The days of conventional bake sales and car washes are over! To successfully attract your audience’s attention and raise money today, your sorority needs to experiment with fundraising ideas that donors might not expect. However, it can be difficult to formulate the right ideas and plan and execute them.
If you’re a fundraising beginner unsure how to start with your next campaign, this guide can help you every step of the way. When you follow our simple steps, you will be well on your way to leading your chapter in pursuit of the perfect fundraising campaign. Let’s explore how you can achieve a successful, well-organized campaign.
1. Assemble your fundraising team with software.
The first step for any successful fundraiser is to select the right people to join your fundraising team. Fortunately, your sorority is full of women who are passionate about your chapter and have a vested interest in the success of your fundraising efforts. All you need to do is organize your members, equip them with the right tools, and motivate them to do their best.
To start assembling your fundraising team, use sorority management software to automate your workflow. The right software tool will help you:
- Manage all of your fundraising participants. Manually upload and manage participant information with this tool to ensure you always have up-to-date data.
- Assign administrative levels. Give certain members of your sorority officer or administrative access to specific campaigns to guarantee they can see and use all of the tools that will be useful during a fundraiser.
- View member profiles. See information on every member of your chapter to decide who is best positioned or most interested in helping to fundraise for your organization. Good picks are those who have been with the sorority for many years or who go above and beyond in their engagement with chapter activities.
Your fundraising team will work together to plan, promote, and execute your event. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look for opportunities for all members of your organization to get involved. The more people working on your fundraising efforts, the better, and using the software can help you engage them all. For instance, you can use digital tools to send updates to your members outside of the fundraising team so they can share campaigns with their own networks.
2. Decide on your fundraiser idea.
Not all fundraising ideas are profitable in every community. To set your sorority up for success, you need to decide on a fundraiser that will appeal to the people who are most likely to donate to your organization. Choose a low-stakes, high-reward, and enjoyable fundraising idea that can benefit your chapter without adding too much extra work for your sisters. Some of the most popular sorority fundraising ideas include:
- Call campaign. Use this fundraising idea to ask your sorority alumnae for donations. People who have loved and supported your organization in the past are more likely to donate and give more, making your alumnae prime prospects. Use your team members to extend the reach of your fundraiser past the borders of your campus and solicit more potential donors via phone.
- Snack box delivery. Who doesn’t love reasonably priced snacks delivered right to their door? Recruit your chapter members to assemble snack boxes and deliver them to hungry customers across campus in return for a donation. Consider scheduling this fundraiser around midterms or finals when many people are stuck in the library and will want snacks.
- Shoe drive fundraiser. This unique fundraising idea allows people to contribute to your sorority’s fundraiser with something other than money. Perfect for college students who may have constrained budgets, this fundraiser allows people to donate their gently worn, used and new shoes to your group. By working with a shoe drive fundraising organization, you’ll receive a payout from the collected shoes while opening up your fundraising efforts to a new audience.
Make sure you carefully choose which fundraising idea works best considering your budget, sisters’ interests, chapter goals, and donor base to ensure the highest likelihood of success.
3. Strategically schedule your fundraiser.
Timing is everything when it comes to fundraising. People are more willing to donate their money at certain times in the year and the semester. Strategically plan your fundraiser for when most people will be receptive to your appeals to boost the success of your fundraiser.
Start by using the event management tools at your disposal in your sorority management software to access a chapter-wide calendar. Ask your sisters to post their availability to the communal calendar so you can determine the best time for a fundraiser. Don’t forget to compare your chapter calendar with your university’s master calendar. It will help ensure you don’t schedule a fundraiser when people won’t be on campus or will be swamped with tests.
Next, consider which times of year best suit your event theme. For instance, consider these seasonal fundraising ideas:
- Ugly Holiday Sweater Contest (winter)
- Chapter Cookout (spring or summer)
- Back-To-School Dinner Party (fall)
If you’re torn between several fundraising ideas that fit within certain seasons, generate a list for your sisters to vote on. This can build their investment in the cause and ramp up internal excitement for your upcoming fundraisers.
4. Promote your fundraiser internally and externally.
Effectively promoting your fundraiser is essential to its success. To raise more money at your fundraiser, make sure you promote it both within your organization and to your wider community.
To internally promote your fundraiser, use your sorority management software solution. Your tool should allow members of your organization to post updates on an informal, public message board that your sisters can like and comment on. This is a low-stress way of communicating with a large group of people and can improve sister engagement.
Once your sisters are on board internally, focus on external communication. Double the Donation recommends starting with social media. If your target audience is college students, your chapter can’t go wrong leveraging platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to spread the word. Allow your chapter members to spread the word about your fundraiser by reposting your chapter’s fundraising appeals.
Don’t forget you should devote a significant portion of your resources to appealing to your chapter alumnae. Alumnae engagement should entail personal correspondence via direct mail, emails, and other customizable communication channels. By addressing them by name and referencing their past involvement with your chapter, you show how much you value their role in your organization and can secure their future support.
5. Effectively manage your fundraising data.
Keeping your chapter’s data organized is key to gauging your fundraising success, conducting outreach, and planning future campaigns. However, managing your sorority’s data is no easy feat. However, the right digital tool can make organizing your fundraising data a breeze. OmegaFi recommends seeking out solutions that:
- Show summaries for each gift.
- Contain a list of donors for each campaign.
- Determine prospective donors based on personal data.
- Store and protect confidential information.
- Display chapter portfolio balance.
Keeping your data clean should be a critical aspect of your daily work. Schedule regular audits to remove duplicate records and pinpoint which records you need to append. Also, ensure all relevant team members are trained to use your database so nothing falls through the cracks.
Like any other nonprofit, sororities need to fundraise to continue moving their missions forward and serve their members. Even though you aren’t a nonprofit professional, you can adopt these tips to function (and raise money) like one. Your chapter will be able to hit your fundraising goals and stay organized while doing it in no time!
