How To Explain The Impact Of Donations In Your Fundraising Story

Asking someone to donate £10 or £20 to your fundraising page is one thing. Helping them understand what their donation could help achieve can make your fundraising story much more meaningful.

When people understand the difference their support can make, the number on your fundraising page starts to represent something more tangible. Their donation might help a charity provide a service, fund research, support a family or continue another important part of its work. The key is to explain that impact accurately, using information provided or approved by the charity you are supporting.

Explain Why The Money Matters

Your fundraising story should explain what you are doing, why you are taking on the challenge and why you have chosen your charity. Explaining the potential impact of the money you raise adds another important part to that story.

If your charity provides examples of what different donation amounts could help achieve, these can be particularly useful. They can make an otherwise abstract fundraising target easier to understand because somebody unfamiliar with your charity may have little idea what £2,000, or even £20, means to the organisation or the people it supports.

Showing the potential impact connects the money you are asking people to donate with the reason you are fundraising in the first place. Instead of simply seeing a target and a total, potential supporters can begin to understand what their contribution could help make possible.

Read about creating a fundraising plan here.

Get Your Information From The Charity

You should not need to work out the impact of donations yourself. Many charities already provide information specifically designed to help fundraisers explain where money goes and what their support can help achieve.

Start with the charity's website, fundraising pack and any information sent to you when you joined its event team. You may find examples showing what different amounts could help provide, statistics about the charity's work or stories illustrating the difference its services make.

If you cannot find what you need, ask your charity contact. The fundraising team may have current wording, statistics, photographs, videos or case studies that it is happy for you to use. Using information supplied by the charity also protects you from accidentally using an old statistic or making a claim that sounds plausible but does not accurately reflect how donations are used.

Never Invent What A Donation Will Pay For

It can be tempting to turn information about a charity into your own simple donation calculation. If you discover that a particular service costs £100, for example, you might assume that ten £10 donations will pay for one complete service.

That may not be true. Charities have staff, premises, technology and many other costs involved in delivering their work, while donations may support their activities generally rather than being allocated directly to one particular item or service.

The current Code of Fundraising Practice says fundraising must not mislead potential or existing donors through inaccurate, unclear or exaggerated information. It specifically warns against claiming that a donation will be used for a particular purpose if it may actually be used elsewhere.

The simplest rule for a charity runner is therefore a good one: do not invent donation impact figures. If the charity provides an example, use it accurately. If it does not, explain its wider work instead.

Be Careful With 'Will' And 'Could'

There is an important difference between saying that £20 will pay for something and saying that £20 could help provide it. If your charity specifically states that a particular amount will fund an item or service, follow the wording it provides.

In many cases, however, donations support the charity's wider work and there is no direct relationship between one person's donation and one particular outcome. Phrases such as "could help", "could contribute towards" or "can help the charity to" may therefore be more accurate.

Do not make the charity's own wording stronger simply because you think it will make a better fundraising message. This is particularly important with services, medical research and other work where a particular outcome cannot be guaranteed by an individual donation. Accuracy should always come before creating the perfect fundraising line.

Make Your Fundraising Target Easier To Understand

Donation impact is not only useful when talking about individual £10 or £20 donations. It can also help supporters understand your overall fundraising target.

If you are trying to raise £2,000, use information supplied by your charity to put that target into context. Depending on the charity, you may be able to explain the services it supports, the scale of its work or examples of what money raised by supporters helps make possible.

You do not need to turn your entire target into one neat outcome. In many cases it will be more accurate to explain that your fundraising will support the charity's wider work and then provide one or two examples of what that work involves. This gives the target some meaning without suggesting that every pound you raise has already been allocated to a particular purpose.

Show That Smaller Donations Matter Too

If your charity provides approved examples at different donation levels, they can help demonstrate that supporters do not need to make a large donation to contribute to the campaign. This can be particularly useful when somebody sees a large overall target.

A £2,000 target might make a £5 or £10 donation seem insignificant, even though lots of smaller donations can make an important contribution to reaching it. You can also talk about collective impact: ten people donating £10 move your campaign £100 closer to its target, while 50 people doing the same contribute £500.

The important thing is not to turn your fundraising page into a price list. A few relevant examples can help people understand the value of their support without making them feel that there is a minimum worthwhile amount to give.

Read more about smaller donations here.

Smaller donations matter too. Show your supporters how every contribution can help your charity make a difference.

Connect Impact With Your Personal Story

Facts about a charity become much more powerful when people understand why they matter to you. If you have a personal connection with the charity, you might explain the type of support that mattered to you or somebody close to you and then use information from the charity to show how fundraising helps it continue that work.

