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Welcome to the Fundraiser Wiki! You need to raise money! You've come to the right place.
There are lots of ways to raise money. You just need to find the ones that are best suited to your skills and resources and put them to work.
The Fundraiser wiki will help you to find the kind of fundraising program that fits you just right.
Site Contents
The Fundraiser Wiki contains a growing body of fundraising information, case studies, and best practices. For your convenience, they are grouped into the categories that you see below.
Non-Profit Fundraising
Annual Fundraising Plan - Your Annual Fundraising Plan will help you to coordinate all of your fundraising activities, including those focused on donor acquisition, donor cultivation, and donor retention.
Charitable Enterprises - Bake sales, rosary sales, pancake suppers, raffles, silent auction… any method that uses the profit from selling something to raise money is a charitable enterprise. Essentially, you run a little business and putting the profit to charitable use. A key weakness of this type of fundraising is that you focus is on selling a good or service rather than selling your mission.
Corporate Giving - Many companies have ‘community relations’ departments that oversee giving in the community. They follow many different models, from matching gifts and grant opportunities to employee giving drives and sponsorships.
Direct Mail - A direct mail campaign uses the mail to describe a need and requests donations. It is very popular because it is relatively cheap and performs well.
Email Fundraising - Email fundraising looks a lot like direct mail, except that it uses email rather than paper mail. It doesn’t tend to raise as much money as Direct Mail because people are more likely to delete their email than throw out a mail piece. Email fundraising is less expensive than direct mail, so it will continue to grow in popularity.
Events - Fundraising events might be a dinner, run, walk, golf tournament, or something totally new. They raise money by charging entry fees, selling auction items, team fundraising, getting sponsorships, etc. Events take a lot of time and energy to plan. Therefore, they tend to have a lower profit margin when compared with other fundraising types.
Food Drive - A food drive brings in food for a ministry and it can also help gather funds as well. Food and fund drives come in many flavors and can be effective for ministries of all sizes.
Grant Writing - In the US, private and corporate foundations are organizations that exist to give away money. They get special tax benefits for doing so. They give based through process of written requests for funding. Grant funders tend to be more sophisticated than individual donors. Your grant application will explain how you will use the grant funding will meet a need in the community. Churches with an attached parochial school or Cathedral are more likely to be eligible for these kinds of funding opportunities.
Major Gifts - Major Gifts fundraising focuses on getting large one-time or multi-year gifts from individuals. It is one of the most rewarding types of fundraising in terms of monetary impact and relationship building. Small churches and ministries frequently miss out on major gift opportunities.
Online Fundraising - At its most basic, raising money online only requires a donate button somewhere on your website. Strategies can get more sophisticated as you begin to use social media and email to request funding.
Phone Fundraising - Phone based campaigns rely on volunteers or professionals to call current and former donors to request donations. They take lots of energy, but they provide a personal contact with many donors in a short time.
Planned Giving - Planned gifts donate money, real estate, or other assets through a person’s estate plan or will. These gifts take years to cultivate, but are the biggest gifts that a church or ministry will ever get. Having a plan and a strategy to cultivate planned gifts is key!
Team Fundraising - Team based fundraising, or peer-to-peer fundraising, uses volunteers who tap into their networks of friends to fundraise for your organization. This style of fundraising is often connected with online fundraisers as well as events like walks or golf tournaments.
Church Fundraising
Offertory - The offertory is the primary fundraising tool in many, if not most, churches. At its simplest, this is the basket that goes around at Mass. Many churches are moving their offertory online by enabling members to make monthly gifts. Others are adding kiosks that take credit cards to take gifts from members who rarely carry cash.
Personal Ministry Fundraising - Personal ministry fundraising helps someone to raise money for a particular mission or ministry. It focuses on direct asks to friends, families, and associates who share a passion for the mission. This type of fundraising is great for mission related programs, but is also good for any new non-profit.
Stewardship - An annual stewardship campaign is a big push to get members to give their ‘Time, Talent, and Treasure’. Months of planning can be involved, leading to a month-long focus on stewardship commitments.
Knights of Columbus - The Knights of Columbus is a fraternal Catholic men's organization that provides insurance and helps to support the Church through hosting events and other fundraising activities. Members use a variety of different methods to raise money.
Building a Community of Fundraisers
The Fundraiser Wiki seeks to become the best fundraising resource on the web. This will only happen with YOUR help. The Fundraiser Wiki will build a growing body of best practices, stories from the field, sample materials, expert books, etc.
To reduce spam on the site, editing and creating pages has been restricted to users who have created accounts with verified email addresses. This will help to prevent abuse and keep the quality of the content high.
