Today, we received some AWESOME fundraising tips from a family team in the New York area. They've had tremendous success with these approaches, and we wanted to share them with you, in hopes that they might help you, too!
Fundraising Tips from Team Levine
1) TELL YOUR STORY
Whether it is sad or inspiring, all of us have one thing in common – we have our personal stories. Using your personal story is the best way to frame your message and to give people a reason to contribute.
In order to truly make a difference and touch people, Paulina and I knew we had to do more than ask people to help because the March of Dimes mission means so much to us. We explained why it does – in detail. As tough as it was, and very much still is, we opened up and let people into that part of our lives. This has had a big impact on our fundraising efforts.
As a reference, you can read our story on our team site: http://www.goteamlevine.com/
Where to include it:
Put it on your March for Babies Team page, Facebook page, emails, or wherever you are asking people to donate.
Tips on how to tell your story:
• Tone: Use your personal voice. Don’t remove the emotion by making it sound generic. Whether sending emails, invites, or posting to Facebook - say things in your style. (I have spent too much time in past crafting our message and learned that the best way is to just say it the way you are most comfortable.)
• Try to keep everything in first person: Regardless of format or context (i.e., video, Facebook post, email blast), all of your messaging should come from you and your family. Sign it with your names as well.
2) CREATE A VIDEO
Team Levine Video: http://youtu.be/y4uaee3Fkmo
Using video is by far the most impactful way to tell your story and ask people to support you and your team. Let them see your face, hear your voice and be touched by the story as it’s delivered directly from you. Look at the camera, open up and speak from your heart. As painful and difficult as it is, you may actually find it to be easier than putting it in written word. Video is also the best way to touch people who have never met you.
How to do it
Note: You don’t need to be a techie to do this.
• Use your iPhone or any video recorder. Give it a close friend of just place it on table and start recording yourself. It helps to have a few notes handy so that you keep it short and sweet.
• optional: Once you are done, you may want to trim it. Your iPhone includes trimming functionality that makes it so easy to clean up our videos. Desktop apps like IMovie or QuickTime also makes this extremely easy to do.
• optional: If you have a Mac and own iMovie, it's super simple to add some background music and some photos. There are plenty of tutorials on apple.com http://www.apple.com/findouthow/movies/
• Upload it to either YouTube or face book.
• Simple Outline: Say who you are. Tell your story. Share why you chose to support the March of Dimes. Ask for support. Direct them to the website and thank them.
• Share it! Link to it from your team Web site. Add to your Facebook team page. Email it. Put it in your email signature. This should be at the center of your fundraising campaign.
Additional Video ideas
1. Upload videos of your kids rooting for your team. We do it every season and post it to our Facebook page. It’s a wonderful way of generating excitement and activity. Here is one of ours: http://bit.ly/WW36kP
2. Create a YouTube account so that all of your videos can live in one place and be accessible to everyone. Here is ours: http://www.youtube.com/user/teamlevinerocks
3. Upload any and all videos related to your family team (i.e., press, interviews, highlights.)
4. Make a video recap. Take a video of you and your family thanking everyone and letting them know your final results. Keeping people looped in like this will make them want to participate the following year.
3) CREATE & MAINTAIN A DONOR DATABASE
After 2011 we finally started tracking donations, organizing all of our email addresses (both existing donors and target donors).
Create a Spreadsheet
• You can use any spreadsheet application – Excel, Pages, Google Docs. (Another, more powerful solution is to use an online service. The best one out there is donortools.com <http://donortools.com/> - but it does cost $60/mo. Has more features but a spreadsheet is enough to get started.)
• For each of your donors (existing or potential), enter the following data:
- first name
- last name
- email
- email 2 (many people have work and personal emails.)
- address
- segment (see below)
- donations (use a different column for each year)
Why do this?
It allows us to see useful and actionable information like:
• "who donated last year but not this year?"
• "who are our consistent big donors?"
Revisit your list constantly and keep it updated
I meet potential donors all the time. It has become habit for me to add them to my list. Before each season, both Paulina and I put time aside to go through our contacts, Facebook friends, LinkedIn connections and enter new names and emails. We ask our families to do the same.
4) EMAIL BLASTS
This is by far our most successful method of fundraising. And 2012 was our most successful year yet, from an email perspective.
Frequency:
We did 1 big blast & 2 reminder blasts which were very successful. By tracking donors and donations in our spreadsheet, we can see who from the original blast had not donated yet and include them on the follow-ups.
Here is last year’s email schedule along with subjects (Note: we started much too late.)
(2) 3/30/2012 Support Paulina & Josh Levine in the fight against premature birth*
(3) 4/03/2012 Support Paulina & Josh Levine in the fight against premature birth
(4) 4/20/2012 Renew your support & help Team Levine save babies - 9 days left to donate
(5) 4/25/2012 Just 5 days left! Support Team Levine in our fight to help all babies be born healthy.
* For Paulina’s work list, we used a different subject: “Support Paulina Berowitz in the fight against premature birth” because they only knew her as Paulina Berowitz. This had a huge impact on donations.
How to Send:
You can send from your personal email address or use a free email campaign tool like Mailchimp.com. Make sure you put everyone in the BCC list. People don’t like their emails to be seen by hundreds of other people. The TO line should only include your own address.
When to Send:
We think the best time to send is Thursday, around 9 AM. Try to avoid Fridays or first thing Monday morning. Also be mindful of holidays around this time (Passover).
