Celebrate Your Birthday with a Fundraiser
Happy birthday! What better way to celebrate than starting a fundraiser for a cause close to your heart?
More and more Australians are celebrating special occasions, such as birthdays or even anniversaries, by fundraising for something that matters to them. Instead of getting gifts, they are asking friends and family to make a donation. It’s a win-win – everyone involved is doing some good. You can join this trend and help some of the many good causes out there that need your support.
On GoFundMe, we often see Australians tap into special occasions to give their crowdfunding efforts an extra push.
A successful birthday fundraiser
Erica Flament started a GoFundMe fundraising page for her friend’s daughter Maddie who was battling Leukaemia. Erica raised over $10,000 – and $1,500 of that was raised in the space of just one day: Maddie’s birthday. This is how she did it:
For Maddie’s sixth birthday, Erica asked friends and family to each donate $6 to help Maddie beat cancer. She sent out a request on Facebook, asking friends to donate and share. News of the birthday fundraiser spread and more than 85 people donated. A lot of the donations were for the suggested $6, but the majority were for $16, $26, $56 – and even $106!
But Erica isn’t alone, meet other inspiring Aussies launching birthday fundraisers:
- Little Calen celebrated his very special birthday (on a leap year) by fundraising for a well loved local nurse, Linny, to help with her battle against brain cancer.
- After their son Aiden passed away from Rhabdomyosarcoma, his family launched a fundraiser in his memory to celebrate his 21st birthday. All donations were sent to RedKite, the team of childhood cancer specialists who helped their family tremendously whilst Aiden was sick.
- Willow dedicated her 13th birthday to raise $700 for Foodbank. “I’m turning 13 soon, and instead of birthday presents I’m raising money to benefit Foodbank Australia Limited“. Well done, Willow!
In addition to special dates in your own life, you can also tie your fundraiser into public dates such as global generosity movement Giving Tuesday.
Tips for your special event or birthday fundraiser
Choose your cause
First, decide who you want to support. You might want to fundraise for someone you know who is in need at the moment, an issue or cause you care about, or a registered charity. Once you have decided on the person, cause or charity you want to help, you will be even more inspired to make a difference.
Set a deadline for your birthday fundraiser
For any fundraiser, it is key to set a deadline for when you would like to achieve your goal. A deadline creates a sense of urgency and make donors respond more quickly. You can choose your birthday as the deadline, or if you’re running a fundraiser connected to an existing national awareness campaign, such as Breast Cancer Awareness Month, think about making that date your deadline.
Tell your story
Birthdays and other special dates create a natural storytelling opportunity to explain why it’s important to you to raise funds for that specific cause. Your fundraiser story needs to answer questions such as who, what, where, when, why and how. What will the funds be used for? What’s your connection to the cause? How will the donations help you or others? When it comes to fundraising, the why is particularly important; i.e. why does the recipient need this donation?
For more tips on how to tell your crowdfunding story to raise funds, see our posts: Great Ideas for Naming your Online Fundraiser, How Images Can Lead to Fundraiser Success, and Why Videos Are Powerful Tools for Fundraising.
Use social media to spread the word
Share your birthday fundraiser on your social media channels to raise awareness and donations among friends, family, colleagues and your different networks.
For birthday fundraising ideas using Facebook, check out this Facebook Fundraising Tips To Drive Donations guide.
Host an offline fundraising event such as a birthday party
Fundraising events serve several purposes, they help you raise money for your cause, get people together for a common goal and raise awareness about your cause in unique ways. There’s a wealth of different fundraising event ideas you could choose from, such as:
- A birthday party: Now, if you don’t want to deviate from the birthday theme too much, you could host a birthday party and have QR codes linked to your fundraiser. Make sure to communicate to friends and family that you’d like a donation in lieu of presents before the event. The same applies if it’s a baby shower, anniversary, Christmas party etc.
- Host a sports day: Hosting a sports day and asking people for a small donation to enter is a great way to raise funds – and an extremely fun one too. Why not get a team of friends and family together to get competitive in honour of the celebration.
- Morning tea: If you wanted to host an offline fundraising event, a really easy way forward is to host a morning tea. You could even do this on the day of your birthday or special occasion. Bake or buy sweet treats and ask for a small donation to your fundraiser in return.
- Fitness challenges: This one is a little bit different, but why not run a fundraiser around a fitness challenge? It doesn’t need to be an organised event; you can commit to running 10k or doing yoga every day for the month of your birthday, for example, and ask people to sponsor you. This could also be easily done in a fundraising team!
- Arts and crafts: If you’ve got a bit of an artistic streak or just want to explore that side of you, why not host an arts and crafts day for friends and family? There are plenty of ideas to choose from – it could be painting or making pots out of clay, learning to knit or sewing.
If you’re inspired to host a fundraising event, we’ve got a post on Top 10 Fundraising Event Ideas.
Make the most of GoFundMe’s resources
We’ve put together a comprehensive set of fundraising tips, success stories and lots of other free and helpful resources, such as: Viral Fundraising, Free Online Fundraising Tools That Will Help You Raise More and Using Social Media to Promote Your Fundraiser.
Let’s start a birthday fundraiser!
The beauty of fundraisers is the act of people coming together to reach a common goal. What better way to bring people together than on a birthday or another special occasion? With the ideas we’ve outlined here and the resources we’ve provided, your birthday crowdfunding fundraiser should be extra special! Get the party started by starting your fundraiser.