1. How to create a personal fundraiser
Setting up a GoFundMe requires just a few items: a fundraiser title and fundraising target, a photo, and a description of your fundraiser.
Set your targets
When setting your fundraiser goal, we recommend crunching some numbers and determining exactly how much funding you need. Keep in mind that our site has a 0% platform fee for organisers, so you get to keep more of the money you raise.
In general, we recommend starting small. People are more likely to give to your cause if they feel they can make a measurable difference. If your fundraiser goal is £50,000, people might feel like their £30 donation won’t have a significant impact. But if your fundraiser goal is £2,000, your donors will be excited to help you reach a more attainable goal.
Keep in mind that you can change your fundraiser goal at any time. If you’re close to reaching your goal and decide you need more help, you can easily increase it.
How to create your fundraiser title
Your title is one of the first things people will see when your fundraiser is shared on social media, email, and text messages. It’s important that your title makes it clear why you’re raising funds while also enticing people to click your fundraiser URL.
“Tom’s Medical Bills” describes a fundraiser’s purpose well, but it’s not very memorable. The title “Help Tom Walk Again” describes the fundraiser and also describes the specific way donations will help Tom.
Examples of great fundraiser titles:
If you’d like more information about titles, read our blog post on creating the perfect title.
How to tell your fundraising story
Having a compelling story is crucial for your fundraiser’s success. A good fundraiser story will do two things: It will make donors trust you, and it will make donors feel connected to you and your cause.
It’s best to begin your story with a few short sentences that contain the most important information. You can think of this as a brief summary of exactly why you are raising funds. After that, you can provide more background information that will paint a broader picture of why you’re crowdfunding.
The opening paragraph of this fundraiser is a good example to look at. It gets all the information that supporters and journalists would need to know in the opening of the fundraiser. It details where the charity walk will be taking place, when and for what cause.
Your story should clearly explain the reason behind your fundraiser, because this helps build trust with your donors. A story that is vague may not inspire confidence.
Be sure to include important information like:
- Who you are.
- How you’re connected to the beneficiary (if you’re not raising money for yourself).
- Exactly how you plan on using the donations. Listing a budget is a great way to be transparent and gain your donors’ trust.
Here are some other pointers:
- Make sure your story isn’t too long or too short. We’ve found writing a minimum of 400 words can help your fundraiser’s visibility. Learn more on our blog post Building Your Fundraiser With a Title and Your Story.
- If your fundraiser is to help with a difficult situation, explain how you’ve tried to overcome it yourself. Donors may feel more charitable if it seems like you’ve exhausted all other options.
- Allow donors to connect with your story by being vulnerable. If your fundraiser is for an emergency situation, describe the emotions associated with it, like fear or uncertainty. If you’re fundraising for something positive or exciting, describe how much it means to you. This encourages empathy in your donors and helps them understand how much their help means.
- Ask a trusted friend for feedback on your fundraiser story.
Take a look at our blog post for a comprehensive guide on writing a fundraiser story.
The importance of adding photos and videos
Humans are visual creatures who love being drawn into a story, which means that adding pictures to your fundraiser is a fantastic way to capture the attention of your fundraiser’s visitors and keep them engaged.
When including a photo, be sure to:
- Make sure it’s a clear photograph of the person, place or thing you’re raising money for
- Not use a grainy image
- Not use an unrelated image that won’t encourage donations
- Take the photo on a smartphone, camera or if you can professionally. A phone image will do, though.
Keep in mind that, along with the title, the image is one of the first things people will see. Not only should you choose a picture that’s relevant to your cause, you should also choose a picture that inspires people or incites strong emotions.
Videos are also powerful fundraising tools that can elevate your fundraiser to the next level and help donors feel even more connected to your cause. Whether it’s a simple video you recorded on your smartphone, or it’s something more involved—like the creative cartoon in the fundraiser titled “Help Smitha Fight MS”—a video will help get your point across in a compelling way.
