Once you’ve selected the perfect hashtag and launched your fundraising page, the only remaining step is to start promoting your cause. Be consistent when using your new hashtag, and make sure that it’s included in all of your social media posts. You can boost the performance of your posts even further by adding fundraising images and video content to keep your audience engaged. Don’t forget to also include your hashtag when writing your fundraiser story.
The more people that use your hashtag, the more visibility and engagement your fundraiser will receive. As well as using your hashtag in every post, you should also encourage your friends, family and followers to use it when sharing your posts. Search your hashtag regularly to see whether others are using it too, and make sure to respond and engage with these posts to widen your fundraising community.
Boost Your Crowdfunding Efforts With a Unique Fundraiser Hashtag
Now that you’ve got some creative hashtag ideas to help your fundraiser reach its full potential, all that’s left to do is sign up and start sharing. If you’ve still got questions about how GoFundMe works or need more crowdfunding tips, make sure to check out our expert guides for simple answers to all your fundraising questions.
Creating a fundraiser hashtag is an effective way to quickly tell your story and reach more people on social media. As well as broadcasting your unique story to a massive audience and helping to boost donations, an effective hashtag can help your chosen cause to stick in people’s minds long after your fundraiser has reached its goal.