Inexpensive donor involvement ideas showcase
The Oxfamily box
A neat and easily copyable idea from Oxfam in the 1960s. Almost any organisation could do a version of this. Oxfam’s neat device helped involve families in the fight against poverty, it raised a lot of money and also helped families to put their own good fortune into perspective.
Dr Barnardo’s Home: the home collecting box
The home collecting box remains many people’s closest link with charitable giving. Some collecting boxes are themselves collector’s items.
WWF Canada: new donor questionnaire
This questionnaire, though a separate and distinctive part of WWF’s new donor welcome process, is an integral part of it. Great donor development in practice, and easy to emulate.
Dream a Dream: Newspaper Campaign
A brilliant way of raising money without actually asking for any. It can be easily copied, as long as anyone copying can guarantee the same consistency, which is part of the campaign’s success. Dream a Dream ensures that once a commitment is made, newspapers are collected every month, even if it is just three kilos.
Farm Africa ‘ask for what you need’
How do you ask a maojor donor for $50,000 when she’s at the other end of a telephone line and you’re in a very noisy tapas bar? Do you make ‘the ask’ in the worst possible surroundings? The lesson from this case study is that as long as ‘the ask’ is right, it doesn’t matter where you are.
Macmillan Cancer Support: Christmas scratch cards
Macmillan Cancer Support is an organisation committed to challenging the status quo and to looking for different and better ways of doing things. This is a Christmas fundraising product aimed at companies, groups and associations.
Uzhgorod City’s ‘path to life’ concert
This is a straightforward but very professionally run event, the first of its kind in Uzhgorod. The objective of the event was to raise money to support the centre and to introduce the concept of a benefit concert to the local community.
Jeansforgenes: statues wearing jeans
This is an original and fun idea that seems great for attracting awareness and as a backdrop against which the charity can easily rasie money from an intrigued and amused public.
Casa Speranti Edelweiss campaign
Public fundraising is an increasingly important but still emerging activity in Romania. Here Casa Speranti correctly identified the power of linking their fundraising initiatives to the church.
Lake Simcoe Conservation Foundation: 2007 annual report
How do you recognise your donors, produce a key communications tool on the cheap and still manage to turn in a handy profit – all in a ‘one-person fundraising shop’?
Ben Franklin touring education and fundraising shows
This creative example of fundraising educational entertainment seems to SOFII to be very flexible and potentially easy to copy.
The Wildlife Conservation Society and Bronx Zoo: adopt-a-cockroach scheme.
Taking the traditional ‘adopt an animal’ template often used by animal welfare organisations, The Wildlife Conservation Society in partnership with Bronx Zoo in New York, USA, have raised it to a whole new level.
The David Suzuki Foundation’s campaign for Santa Claus
Think of everything that Santa has done for you – now is your chance to help him.
Greenpeace UK’s Rainbow Warrior III thank-you video
’...It was a really inspiring video and your generosity saying it was all of our ship was very moving.’
Malaria No More and CollegeHumor: malarious
Malaria No More have discovered that laughter is a great entry point to learning – even about something as deadly as malaria.
Change Heroes: a new fundraising platform
The aim of each of Change Heroes’ campaign is to bring together groups of 33+ friends to donate $3.33 a day for three months, which equals $10,000. This will enable their charity partners to build a school, library, or water project in a developing country.