Start your fundraising campaign
Now that you’ve added all of your fundraiser information, it’s time to officially launch your fundraising campaign and share it with your network. Below, we go through the best ways to reach potential supporters.
Who to share with
Most of your contributions will come directly from friends and family members who know you, so it’s best to start sharing with them first. Doing this builds your fundraiser’s trustworthiness, as people are more willing to donate to someone they don’t know very well if the fundraiser already has support..
Once you have those initial donations, you can begin sharing your fundraiser with a wider audience. When you feel ready, ask two or three close friends or family members if they would be willing to share your fundraiser with their trusted networks. Read more about the five types of donors for online fundraising on our blog, or look through our blog post on tips for promoting your fundraiser online for some more inspiration.
How to write a message to encourage support
Whether you’re sharing your fundraiser on Facebook, through email, or sending your link in a text message, it’s important that you write a message that encourages people to visit your fundraiser. If you aren’t exactly sure how to ask for contributions, simply think about how you would like to be approached about giving to a fundraiser if the roles were reversed. Here are some other tips:
- Entice people to click on your fundraiser link by writing a brief introduction that encourages them to keep reading.
- Explain how important the fundraiser is to you and how much you value their support, even if it’s just to visit the fundraiser and read your story.
- Try to make your post stand out in some way. This is especially true when sharing on social media, where your post will be one of hundreds in your network’s social media feeds. Using a thoughtful message or an emotional introduction can help.
Where to share your fundraiser
There are numerous places to share your fundraiser, so you’ll want to use the avenue that is best for you. In general, anywhere you connect with people you know is a great place to share your fundraiser. Here are the most common ways to get the word out:
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Instagram
- Text messages
- Emails
- Fundraiser flyers in your local community
- Word of mouth
- WhatsApp
- Linkedin
One huge benefit of using social media to promote your fundraiser is that it’s a fairly low-effort way to reach a lot of people at once. Read our blog post for more information on fundraising on Facebook, or this post on how to fundraise on Twitter.
How often to share your fundraiser
While you don’t want to bombard people with donation requests, it’s also important to remember that sharing your fundraiser once is not enough to reach your goal. Some people may have the intention to donate but get distracted or busy. Others are hesitant to donate until the fundraiser has already received some support and they know their donation will actually matter. Sharing your fundraiser multiple times is crucial for getting as many people to donate as possible.
Consider sharing it among your community in a more traditional way. This can be through flyering, posting in community Facebook groups or reaching out to community WhatsApp groups.
You may also consider sharing on big days that correspond with your fundraiser. For example, if you’re raising money for your friend’s cancer treatment, use cancer awareness days and months to raise awareness.
3. How to promote a fundraiser
Once you’ve shared your fundraiser with your close network of friends and family members, you can use the methods below to cast a wider net and reach more potential supporters..
As well as hopefully encouraging donations, it’s important to spread awareness about your fundraiser generally.
Share on social media
Social media is one of the most effective ways of reaching a mass audience at one time, which makes it an ideal way to share your fundraiser. If people leave comments on your fundraiser or social media posts, be sure to respond. Taking the time to engage with your supporters is also another way to attract donors, and it also builds trust with them.
Another benefit of using social media in your fundraising efforts is that it offers plenty of ways to be creative. Here are a few ideas you can use to promote your fundraiser on social media:
- Create a hashtag for your fundraiser that will make it easy for others to follow along.
- Ask everyone if they would be willing to forgo their £3 coffee for the day to support your fundraiser instead.
- Consider planning your fundraising around big UK-relevant giving days, like Red Nose Day or Children in Need
Share via email
If you aren’t very active on social media or other social media platforms, it might be better for you to share your fundraiser via email.
This can be a personal way of reaching supporters and is an opportunity for you to personalise your story with people you know better. Your tone could even be more casual than it normally is.
One advantage of sharing your fundraiser through email is that people may be more likely to see an email instead of a Facebook post, which may get lost in the shuffle of their social media feed.
