Be sure to check out the video where George provides examples for each social distancing fundraising idea.
Video Transcript:
Welcome to our best social distancing fundraising ideas that are working during the COVID-19 shutdown.
COVID-19 has ruined almost everything phone number library and the world of fundraising is no exception. Forcing the shift to digital overnight. Some experts or organizations have jumped ship while others are still trying to figure out where to start.
We’ve rounded up 20 of the best virtual COVID-19 socially distanced fundraising ideas that leverage tools like: blog title generator pricing Zoom and Facebook and YouTube and Gaming. Ideas that are working to raise money in this climate.
Stay with us till the end where we also share three steps that will help you create coded adjacent communications.
My name is Giorgio Minatore I am the Chief Whaler at Whole Whale, a B-corp digital agency and online course company. As always, we share our top thoughts on technology, marketing, and impact.
COVID-19 has upended the way we work, caseno data live, and give. What worked in early 2020 is now almost completely obsolete, and for many, real-life fundraising events are clearly no longer working. Nonprofits that depend on races, galas, workplace giving, small school fundraisers, peer-to-peer events, in-person fundraising events are now scrambling to digitize their efforts. As we’re in this transition, we’ve seen some great case studies and fundraising approaches. They’re starting to gain traction with these new fundraising rules. So let’s walk through some of these ideas with examples to give your organization some fundraising ideas.
Also, actually, if you have any good COVID-19 examples or virtual fundraising examples, we’d love to see them in the comments section below.
Maybe we’ll make another episode and feature them if they’re good enough and they’re funny.
Okay, let’s get to the point. Let’s go fast here.
All right :
Number 1: Virtual Poker Night
Okay, he hosts a live stream virtual poker night, has a featured room with lots of celebrities, and uses the “others room.” Rooms where people can join a poker tournament. You can use apps like poker2 or Poker Stars calm. On April 20, 2010 Matt Damon held a celebrity poker class and people like Sarah Silverman have some funny things to say as they join in to keep things lively and interesting. 100% of the $1.75 million in proceeds they raised went to Feeding America.
Pretty cool. Well look. You need to be quick to do it, but if you can put together a virtual poker tournament. See you later, obviously there is no winner take all scenario it is more like winner give all.
Number 2 : Thanking frontline workers with various campaigns
The USO is amazing at doing this. They actually have a lot of different campaigns that send signatures to support the troops that are working on the front lines in this current climate. After users sign the virtual message of support, the USO sends them to the front lines while directing people from that user to an instant donation page.
So think about how you might send thank you messages to frontline workers or solidarity messages to your stakeholders in the region, and then send that user to a confirmation page with the donation.
Number 3: Peer-to-Peer Virtual Popcorn Sales
However, any kind of peer-to-peer strategy that has been fundamentally altered by social distancing can be remade. Look, virtual peer-to-peer tools are out there. Like this one we show you from Double Good. They use it to quickly raise money by running a virtual gourmet popcorn fundraiser. The entire fundraiser is done through this double good mobile app and all of these orders are shipped directly to people in the United States. So they avoid any in-person contact. It’s kind of like your supporters doing what Girl Scouts do with selling cookies but entirely remotely through an app that’s perfect for social distancing. Holiday Heroes org, a local nonprofit in Chicago whose mission is to provide joy and entertainment to seriously ill children, actually created a virtual double fundraiser that raised about $10 for days with all supporters receiving large popcorn for their contribution.
Also, this was a quick note from the executive director, our return on investment has been pretty large, because all of our other fundraisers are typically in-person events or golf outings, so those types of things have taken a lot of coordination and a lot of work, a lot of hours just to run them. Logistically, so they’ve actually saved time compared to what they were putting in to organize. Also, it’s a type of shift that we have to start making when our galas and events are canceled, so I encourage you to try that.
Number 4: Give live streaming
This is funny and it comes from something we saw with Pat Flynn. He did just a sort of live stream of Wheel of Fortune where he actually does this live stream every single day supporting various nonprofits in the code environment and he’s actually using YouTube live streaming with the super chat feature. The basic super chat feature allows you to accept payments for people who want to chat any questions or comments that they didn’t answer on the show he answers on a show plus every part of the wheel was sponsored so when he got to the section that company made a donation in exchange for the shoutouts that Pat gave them.
We’ve added a link to what it does and examples in the description so you can see a little more how it works. Quick note, super chat is only available to channels that have monetization are 18+ and only in eligible locations, but you can still turn it into a great game show in other ways and make it fun you don’t even need a big event.