JustGiving blog

In the last two or three years the way people use JustGiving to fundraise has changed immensely, mostly down to the increased use of social media websites like Facebook and Twitter.

They offer you a brilliant way of sharing your fundraising page with more people than just your immediate friends and family. But where do you start? If you’re not a social media guru (who is!), it’s not easy to know how best to ask people to support you on different social media sites, as they all have their own little quirks.

But fear not! Here’s where our new JustGiving guide to social media fundraising (pdf) will help. You can download the file, or just read on…

So you’ve already asked your close friends and family for donations, but are still short of your fundraising target. How can you reach more people? Social media is a powerful way to get your story, and your fundraising page, to a potentially unlimited audience.

Here are JustGiving’s top tips on using social media to reach your fundraising goals.

Fundraising on Facebook:

Update your Facebook status with your JustGiving link – so all of your friends see your link in their News Feeds. For an extra push, post your link on their walls.

Ask friends to ‘donate’ their status update to you. Via their statuses, you can reach people you might not know.

Use the JustGiving Facebook application to invite people on Facebook to sponsor you: http://apps.facebook.com/justgiving

Ask your friend to use Facebook Connect on JustGiving after they’ve donated. This way they can share your page with their Facebook friends. You can also use it to promote your page.

Fundraising on Twitter:

Use Twitter to share your JustGiving page – write what you’re doing and why people should sponsor you, in the shortest sentence possible.

Ask your followers e to ‘retweet’ your link – so it reaches their followers too (remember: the shorter your tweet, the more retweet-able it is).

Ask your charity to share your link on their Facebook or Twitter sites. Or post it yourself on their Facebook wall.

Fundraising on YouTube:

Get on YouTube. Make a video – maybe a funny parody of your training, or just you telling the camera what you’re doing and why people should donate.

See our previous post on great fundraising videos here.

Fundraising with presentations:

Create a presentation and upload it to sites like Prezi or SlideShare. Don’t be boring! You can make it fun, like this one. 

Fundraising with Flickr or Picasa:

Take photos of your training or event and share these on sites like Flickr or Picasa. Show people what you’re doing and why they should support you. Don’t forget to link to your page.

Fundraising with blogs:

If you’ve got a great story, start a blog about it. Blogs are a great way to share your photos, videos and tweets in one place, keeping your supporters up-to-date.

Fundraising on, well, the web:

Search ALL of these sites for people talking about the charity you’re supporting. If you find people interested in the same cause, talk to them. They might be interested in supporting you, and you might make some new friends along the way.

Fundraising with the JustGiving widget:

Use the JustGiving widget to show your latest fundraising total on your own website – www.justgiving.com/widget

These are our tips based on how we’ve used those sites ourselves to raise money and how we’ve seen other people fundraising, but we’d love to hear your own stories and tips too.

Let us know how you’ve used social media to raise money for your cause in the comments, or on Facebook and Twitter.

Tags: Facebook, flickr, Fundraising, Help, YouTube