3 Tips For Encouraging Charitable Donations

12 May 2016
 Categories: Finance & Money, Blog


If you are a charitable organization or an individual who needs to collect donations, encouraging people to donate to a worthy cause might be a challenge. There are ways encourage donors to be more generous and help you meet your financial goals.

Use Multiple Avenues

Choosing a single method of accepting donations can cause roadblocks for your donors. You must consider the accessibility of all donation methods you choose to ensure people with different payment methods and financial situations are able to help. If you're choosing from the best personal crowdfunding sites, try to find one that allows donations from different types of credit cards or person-to-person payment methods. When possible, allow people to make donations directly by dropping off a payment or sending it via postal mail. For example, if you are raising money to cover medical or funeral expenses, it helps when people can make donations directly to the facility or funeral home because they may otherwise be skeptical about the cause.

Maintain A Website

Maintaining a website is helpful when encouraging people to make a donation. You do not need to pay for hosting; a free website will work. If the charitable cause is for medical bills, you might use the website to show pictures of the person's progress throughout treatments. This also gives donors the opportunity to post well wishes and see where their dollars are going. If the cause is a yearly event, such as a marathon, you can use the website to show each year's events and give updates on the amount of money that was raised. Many times, putting a face to the cause can appeal to a wider audience.

Give Tokens Of Appreciation

Even small gestures of appreciation can make people feel good about donating. There are inexpensive or free ways to give something back to your donors. You might want to create handmade awareness ribbons that are mailed to your donors, if it is applicable to your cause. Another gesture is creating virtual badges or banners that can be added to a website or social media page. When people donate, they can display this information in the virtual format of their choosing. Other people might become curious about the badge or banner, which can spread information about your cause and encourage additional donations.

Encouraging donations is not always easy, especially when you need to raise money in a short time. By making it easy to donate and creating multiple ways of encouraging donations you are more likely to meet your goals.


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