How To Create A Charity Fundraising Plan That Works

Signing up to run for a charity can be exciting. You have your event, your charity and perhaps a fundraising target to reach, so the natural temptation is to create a fundraising page, share the link and start asking everyone you know for donations.

Before you do that, spend a little time making a fundraising plan. You don't need a complicated spreadsheet or a detailed strategy, but it helps to understand how much you want to raise, why people might support you, who you are going to ask and how you are going to reach them.

Doing that work before you start can make fundraising feel much more manageable, particularly if you have never raised money for charity before.

Start With The Number You Need To Raise

Your starting point should be your fundraising target. If you have a charity place in an event, check exactly what fundraising commitment you made when you accepted the place and whether the charity describes this as a minimum amount, a pledge or a target.

If you secured your own place through a ballot, general entry or another route, you will not have a fundraising requirement. You can choose a target that feels ambitious but realistic for your circumstances and the amount of time you have available.

Once you have a figure, it becomes much easier to make a plan. Raising £500 can feel very different when you start thinking about several possible sources of £50 or £100 rather than one intimidating £500 total, and a larger marathon fundraising target can be approached in exactly the same way.

Your target doesn't necessarily have to stay fixed. Most online fundraising platforms allow it to be changed, so if your campaign goes particularly well you can increase it and give supporters something new to aim for.

Read more about your fundraising target here.

Work Out Why People Will Support You

Before asking anyone for money, think about what you are going to tell them. People aren't necessarily donating simply because you are running a marathon, half marathon or 10K; they may be supporting your connection to the cause, the challenge you have taken on or simply you.

If you have a personal connection to the charity, explain it if you are comfortable doing so. You don't need to share anything you would rather keep private, but helping people understand why you have chosen that particular charity can make your fundraising story much more meaningful.

If you don't have a personal connection, that's fine too. Learn enough about the charity to explain why you chose it, what its work involves and what the money you raise could help it achieve. JustGiving specifically recommends explaining why you chose your charity, how you are challenging yourself and how the money raised will help.

This thinking will eventually form the story on your fundraising page, but it will also give you something more interesting to say when you ask people for support.

Map Out The People You Can Ask

One of the most useful things you can do before fundraising is think beyond the obvious group of close friends and family. Consider the different parts of your life and the people you have genuine relationships with.

There might be family, friends, neighbours, current and former work colleagues, running club members, people you know through your children's school, members of other clubs or organisations and contacts from your professional network. Your own list will be different, but writing these groups down can quickly show that your potential fundraising network is larger than you first thought.

You don't need to ask all of them immediately. The purpose at this stage is to understand the size and shape of your network so that you don't use every potential supporter during the first few days of your campaign.

It may also become obvious that different groups need different approaches. A WhatsApp message could be appropriate for close friends, while email may work better for some colleagues and LinkedIn can give you another way to reach professional contacts.

Read more about asking friends and family here and using social media here.

Decide How You Will Reach People

Don't build your entire fundraising plan around repeatedly posting the same fundraising link on social media. Social platforms can be extremely useful, but they are only one way of reaching potential supporters.

You might also use WhatsApp, email, LinkedIn, conversations at work, your running club, community groups or face-to-face fundraising. Think about the groups you identified when mapping your network and where you normally communicate with each of them.

You don't need to use every possible channel. Concentrating on places where you already have genuine relationships can be much more effective than suddenly trying to build an audience somewhere new simply because you are fundraising.

It is also worth thinking ahead about what you will have to talk about. Training milestones, fundraising progress, updates from your charity and the event getting closer can all give you genuine reasons to contact people again rather than simply reposting the same request.

Don't Expect Every Pound To Come From Sponsorship

A fundraising target doesn't necessarily have to be reached entirely through individual donations to your online fundraising page. If you have a larger target, it can be useful to consider whether fundraising activities could contribute part of it.

A quiz, bake sale, workplace activity or other fundraising event might raise a chunk of your target while also introducing your campaign to people who might not otherwise have donated. Macmillan, for example, encourages event participants to consider additional fundraising activities alongside their online giving page.

This doesn't mean you need to fill your diary with fundraising events. Organising them takes time and effort, while training for your running challenge will increasingly demand both, so one well chosen activity that suits your network may be more useful than several complicated events.

Think about these activities at the planning stage rather than waiting until you are struggling to reach your target. You can then decide whether you actually need them once you see how your fundraising develops.

Getting support and ideas from friends and family is crucial.

Check What Your Employer Can Do

If you work for an organisation, investigate its charity and community policies before you start fundraising. Some employers offer match giving or matched funding schemes, while others may make charitable donations, support employee fundraising activities or allow fundraising in the workplace.

The arrangements vary considerably between employers, so ask your HR, people or corporate responsibility team what is available and what you need to do. There may be eligibility rules, deadlines, evidence requirements or limits on the amount an employer will contribute.

It is worth checking this early because employer support could change the rest of your plan significantly. If your company will match some of the money you raise, you may not need to find the entire fundraising target from individual supporters and fundraising activities.

