How to run a fundraising event

If you’re wanting to raise money for your local community group or charity, a fundraising event is a good idea to raise funds and get your local community involved too.

If you’re interested in running a fundraiser and don’t yet know what you want to choose as your cause, speaking to people within your community and doing some research online into how to choose a charity to support will certainly help you find a worthy cause.

If you aren’t sure where to start, this blog will take you through the steps of how to run a fundraising event as well as provide you with some useful links for further information.

What is a fundraiser?

A fundraiser is usually an event to gather financial support for a particular purpose, charity, or cause. Organising a fundraiser can be challenging, but it can also be rewarding for both you and your community.

There are few better ways to raise funds and awareness, find new volunteers for your cause, and bring a community together than with a community fundraiser.

You may already be very familiar with a range of fundraising events, and even attended one yourself. Common fundraising event ideas include events such as raffles, auctions, bake sales, car washes, and sponsored runs.

8 key steps to running a fundraising event

Whether you want to raise money for a charity or your local community group, knowing the key steps to running a fundraising event is important. In this blog, we’ll go through 8 steps to running a fundraising event, from initial planning through to gathering feedback after the event is over.

1. Build your team

First things first, planning and running a successful fundraising event takes more than one person. You may want to lead the project yourself, but you’ll need to find a group of people who can help you execute your fundraiser—especially for larger events.

If you plan on raising funds for a local club, asking members of that club could be a good place to start! Of course, the number of people you’ll need will depend on the size of the event and how much you want to raise.

Contacting other local community groups or friends and family will also help you determine how many people may be available to help you before, during, and after the event.

2. Pick a theme

Next, you’ll need to pick a theme for your event. It helps at this point if you know your target audience. Is your fundraiser most relevant to a certain age group, families, or people with a particular interest?

You may be fundraising for a cause or group that appeals to a wide range of people. In this case, you need to find a theme that will appeal to as many members of the community as possible. For example, those fundraising for Breast Cancer Now run Wear it Pink Day where supporters dress in pink whilst fundraising.

There are loads of fundraising ideas online if you’re stuck for what to choose. You could run a sports tournament, live music event, or community fair, to name a few. You can also find inspiration online via apps like Pinterest and lots of useful advice on sites like JustGiving to get you started.

3. Pick a time

When you announce your event, you need to give people more than enough warning to be available to attend. You’ll also want to make sure you’ve got enough time to put the event together, including collecting prizes and donations and getting sponsors on board beforehand, depending on the type of event you’re running.

You’ll also need to decide if a particular time of year would be best for your event. Do you need good weather? Does it need to be a weekend? Or does it clash with any major holidays? Again, this is a perfect time to consider who your audience is for the event and plan accordingly.

4. Choose your goals

Running a fundraising event isn’t only useful for raising money for your cause; it’s also a chance to network within your community, find volunteers and future donors, and raise awareness of what you’re trying to achieve.

Setting goals can be a good way to track your impact on the community and the growth of your fundraising events over time, particularly if you want to run them regularly.

You can also use this information to improve. For example, if one event doesn’t gather much interest, you can plan something different in the future and use these learnings to your advantage.

5. Set a budget

A key part of deciding how your fundraising event will take shape is ensuring you look at costs and set a budget.

If you get the word out into the community, you may find people willing to donate prizes or help you create different stalls and forms of entertainment for free, depending on the type of event you want to run.

If you want to run a live music event, you may be able to find local talent within the community who are happy to participate.

6. Speak with donors

Reaching out to donors is a great opportunity to gather donations, prizes, and sponsorship for your event. Approaching local businesses will also help raise awareness for your cause to a wider range of people within your community.

Before you begin approaching donors, make sure you have a clear understanding of your goals and why they should invest in your cause. This will give you the best chance of attracting their interest in your event.

7. Event promotion

Once you have your event planned, it's time to start marketing it! You want to make sure as many people as possible know about the details of your event. If you have limited space available, you can always offer tickets online or at the door so you can keep track of numbers.

There are lots of options for promoting your event on social media, and many of them are free. For example, local community group pages on Facebook are a great place to start sharing details of your event and what you'll be raising money for.

Just as you should when speaking with donors, you should have a clear message of what you're trying to achieve with the fundraiser and where people’s money will be spent.

Putting this information in the most tangible and simplest terms helps people to understand what they're donating towards.

8. Feedback

Once your fundraising event is over, ensure that you take steps to gather feedback from attendees and thank everyone for taking part.

Any information you can get from donors, attendees, and volunteers on how they felt the event went is a great way to ensure you're continually improving your fundraising events.

Of course, don't forget to let everyone know how much you managed to raise throughout the event, too! Pairing this information with what went well will put you in a great position for planning more fundraising events in the future.

Specialist community insurance through Ripe

If you're looking at running regular fundraising events, you may want to consider protecting yourself and your volunteers with insurance.

If you run an organisation in the sports, leisure, or community sectors, you'll face a number of risks daily, as well as when running public events like fundraisers. However, sporting club, leisure, and community insurance through Ripe is designed to safeguard against these risks.

There are many cover options to choose from through Ripe, including Public Liability, Products Liability, and Legal Costs cover for pursuing or defending a claim.

Click here to learn more about sporting clubs, leisure and community insurance coming soon to Ripe.