Creative Fundraising Ideas
Brett Cease
3861 Posts

In Raising Funds for CCL National Training, one area that invited further brainstorming, was creating a list of things groups have done that aren’t your typical fundraising asks.

Here's a start to the list, but feel free to share what's worked for your group!

  • Add the URL for your fundraising web page to your email signature.
  • Change your voicemail on your cell phone and answering machine recording at home so when people leave messages, they hear that you are fundraising for CCE and can leave in their message that they are interested in hearing back from you on how to donate.
  • Give out “piggy banks” and ask people to save their change for a month.
  • Ask your friends to do a coffee or vending machine fast for one week or one month and donate what they would have spent on those goodies to your goal instead.
  • Create business cards or handbills to give out during face-to-face interactions.
  • Hold an auction.
  • Throw a fundraising party, such as a BBQ or potluck.
  • Ask a local business to donate a gift basket or product that you raffle off to anyone donating $50 or more towards your campaign.
  • Hold a Pint Night at your favorite neighborhood bar.
  • Provide a service in return for donations (such as offering to wash your neighbor’s car or mow their lawn or babysit their kids in return for a donation).
  • Sweeten the deal by giving donors over a certain donation level a goody (e.g. homemade cookies, something fresh from your backyard garden this summer).
  • Do something outrageous (for every 10 donations you get, you’ll get a pie in the face and send the donors a picture or video of it; or if you’re a terrible singer, promise to sing, record, and post to social media a video of you singing karaoke at a bar if you meet your fundraising goal; shave your head if you meet your goal; wear a tutu in public all day, etc).
  • You can also do a Gift Grab Bag, where you post on social media or via an email blast that the next person who contributes $XX (usually a higher donation level of $50 or $100) will get a prize such as homemade cookies or a prize you got donated by a business. This creates urgency and might push a couple of people to donate who had been sitting on the fence and waiting.
Replies

Forum help

Select a question below

CCL Community's Sitewide Forums are an easy and exciting way to interact with other members on CCL Community.  The Sitewide Forums are focused on subjects and areas of general interest to members.  Each forum consists of topics that members have posted, along with replies from other members. Some forums are divided into categories to group similar topics together. 

Any members can post a topic or reply to a topic.

The Sitewide Forums are open to the entire CCL community to create, comment on, and view online discussions.  Posts and comments should address the subject or focus of the selected forum. 

Note: Categories can only be created by community administrators.

Guidelines for posting: (also see general Community Guidelines)

  • Don’t see your question or topic? Post it.
  • Be thoughtful, considerate (nonpartisan) and complete. The more information you supply, the better the better and more engaging the conversation will be. 
  • Feel like cursing? Please don’t.
  • Ask yourself, “Would my topic post reveal sensitive or confidential information?” If so, please don't post!

Flag/report any offending comments, and then move on. In the rare instance of a comment containing a potentially credible threat, escalate that immediately to CCL.

If the Sitewide Forum has no categories, select the "Add Topic" button at the top of topics window. 

If the forum has categories, when you click on "Add Topic," a dropdown list of the categories appears. Select the desired category and then "Add Topic."
In either case this brings up a box to enter both the topic subject and topic text.

If you have questions or wish to add comments on a posted forum topic, open the post and click the blue “Add Reply” button at top. You can also click on the “Reply” link at the bottom of the original topic posting.

This opens a text box. Add your reply. You can also add documents by dragging a file into the text box. Click “Post” at the bottom of the reply window This will add your reply to other replies (if there are any), sorted by oldest on top. 

If, however, you want to reply directly to someone else’s reply, click on the “Reply” link at the bottom of their reply. 

When replying to a topic post or a topic reply it may be helpful to quote the original text, or the part that your reply is referring to. To quote a topic or reply, click on the "Quote" link at bottom of post. 

When you do this the full text of either the post or reply will be pulled into a reply text box. If desired, you can remove parts of the quoted text in order to get the portion you are interested in quoting.

You can subscribe to notifications of new postings from any of the Sitewide Forums or forum categories. To subscribe, select the green “Subscribe” button at the top of the forum. Click on dropdown arrow to select frequency of notification.

If you are already subscribed, the button will display “Unsubscribe.”  Select it to unsubscribe or select the dropdown arrow to modify frequency of notification. 

Note: If you subscribe to a Sitewide Forum, such as "Media Relations" that has categories (such as "LTEs and Op-Eds"), you will also be subscribed to all the categories. If you wish to subscribe to only one or more of the categories, unsubscribe to the parent forum and subscribe individually to desired categories.

.

If you see a topic post or reply that interests you or that you like, you can click the “Like” icon at the bottom of the topic post or the reply. This lets the poster know that the topic was helpful. It also contributes to the topic’s popularity, which influences where it is listed in the "Popular" forum tab. There are also additional reactions available for members to use. Mouseover the "Like" icon to choose one of these options: Love, Clap, Celebrate, Insightful, or Interesting.

CCL Community Guidelines

  • Discuss, ask and share
  • Be respectful
  • Respect confidentiality
  • Protect privacy

More guidelines
 

CCL Blog Policy Area Categories