Skip to main content

10 tips on how to make your virtual fundraising event stand out and increase smash your donations targets.

You’ll probably never face a more challenging time for your charity that right now. Not surprisingly, there’s a huge amount of fear and anxiety among charities at the moment. You may have seen a big reduction in charitable donations and decreased participant sign ups due to your fundraising events being cancelled. Many of your key staff may have also been furloughed and your charity income may have been hit hard. It’s difficult to not be disheartened and worried about how it will all end. 

This is why SO many charities are reacting and adapting by shifting their focus to virtual fundraising. As charity sector specialists we’ve helped to create events, their identities and merchandise for many successful charity events.  We believe in sharing with our community and so we thought we’d put together our top tips on how to navigate the virtual fundraising landscape! 

 Follow these tips and you’ll learn what aspects underpin a successful virtual fundraising event & have every chance of not only surviving the crisis but coming out even stronger than before. 

1. Define your target audience.  

As with any event or piece of communication, it’s important to know who you are talking to. If you’re used to holding any type of event, mass participation or otherwise, you’ll know the type of person you attract to those events. You may want to target those same people, or use your online presence to reach a whole new audience.  Either way, it’s best to know who you’re talking too, the more refined and pointed, the more accurately focused your event can be. 

2. Set yourself a realistic fundraising target.  

It may sound obvious but generally speaking, the more money you would like to raise, the more people you need to get involved. If your charity has a wide reach, you can set yourself a higher target. But be realistic too, a wide reach could be better served with several smaller events. The key is that you know your targets in order to know the shape and size of an event. 

3. Set yourself a non-monetary objective too. 

Your virtual fundraising event doesn’t have to be purely about raising lots of money this time around.  You can use the event to increase awareness of a particular service that your charity provides or maybe you have demographic that you would like to be more involved in your charity. Your virtual fundraising event is a mini advertising campaign so maximise your investment… just don’t try and do too much. 

4. Identify key dates. 

The beauty of virtual fundraising events is that they can be done any time.  But not setting a definite timeline or date can be detrimental to involving your fundraisers.  Online events work best when they have a defined period.  This not only makes them easier to manage, it also gives more clarity about when your fundraisers should take part. Whether it’s a day or a few weeks, setting that time makes everything a lot easier to plan around. You’ll be able to introduce the event, encourage participation and increase donations far more easily. 

5. Have an idea.  Or don’t. 

Charity teams are full of creative people and you’ve been creating fundraising events for years.  If you’ve got an idea that’s been dormant for years or you don’t know how to get it off the ground, give it a go as a virtual event, they’re much lower risk than those physical events that require space, property, insurance… (you know the drill).  If you’re scratching your head, we can help. 

6. Give your virtual fundraising event a clear identity.

With a crowded market, it is hard to stand out and with no clear identity it’s easy to be overlooked. Having a clear identity will make your event stand out from the crowd. A clear identity for your event will also ensure that people notice the event and not mistake it for any other comm’s you have out at the same time. Be clear with what your event is about and convey that through your identity.  

7. Have assets to send to your fundraisers. 

If you’re asking your fundraisers to do something online, ensure that they look good or have the tools to do what they need. Share assets that they can use on social platforms to make their space stand out from all their other content. 

8. Have a plan for marketing your event.

It may look simple and easy but you need to give some consideration about how best to reach your audience.  Ensure that your demographic will see your content where you intend to share it and consider where to use paid media in order to reach a wider demographic and new supporters. Acknowledge that you will need to be in front of your audience in a productive way throughout your events timeline. 

9. Thank your supporters just as you would at a physical mass participation event. 

You know that your fundraising supporters appreciate the thank you they receive across your events.  For some they have achieved a lifetime goal, for others, it’s a chance to cement relationships and to feel part of a team.  We know that merchandise continues to solidify relationships with supporters, receiving a medal recognising the achievement or a t-shirt that reminds the team of the camaraderie shared, is often an emotionally well received thank you.

10. Do you have existing resource to manage a fundraising event? 

Do not underestimate an online (Virtual) event, it is important to give all aspects consideration and be able to support the online necessary platform. The good news is that they are easy to manage and a doddle to learn.  But if you need any additional support, we can help. 