If you do not have a personal connection, explain what you have learned about the charity and why its work made you want to support it. There is no need to manufacture an emotional connection that does not exist.

The two parts of the story work together. Your personal motivation helps people understand why you are taking on the challenge, while the charity's impact information explains why raising the money matters.

Do Not Overload Your Story With Statistics

A charity may have dozens of impressive statistics about the work it does, but you do not need to include all of them on your fundraising page. Choose one or two pieces of information that relate closely to your reason for fundraising and that somebody can understand quickly.

A clear example of what the charity does is generally more useful to your story than a long collection of numbers. You can save other information for later in your campaign, when a different impact example might provide useful material for a fundraising update, social media post or message.

Your job is not to reproduce the charity's annual report. It is to help potential supporters understand why their contribution matters, so choose the information that does that most clearly.

Use Charity Stories And Images Carefully

Real stories can make the impact of a charity's work much easier to understand, but you should use case studies, photographs and videos that the charity has made available for supporters to share.

This is especially important when charities work with children, people experiencing illness, bereaved families or others whose personal circumstances may be sensitive. Finding a photograph or story online does not automatically mean it is appropriate for you to copy it onto your own fundraising page.

Ask your charity if it has approved stories, photographs or videos that fundraisers can use. These can bring the charity's work to life while ensuring that you are sharing the material in the way the organisation intended. You can then combine these resources with your own photographs and experiences to make the fundraising page personal to you.

Use Impact Throughout Your Campaign

Donation impact does not have to appear only when you first create your fundraising page. It can provide useful material at different stages of your campaign.

When you reach a fundraising milestone, for example, you could thank everyone who has supported you and use an approved example to illustrate the difference that fundraising can help make. Later, if you are making another fundraising push, a different piece of impact information can remind people why reaching your target matters.

Do not attach an impact statistic to every update. Your training, fundraising progress, personal motivation and the charity's work should provide different parts of the story as the campaign develops. That variety helps you continue talking about the cause without simply repeating the same request for sponsorship.

Keep Your Information Current

Impact figures and charity statistics can change. Costs rise, services develop and organisations sometimes change how they describe their work, so check the charity's current website or the fundraising materials it has provided rather than relying on an old social media post or somebody else's fundraising page.

If you are unsure whether an example is still accurate, ask the charity before using it. This is particularly important if you have supported the same organisation before, because a donation example you used for a marathon several years ago may no longer be current.

The Fundraising Regulator requires information in fundraising communications about charitable organisations and fundraising activities to be accurate. Using current, charity approved information is therefore not only good storytelling but also the safest way to make sure supporters are being given reliable information.

Be Careful About Promising Where The Money Goes

There is another reason to follow the charity's wording carefully. Saying that money is being raised specifically for one project or purpose can have implications for how those funds are used.

Charity Commission guidance explains that money raised for a specific purpose can become restricted to that purpose. It therefore advises charities to make their appeal wording clear about what they are fundraising for.

For an individual runner, the practical lesson is straightforward. If you are raising money generally for a charity, do not tell supporters that their donations will definitely be spent on one particular project unless the charity has told you that this is genuinely the case.

It is usually safer and more accurate to explain the type of work your fundraising helps support, using the language provided by the charity. That still allows you to demonstrate impact without making a promise about where individual donations will go.

Show Supporters What They Helped Achieve

Impact should not disappear from your fundraising story once people have donated. As your campaign progresses, remind supporters that they are part of what you are achieving.

When you reach a major fundraising milestone, connect the total with the charity's work where appropriate. After your running event, tell people how much you raised and thank everyone who donated, shared your page or helped in another way.

If your charity later tells you something specific about what your fundraising helped achieve, that can provide a strong final update. Until then, avoid promising individual donors that their particular contribution funded a particular outcome unless the charity can genuinely confirm it.

Closing the story in this way turns the final fundraising total from a number on a page into something your supporters can feel proud to have contributed towards. It also gives everyone who supported your campaign a much clearer sense of what their collective effort helped make possible.

Final Thoughts On The Impact Of Donations

Explaining the impact of donations strengthens your fundraising story because it helps answer an important question for potential supporters: what difference could my money make? Use current information supplied or approved by your charity, choose examples that are easy to understand and connect them with your own reason for taking on the challenge.

Smaller donations, larger donations and the combined total can all matter, so avoid making anyone feel that their contribution is too small. Most importantly, never invent impact figures or promise that money will be used for a particular purpose unless you know that is accurate.

Your personal story gives people a reason to care about your challenge, while reliable information about the charity's work helps them understand why supporting it matters. Bringing those two elements together can make the impact of your fundraising much easier for potential supporters to understand.