Reaching out to potential donors through email also offers an opportunity to add a personalised touch. A short but thoughtful message that accompanies your request for support can make all the difference. If you’re having trouble thinking of how to make your message memorable, then take a look at our blog post on different fundraising email templates you can use in your email outreaches.
Get attention from the local media outlets
Getting local media attention is another way your fundraiser can raise awareness and gain support from your community. It takes some work to get your fundraiser in the news, but if the local media covers your fundraiser, the payoff will certainly be worth it.
It’s best to wait until you’ve received some donations to pitch your story to the media, because journalists will want to see that your fundraiser is generating interest in the community. When contacting local journalists, focus on why your story is compelling and why readers would find it interesting—don’t focus on how the media coverage would help you.
This can also be helpful as once the fundraiser has community support, a journalist will often take notice of the way the community is coming together to offer support. If your fundraiser will benefit the local area in some way, even better.
Take your fundraising offline
Social media makes sharing easy, but it isn’t the only way to make your fundraiser known. If you’d rather branch out from social media, here are just three of the ways to share your fundraiser offline:
- Make fundraiser flyers that you can post around local businesses.
- Chat with people in your community. Colleagues, small business owners, and neighbours are all people you can approach and share your fundraiser with. Be sure to have a flyer handy so they can look up your fundraiser online.
- Call friends and family members to tell them about your cause, then offer to email them your fundraiser link.
- Consider sharing your fundraiser in community WhatsApp groups and on texts.
4. Maintaining support for your cause
If you aren’t sure what to do when your fundraiser stalls, we have some ideas to help your fundraiser reignite interest again.
Host a fundraising event
If online fundraising has begun to slow, offline fundraising events can help renew interest in your cause and reach potential donors outside of your usual social network. Not only that, but people will realise you’re serious about your fundraiser when they see the effort you’ve devoted to hosting a fundraising event.
There are plenty of fundraising event ideas to rally the community around your cause offline, but two of the most popular ideas are hosting a happy hour or partnering with a local business to host a happy hour or similar event. Getting the community involved offline gives people the opportunity to get to know you in person and connect with your cause, which is important for encouraging recurring giving.
You could also consider hosting a quiz in your local pub, with you acting as the quiz master. Why not host a tea morning at your local community hall? Or perhaps a tea afternoon where you live. This could be good for friends who may not drink alcohol and is a relatively low cost way of getting together with a group of people. Using community venues is also a great chance to get to know your local community and feel closer to them.
Tips for writing fundraiser updates
Every time you post a fundraiser update, it serves as a little reminder to your donors that you still need help reaching your goal. Another benefit is that it helps people connect and engage with your fundraiser by giving them more content to read. Lastly, updates build credibility if you include pictures and share any progress that was possible because of donations.
- First, learn how to write a fundraising update that will engage people.
- Rotate between the types of updates you write. Your updates can be about finances, gratitude, or any recent news related to your cause. You can even simply include a photo with a line of text.
- Keep updates relatively short and include a photo if you can.
- Posting an update about once a week is a good goal to aim for.
- You can also consider using local community newsletters or posting in local community groups on Facebook
Thanking your donors
Expressing gratitude for your donors and their donations is paramount. Everyone loves feeling appreciated when they do something nice, so be sure to send thank you messages. Aside from making your donors feel good, showing them gratitude can actually encourage them to give again.
Our blog post on how to write a donation thank you letter can provide some guidance if you aren’t sure where to start. And if you’d like to express gratitude with more than just an email, we’ve put together ways to thank your donors.
Donors can also be thanked in future projects or charity newsletters.
Finding support through personal fundraising
No matter what your financial needs are, GoFundMe is here to help you along your fundraising journey. Running a successful fundraiser takes some time and vulnerability, but the payoff is worth the effort. Start fundraising for individuals today and receive the financial help you need for causes that are important to you.
You’d also be amazed at how far fundraising can go in getting engaged with your local community. After fundraising once, you may want to give back to the community again.
It’s also a great way of getting involved and finding out about people raising money and giving back to the area you live in.
