Arup in Wear Red for RedR Day: 5 tips to navigate through Fundraising

Setting a goal will always help the fundraising team to know what the aims are and get everyone on the same page. It is also an effective way to inspire your potential donors to act and support your cause. 

It is important to set your goal high, believe you can achieve your goal and push yourself to do your best. When our team set the initial fundraising target of £10,000, the goal was slightly daunting. At the end, we bettered our initial goal! It is very encouraging to know that we have achieved so much – if we can do it, I believe all other fundraising teams can do it too! 

Use your goal to push yourself to raise more than you ever thought you could! 

Traditional fundraising events, such as bake sale, raffle ticket sale and quiz night, are always effective and relatively easy to organise. However, novel fundraising events can showcase your enthusiasm to the potential donors and sponsors. Subsequently, you can raise a surprisingly large amount of donations from these novel fundraising events! 

For example, the Mauritius Office has organised a fundraising event which lasted for a whole day. Combining Mauritius’ Independence Day and Wear Red for RedR Day, the fundraising team included a lot of fun activities (e.g. bingo, animation corner, play station, dart, poker) into the events schedule. The event was a huge success, making the Mauritius Office among one of the highest-fundraising offices. 

A mixture of both traditional and novel fundraising events is highly recommended – be both realistic and ambitious! 

Many donors support your cause not only because they believe in the cause, but also because they respect your effort. This is particularly relevant in an office setting where everyone is busy working. It is so much more effective if you go to your colleague’s desks and ask for their support than waiting them to come over the donation stall!  

The same goes for finding prize sponsorship for raffle ticket sale and quiz. Asking for sponsorship face-to-face often has a higher successful outcome than emails. However, emails can be equally effective if they are tailor-made to your potential sponsors – in fact, more than half of the prizes in London’s raffle ticket sale came through email requests! 

The key of writing an effective sponsor email or letter is to make them personal and relevant to the sponsors. Think about and emphasize why the potential sponsors should support your fundraising efforts. If you are writing from an office of a well-established company with many employees, a professional format of the letter can persuade your potential sponsors that they would benefit from raising their profile among your professional colleagues. If you are swaying them as a neighbouring business in the local community, a causal tone can convince your sponsors that you are a congenial partner to support.  

Always remember to understand your potential donors and sponsors and tailor your approach to them accordingly! 

Feeling the pressure of the fundraising deadline it can sometimes easy to focus too much on the fundraising goal and forget the reason of why you are supporting the cause. However, what motivates your donors’ and sponsors’ support is not your fundraising goal but your inspirations!  

One way to inspire your donors and sponsors is to incorporate elements of promoting RedR and their work into your fundraising events. Putting out RedR leaflets or poster is an easy way, but you can always go further than that. The fundraising team from the Copenhagen Office organised a breakfast session where the team also gave a presentation on RedR’s work. Some teams have also invited speakers from RedR to give out a lunchtime talk on the disaster relief work that RedR does.  

Your fundraising is not just raising money for RedR, but also about promoting the work that RedR do! 

Fundraising for a charitable cause is a rewarding experience. If you have no previous experience in fundraising, this will be a great opportunity for you to learn, and to show support for a cause that you believe in!