How to raise money for a cause you care about
Most of our Advocacy 101 series has been focused on how to make your voice heard with elected officials, from Twitter to town halls. We’ve also shared tips on how to stay informed, including working with advocacy groups that champion the issues you care about. Outdoor Alliance is a coalition of 8 advocacy groups, whose members focus on issues from paddling to climbing to mountain biking. For virtually any issue you care about, you can bet that there is a nonprofit advocacy organization working to make sure your voice is heard.
Along with doing incredibly important work to protect shared resources, all these nonprofits have one thing in common: they always need more resources to do their work.
And that’s where you can come in.
Raising money is a great way to make sure that organizations working around the clock to protect public lands have the resources they need to do their work. Here are our top five tips for how to raise money for a cause you care about:
Contact the organization to see whether they have resources for individual fundraising – some larger organizations will be able to build individual fundraising pages and let you track contributions. Make sure you understand the work they are doing and can talk about the cause.
Do something cool that you love – an endurance event, a marathon, a cross-country backpacking adventure – or hold an event like an auction, birthday party, or dinner where you ask friends and family to donate. Donate your next adventure to a cause you care about, raising money for the number of miles you hike or ride.
Advertise your cause or event by asking friends and family to donate to the cause through email, Facebook, or paper invites to events. The number one reason that people give to a cause is because someone asked them to do it.
Make donating easy: get your own page on the organization’s website, run a fundraiser through Facebook (most non-profit pages will let you do this easily), or link to the organization’s donate page.
Thank your donors! Write them a short email or note thanking them for their donation.