Read more about match giving here.

Break Your Target Into Smaller Pieces

Once you have thought about your network and the different ways you might raise money, try dividing your overall target into smaller amounts.

Imagine your target is £2,000. You might initially hope to find £700 from friends and family, £400 through work, £300 from a fundraising activity, £300 from your wider network and another £300 through employer match giving.

Those figures aren't predictions and they don't need to be exact. Their purpose is to test whether your overall target looks achievable and to stop you relying on one group of people to provide all the money.

The plan can change as soon as fundraising starts. If friends and family are much more generous than expected, that's great; if workplace fundraising produces very little, you can concentrate more effort somewhere else.

Get Your Fundraising Page Ready Before You Share It

Your fundraising page deserves more than a couple of rushed sentences followed by an immediate social media post. Set it up properly before you start sending people the link.

Add a good photograph, set your target and explain what you are doing, which charity you are supporting and why. Where possible, tell potential supporters what the charity does and give them an idea of what donations could help achieve.

JustGiving recommends including your reason for fundraising, your connection to the charity and details of your challenge, and personalising online fundraising pages with a photograph and your story. A completed page gives potential supporters much more reason to engage with your fundraising than an almost empty one.

If your charity uses JustGiving or Enthuse, we have separate guides explaining how to make the most of your fundraising page.

Plan Your First Few Donations

Rather than immediately sending an empty fundraising page to everyone you know, consider approaching a few people close to you first. They may already know about your challenge and be happy to help get your fundraising started.

Make a personalised approach to close friends and family, and start with your closest contacts. Early donations can encourage other people to donate, and making the first donation yourself is another option.

There is no requirement to do this, and you shouldn't feel that you have to donate to your own page. The important point is to think about how you want to start rather than automatically sending the link to your entire network as soon as the page is created.

Think About Your Launch

There doesn't need to be a dramatic launch day, but you should have some idea of how you are going to introduce your fundraising. Rather than posting a bare link and asking people to sponsor you, explain what you are doing, why you are doing it and why their support matters.

You also don't need to contact everyone you know at once. Fundraising for a running event can last for weeks or months, and your training will provide new stories, milestones and reasons to talk about the challenge as the event gets closer.

Keeping some audiences and opportunities for later gives your campaign somewhere to go after the initial burst of donations. Regular, genuine updates are also more interesting for potential supporters than seeing exactly the same fundraising request repeatedly.

Check The Rules Before Organising Fundraising Activities

If you are fundraising as part of an official charity team, ask your charity about any materials, advice and fundraising support it can provide. It may already have resources that will save you time and help you organise activities correctly.

If you plan to organise raffles, lotteries, prize draws, public collections or other fundraising activities, check the relevant rules before going ahead. The requirements vary according to the activity and, in some cases, where it takes place; for example, public collections can require permission or a licence, while raffles and other lotteries are regulated activities.

If you're unsure, speak to your charity before organising the activity. In the UK, the Fundraising Regulator provides guidance on different fundraising methods, while the Gambling Commission is responsible for regulating lotteries.

Read more about organising a raffle here.

Understand Where Gift Aid Fits In

If you are fundraising for a UK charity, Gift Aid can make eligible donations from UK taxpayers worth 25% more to the charity without costing the donor anything extra. The donor must meet the eligibility requirements and make a valid Gift Aid declaration.

However, Gift Aid doesn't apply to every pound that enters your fundraising campaign. Payments for goods or services are not eligible, and special rules can apply to fundraising events and sponsored challenges, so don't automatically add 25% to everything you expect to raise.

Your charity or fundraising platform should provide guidance on Gift Aid, and HMRC publishes the detailed rules. For your initial fundraising plan, the important thing is to recognise that Gift Aid can increase the value of eligible donations without treating it as money that you personally have to raise.

Read more about gift aid here.

Then Build Your Fundraising Timeline

Once you've worked through these steps, you have the foundations of your fundraising plan. You know what you are trying to raise, understand the story you want to tell and have identified the people you can approach, the channels you can use and possible additional sources of money.

The next step is deciding when you are going to do everything. That's where a fundraising timeline becomes useful, because it allows you to spread your activity across the weeks or months leading up to the event rather than asking everyone at the beginning and then wondering what to do next.

Our Charity Fundraising Timeline takes you through that next stage and helps you decide what to do and when. The plan tells you where the money might come from; the timeline helps you turn that plan into action.

Read more about your fundraising timeline here.

Your Charity Fundraising Plan Doesn't Need To Be Complicated

The purpose of planning isn't to predict every donation before you start. You won't know exactly who will support you, which messages will work best or where unexpected donations might come from, and your fundraising will almost certainly change as you go.

What you need is a sensible starting point. Know your target and why you are fundraising, think about who you can ask and how you can reach them, check whether your employer can help and consider whether you need other fundraising activities alongside individual donations.

Then get your fundraising page ready and start putting your charity fundraising plan into action. Spending a little time thinking about your campaign before you share that first link can make a large fundraising target feel much more achievable.