Birthday Fundraising Ideas
Fundraising is a good way to celebrate the birthday of someone close to you, especially if it’s a milestone.
You can fundraise for a loved one or use a birthday as an occasion to fundraise for a charity or a good cause. It could even be a cause close to the birthday person’s heart.
Birthday fundraising is a great chance to get creative and give your loved one a present they may not have had before.
How to start a birthday fundraiser
It couldn’t be easier to get started!
Plan in advance for a birthday fundraiser and think about exactly what it is you want to raise money for.
All you need to do is start a GoFundMe page, tell the story of why you’re raising money and say what occasion it is you’re marking.
You can raise money for whatever cause you want. This can include doing something positive for charity to mark a special date and make it a birthday to remember.
Once you’ve created it all you have to do is get sharing widely.
Birthday fundraising tips
It can be hard to know where to get started if you’ve never fundraised online before.
Birthday fundraisers are slightly different in nature too, but we’ve broken down some of the best tips and examples below.
Use a birthday as a special event to fundraise
In your description you can mention when the person’s birthday is, with a goal of raising money ahead of that date.
However, once that date has passed it doesn’t mean the fundraising needs to stop. Your loved one will be able to see the donations once their birthday and the surprise has passed.
Tell your story
Birthdays and other special dates create a natural storytelling opportunity and telling your story is key to raising funds. With a fundraiser, your story needs to answer basic 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?
It’s a great chance to say why you’re fundraising for someone’s birthday and why you want to celebrate them. You can say that loved ones will naturally want to contribute to something for a birthday and why the person concerned would be touched by this.
For more tips on how to tell your crowdfunding story to raise more money, see our posts, Great Ideas for Naming your Online Fundraiser, How Images can Lead to Fundraiser Success, and The Power of Video.
Use social media to spread the word
To get the most out of your birthday fundraiser, combine your special-occasion-based fundraising approach with social media tools.
This can include asking friends and families to share the link on their social media platforms as well as widely sharing it on your own.
You may also want to share pictures and content from previous birthdays to help engage friends and followers.
For more ideas, see our guide for Facebook Fundraising for Beginners.
Turn birthday parties into fundraising events
Fundraising events serve several purposes – they help you raise money for your cause, get people together for a common purpose and raise awareness about your cause in unique ways.
Parties offer the perfect opportunity to get the message out about your fundraising. You can gather people together in an easy way and help to explain the fundraiser.
It could even be included in emails or invitations about the event. It’s also always easier to explain in person why this fundraiser matters so much.
For event ideas, see our post 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 resources including the following posts to mention but a few: Viral Fundraising, Online Fundraising Tools you Need to Revamp your Efforts and Using Social Media to Promote your Fundraiser.
Join others fundraising for birthdays on GoFundMe
If you’re looking for inspiration, here’s some successful fundraising examples.
Stephen’s 50th Birthday Dream!
This is a great example of organising something special for a milestone birthday.
Friends of Stephen raised money for him to live his ‘lifelong dream’ of taking part in a Spitfire flight.
The fundraiser collected dozens of donations which helped Stephen to have a birthday he won’t forget.
Birthday gift to help Chelsie do a dog grooming course!
This fundraiser helped to raise money for something practical and not a typical gift.
Loved ones chipped in to help Chelsea go on a dog grooming course, to add to her career. The original fundraising target of £1,085 would have been enough to cover the fees for the course, but generous donors helped push the total amount raised to over £1,400.
Royal military canal walk for parkinson’s
Nicky Hall took on a huge 20-mile walk for his birthday.
To mark the occasion, he asked loved ones and followers to donate to the Parkinson’s Disease Society of the United Kingdom, a charity close to his heart.
He was able to raise hundreds in doing so.
Celebrate your birthday by fundraising
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!