 

Need Additional Support? Drop us a line to see how we can help you with your online, virtual fundraising events. 

On your marks, get set, bake! For another year running, Bluestep have had the pleasure of working with Macmillan Cancer Support on their fundraising packs for The World’s Biggest Coffee Morning.

Any excuse to bake, and more importantly eat, cake is fine by us. So, when it’s for an amazing cause it’s even sweeter.

After working hard on this exciting top-secret project earlier on in the year, we have been really looking forward to seeing everyone hosting their coffee mornings and watch the products in action.

The 2018 pack includes an array of fun props to ensure hosts and participants get the most out of their morning. This includes flags, stickers, a fundraising box, bunting, tablecloth, bake-related games, cards and ‘mmm’ bunting; which our very own designers created!

1.5 million of these units were printed, stored and shipped back in June by yours truly, at our very own warehouse facility.

The masterpieces for our own coffee morning included a refreshing lemon drizzle, an indulgent red velvet creation and a selection of tasty cookies.

Not one to shy away from the cake, next month sees the launch of our very own Bluestep Bake Off! Keep your eyes peeled on the blog to watch it all unfold. Fingers crossed for no soggy bottoms!

We hope everyone across the UK had an amazing coffee morning raising money (and bakes) for such an important cause.  We’re already looking forward to next year, so stay tuned to see what we have planned…

It’s undoubtedly the biggest charity fundraiser in the UK and we’ve finally been able to debut our Macmillan charity fundraising pack! Plus, it gave us a good excuse to bake cakes…

We’ve been counting down the days until Macmillan’s World’s Biggest Coffee Morning, as this year we had the pleasure of creating promotional products for their charity fundraising packs – one of our most exciting projects to date.

The order involved 1.7 million units including branded miniature cake bunting, mini cake flags, ‘Best Baker’ badges and a tablecloth printed and stored at our Bluestep warehouse facility. And we’re no strangers to orders of this size, just see our order for the FA Cup Final!

Not only did we want to use our fundraising pack and get our quintessentially British bunting up, but it also meant we could show off our second-best set of skills – baking.

We love an excuse to get our hands stuck in cake mixture (and our faces), and we like to think we’re pretty good bakers if we do say so ourselves – just see how our Bluestep bake-off turned out. We can categorically confirm that there were no soggy bottoms in the office on this day. Mary Berry would be proud.

Our freshly-baked goods selection included Mia’s deliciously delicate Viennese Whirls and creamy sandwich biscuits, Alice’s crumbly white chocolate and raspberry cookies and Yasmin’s tasty Oreo truffles.

After devouring the lot, it was up to us official “taste-testers” to see whose bakes were fit for the ‘Best Baker’ award. It wasn’t an easy decision, but after much deliberation, we chose Mia as the Best Baker for Macmillan’s World’s Biggest Coffee Morning!

We hope everyone across the UK had a successful World’s Biggest Coffee Morning and enjoyed their cake bunting as much as we did! We’re already looking forward to next year’s event, so stay tuned to see what we have planned…

Butter bashing, nut crunching, stiff peaks and soggy bottoms...The Great British Bake Off is back. Why we love it SO much, we’ll never know. Perhaps it’s the adorably chic backdrop (set in the English countryside, complemented with pleasingly regular April showers), the quintessentially British narrative, laced with cheeky innuendos and Mel and Sue’s annoyingly addictive puns, or the refreshing inclusion of everyone from the endearing middle class mum and homemaker, to the young and energetic engineering student.

We just can’t get enough, and as our very own Hollywood ‘nod of approval’ to the show, we decided to host our very own Bluestep Bake Off.
Each Bluestepper was assigned a week, with three bakers going head to head each week for StarBaker status. All-star bakers will be automatically sent through to the Bake Off finale, where they’ll be tasked with creating a show-stopping masterpiece!

So how have we fared so far?

We’ve had everything from chocolate mousse cakes and feta tartlets, to orange layer cakes and banana cheesecake. As our belt buckles tighten, the final draws closer. Who will be the winner of the Bluestep Bake Off?

Watch this space!