First Steps to Fundraising for Your Charity

Making sure your charity has the funds to continue is a big responsibility and can feel a little daunting, especially if – as is usually the case – you’re facing deadlines. Don’t worry. You are not alone.

This article is for individuals as well as community groups and organisations. You may find that one or more of the following scenarios reflects your situation:
 

• You are a family/community group looking to build/renovate a mosque or community centre, and we need to start fundraising.

• You are a community centre which operates a food bank or provides other services to support the elderly or young people, and we need to start fundraising.

• You are an existing charity run by families or local community members. We’ve found that our existing networks are starting to run dry and need more funds to continue our work.

• You are an existing organisation running charitable/community, and though we were previously funded by institutes/charitable grants/wealthy benefactors, our source of funds is drying out.

You are not alone

First things first, do you have a website? And if you do, is it driving your growth or income right now? It’s likely that the answer to one or both of those questions is ‘No’. Either way, you are facing an urgent need to develop a fundraising infrastructure or system that can generate funds from a wider network on an ongoing basis.

Your fundraising plan in 2 stages

The plan should be to establish a stable, sustainable income source, so you can focus on what’s important. We’re going to help you get your thoughts in order and work out the steps you need to get there.

You can break this down into 2 main stages:

• Stage 1 – Planning and Consolidation

• Stage 2 – Strategy for Growth

Stage 1 – Planning & Consolidation

This first stage is where your money – Qard-e-Hasana and donations – is going to come from in the short term.  This is where you need to focus for now: getting the people who know you and trust you on board.

Mobilise your core community.

Ring around and meet people to establish how much money can be raised immediately. This gives you a realistic starting point.

Consolidate your personal contacts.

Make a list of people who can be persuaded to raise funds to support your project.  You’re looking for 10, 20, 30 or more people who will commit to raising a minimum amount – let’s say £5,000 each over the next 2 or 3 months.

Now you’ve got a fighting fund.  This gives you a figure to work with to invest towards the project and to invest in further fundraising.

Consolidate your networks.

Moving on from this, you need to compile a full and detailed list of your entire fundraising networks: people, mosques, and institutes that will help you raise money. Have conversations and come up with a realistic target of what’s achievable over the next year.

If you have people with influence or are part of networks that are prepared to put their weight behind this, then all the better. This will help you to broaden your appeal and push your numbers up.  The other thing this will do is to establish or reassert a culture of fundraising. This is key: it proves you can mobilise people, and raise funds, and it creates a positive can-do mindset.

You might also think about organising a fundraising event. 

Volunteers can play an important role in organising events and supporting your fundraising goals. For more information on how to develop a basic volunteers programme, take a look here.

Stage 2 – Strategy for Growth

Becoming digitally facing is an essential component of existing in the 21st Century and cannot be overlooked! It is not good practice to only rely on the local networks or running events. Ultimately it is too time-consuming and is a drain on your time, energy, and resources. When going online to fundraise, you’re casting a much wider net.

The good news is that we’ve never met a charity that cannot develop and benefit from developing and executing a digital fundraising strategy.

The bad news is that it takes time to build engagement and develop trust with people online who don’t yet know you. But we can hold your hand here. We’ll show you what you need to do to develop a network of supporters over time. Get in touch to see how we can help you get the ball rolling here.

To conclude

To establish a decent digital fundraising framework, you must create a robust website, with assets and resources, such as videos and wider content. These will highlight your work and allow you to engage with and build a supporter base. It will include:

• Showcasing information about you, your work, your impact (through case studies and achievements and testimonials for example).

• Providing clear examples of how people can help, with specific donation amounts all linked to easy and intuitive donation routes.

But that’s just where it all starts. Testing propositions, building and converting audiences is a whole other ball game which we’ll cover in a series of other articles. Meanwhile, we can help you take the next steps with the wider Muslim community. Just get in touch for a free consultation to bounce around ideas.