Format/Design:
View our email from last year for reference: http://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=91e8b6d83c08e83439331878b&id=fbffc1406b&e=
• Use a clear, concise headline. Ours: “Please join us once again in our efforts to fight premature birth & honor the memory of our daughters, Chloe & Isabelle.”
• If possible, try to include a photo – one that best represents your personal story.
• Make sure you have a clear call-to-action that links to your March for Babies team page and Facebook team page. MAKE A DONATION > If email is long, include it towards the top and at the end.
• Tell them where their donations are going and how it will have an impact (you can grab this from marchforbabies.org).
• Share your goal. And if this is a follow-up email, say how far you are from your goal.
• Include your story. (This email may get forwarded to others so you want to assume people never heard it or need to be reminded.)
• Sign it from you and your family.
Send different emails to your different segments (see note above regarding “segmentation”)
This past year we segmented our list of email addresses and sent a different email based on the recipients.
We broke ours out by “Josh & Paulina”, “Josh Work”, “Paulina Work”, “”Mom’s List”.
And tailored the message accordingly.
o Example: Most of Paulina’s work people didn't know my name and only knew Paulina by her maiden name, Berowitz. So if we sent from my email or even her personal email, they wouldn't have immediately known who it was.
Email Subject Tips
Subject of your email is crucial. Aside from your name, this is the first thing that people see. People are quick to instantly trash emails that sound too sales-like or vague – especially if it is from someone who they may not be immediately familiar with.
• DON’T BE VAGUE OR GENERAL (I.e., Support Us! or “Hey There”)
• You want them to take action, so say it in first couple of words
- Support Paulina & Josh Levine in the fight against premature birth
- Renew your support & help Team Levine save babies - 9 days left to donate
• Stress the urgency by telling them how many days are left
- Just 5 days left! Support Team Levine in our fight to help all babies be born healthy.
• If you are close to your goal, say so.
- We’re just $500 away from reaching our goal of $X000! Help us in our fight...
5) USING FACEBOOK
Create a team “Page”.
Don’t just use your personal pages. A “Page” allows you to have people subscribe to your team and have dialogue with you and others.
Our team page: http://www.facebook.com/goteamlevine Screenshot below.
If you don’t have one, go here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php and click on “Community and Causes”
Once you create your team page, you need to:
• Add content – old and new. Upload photos/videos and create albums (i.e., 2011 Walk, 2012 Fundraising Party)
• Important: Tag any and all friends in pictures to make it more viral. Tagging your friends will post the photo to their feed, allowing their friends to see it. Hopefully this will get more followers for your team page. Do this every time you add a new photo.
• Select a representative photo to use as your hero image for your team page. This should immediately hit home to people. We use a photo of me holding Isabelle’s hand.
• Fill out the “About” section and any other content areas so that people can learn everything about your mission and story. Include links to your March of Dimes team page.
• Invite your friends to ‘LIKE’ it. Tell your family and close friends to do the same.
Other content ideas to your page fresh and people engaged:
• Take screen captures of leaderboards
• Share any press or special notes you have received from the March of Dimes.
• Get people involved in the competitive aspect with posts like: “We’re ranked #3 in NY... help us be #1!”
• Give updates on how much you have raised and how much you have left to hit your goal.
• Post team news and share any events you may have attended.
• Share facts reminding people of how severe and real the problem is. (i.e., “Nearly 500,000 babies are born too soon each year” or “1 in 9 babies are born prematurely in the U.S.”
• Post facts showing the impact that the March of Dimes has had. People want to see that their donations are actually making a difference. (i.e., Pre-term births hit 10 year low. March of Dimes goal is to get below 10% by 2020.) They have a bunch on the MOD-NY page https://www.facebook.com/MarchofDimesNYDivision
• Remind people about the walk! Link to past walks.
Facebook just released an iPhone app – called “Pages”. I find it helpful to manage and post directly to my team page without going through my personal account. It can be a little confusing on the Facebook app when you toggle between multiple accounts.
6) USE AN EMAIL SIGNATURE
Include a March for Babies team signature on all of your emails for everyone to see. Include a link to your Facebook page, March for Babies team page and any other relevant information. This is a great way to spread awareness. The March of Dimes site has information on how to do this. It’s really easy to do.
5) THANK YOU CARDS
Send them immediately. And don’t count on the out-of-box thank you emails that get sent from the March for Babies site. It should come directly from you and should be personalized towards the donor. We also write hand-written notes to everyone who makes a donation. While it takes a bit more effort, there is no better way to show your appreciation.
5) FUNDRAISER/PARTY IDEAS
We were able to raise around $3,000-4,000 each of the past couple of years.
• Find a free venue by asking around. If you pick an off night, bars might be open to giving you a space for free.
• Make it clear that 100% of donations and raised money will go to the March of Dimes.
• Charge cover $20.
• For raffle tickets, we sold them at: 3 tickets for $10. — 7 tickets for $20. Gave them incentive to buy more.
• I had someone from my office walk around all night to gently nudge and ask people to buy more tickets.
• Ask everyone you know to donate something for the raffle. Don’t be shy. People want to give to these types of things – they just need to be asked.
• Once you have the list, email it out to the invitees. Gives them more incentive to come and spend money.
• Sell raffle tickets at the door.
• Have a family or close friend sit at the door to collect. People are willing to give more than the recommended cover so if you have a persuasive person at the door it will increase the likelihood of people buying more tickets than they expected.
• Make a speech.
• Post photos and send a think you note out the next morning and tell everyone how much you raised.
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