We are at the start of another year of infinite fundraising opportunity. We know you’ll need to start planning your key fundraising drives well in advance. To help you, here are some of the most important fundraising opportunities you’ll come across in 2019.

Marathons and runs

Marathons and other sporting events are a really good way of raising money because once you’ve recruited people to run on your behalf, the work is pretty much done. You should probably offer some moral support throughout the training, and it is really important you try and get a team along to support your runners, but in terms of raising actual money, your runners with do that for you.

There are marathons all over the place and the spaces are highly sought after. If you have charity slots, you shouldn’t have too much trouble finding people who want to run on your behalf. Set a high-ish but realistic fundraising target. If you have no idea where to start, have a look at what the other charities are asking people for.

Most marathons take place across the spring, summer and autumn. It might be too late to purchase charity spaces this year for the spring and summer runs, but have a look into autumn. Most marathons start selling their spots for next year right after the current year’s event ends, so if there is an event you are interested in, keep your eyes open.

Ramadan 2019

Ramadan is an Islamic celebration centred around the evening. Muslims are required to refrain from eating, drinking and smoking during daylight hours. In the evenings, Muslims break their fast and attend the Mosque to pray.

As part of their faith, Muslims are obligated to give a part of their wealth to help those less fortunate each year. Many of them choose to donate this money to charities during Ramadan because they believe that the rewards they receive from God are multiplied at this time. That means this is a great opportunity to appeal for donations from people who are already looking to give to a worthy cause.

You should be aware that there is a huge amount of competition at this time. Ramadan is the most important time for fundraising for most Islamic charities. They really know their audience. If you want to take any share of the donations, you need to learn all about them, too. There are specific rules to giving you’ll need to learn about, otherwise, you have no hope at all of achieving donations.

Ramadan starts on Sunday 5th May and finishes on Tuesday 4th June.

Christmas

If you work in charity, it is never too early to start talking about Christmas. Your 2018 campaign has only just completed; you still remember how everything went. You still know what worked and what didn’t. Now is the time to start thinking about next year, at least a little bit.

At the very least, call a meeting with your team to discuss what went right and what went wrong and talk about the things you might do next year. This is the only way you’re going to get better at capitalising on this key period for fundraising.

For charity workers, it’s easy to plod along and continue doing what we always do to raise funds at Christmas because we think we already have it nailed, or we don’t think we can do any better, but this is most likely not the case. Don’t lose sight of the opportunity to encourage donations at Christmas. Do everything you can to get the best from it, even if you don’t think you can stand the idea of starting even earlier than you usually do.