Confused About Pledge Fundraising? Your Questions, Answered

As a professional in a school or nonprofit, you’re familiar with both the importance and the challenges of fundraising. Fundraising brings your program the funding it needs to fuel the good work you do for your community. But, it can feel difficult, and, at times, overwhelming to find the time and resources required to raise enough money for your needs.

However, making a simple change to the fundraising idea or method you use can help you reach your fundraising goals more efficiently. For example, holding a pledge fundraiser will engage your community and participants and encourage them to take an active role in the campaign.

In this guide, we’ll cover the basics behind pledge fundraising and how your organization can get started:

• What is pledge fundraising?
• What does your organization need to get started?
• What are some pledge fundraising best practices?

Before you can start making more granular changes to improve conversions or reach your audience more effectively via marketing, it’s essential to understand what pledge fundraising is and how it can work for your organization. Let’s start by breaking down what the pledge fundraising process looks like.

What is pledge fundraising?

Pledge fundraising, sometimes called pledge-based fundraising or pledge drives, requires donors to commit to making a certain donation at a later date. Donors typically do not make the donations immediately, but instead donate at a later date or over a period of time. This type of fundraising offers more flexibility for donors and allows them to give more than they normally would.

The pledge fundraising method is very versatile, making it easy to fit it into almost any campaign. For example, 99Pledges’ guide to read-a-thon fundraisers demonstrates how you might incorporate pledge fundraising into a read-a-thon:

• Step 1: Your fundraising software provider creates a participant pledge page for each student or supporter joining the read-a-thon.
• Step 2: Each participant collects pledged donations from their friends and families. Donors may pledge a flat donation amount (e.g., $50) or a certain amount per minute spent reading (e.g., $5 for every 15 minutes of reading).
• Step 3: Participants spend as much time as they can reading, making sure to carefully track the time.
• Step 4: Once the fundraiser ends, your fundraising software will automatically report the total minutes each participant spent reading and collect the pledged donations. For example, if a participant reads for three hours, they’ll receive $60 from donors who pledged $5 per 15 minutes of reading.

It’s important to keep in mind that the success of a pledge fundraiser is dependent on how many participants join in and how many donors they reach. Before starting your campaign, make sure to spend time optimizing your social media strategy so you can spread awareness of the campaign to a large audience.

What does your organization need to get started?

The pledge fundraising strategy is simple and straightforward, meaning you won’t need much to get started. However, the right tools and proper preparation can make the process run more smoothly.

Here are the basics you’ll need to implement this strategy at your organization:

• A dedicated fundraising tool. Fundraising software will help you manage the logistics of the campaign, such as creating pledge pages, processing payments, and even sending automated communications. Additionally, the right software will track important campaign data so you’ll know how close you are to achieving your fundraising goals.
  
  
• A pack of digital marketing materials. Because the majority of this campaign will take place online, it can be helpful to create pre-made, shareable social media infographics for your organization and participants to use when sharing online. Fundraising Letters’ guide to pledge cards also recommends creating digital cards that serve as fundraising appeals. This will make the donation request process simple, effective, and much less intimidating for participants who have never fundraised before.
  
  
• A follow-up strategy. Due to the nature of pledged donations, your supporters may need a reminder to submit their gift. Many fundraising software providers do this automatically so you don’t have to spend time reaching out to donors after the fundraiser. It’s also important to send donors donation receipts and heartfelt thank-you messages, both of which you can set up using your fundraising tool.

Based on the scope of your campaign, you may also need to invest in marketing materials tools. For example, social media scheduling tools can help you maintain a consistent posting schedule across several platforms, and email marketing tools make it easy to segment and schedule email promotions.

What are some pledge fundraising best practices?

Once you’ve prepared with the proper tools and techniques, you can start to fine-tune your fundraiser. To get the best results from your pledge fundraiser, follow these best practices:

• Begin marketing early. Develop your fundraising goals and corresponding marketing plan ahead of time. If you’re planning to stick to digital marketing platforms only, such as email and social media, you’ll just need enough time to create audience segments, craft messages, and create a schedule. If incorporating print elements like direct mail, however, you’ll need to be prepared for longer lead times.
  
  
• Maintain quality communication. Prioritize communicating with participants about the best ways to share about the fundraiser online. Consider offering them a media kit with premade graphics and caption templates they can use to promote the fundraiser. Additionally, maintain transparency with your audience by posting updates about fundraising progress and showing how you plan to use the funding after the campaign.
   
• Consider gamification or incentives. Gamification, which involves adding game elements to a non-game scenario, can help motivate your participants to give fundraising their all. This method is especially effective for fundraisers geared toward kids because it will spark their competitive spirits. To get started, try creating leaderboards that track the top earners for the fundraiser and offer incentives to those ranked in the top positions.

These best practices will help your organization reach more potential supporters, fundraise effectively, and increase the likelihood that you’ll meet your fundraising goals.

Pledge fundraising is an effective, engaging way for all kinds of organizations to raise money to support their work. By leveraging powerful marketing tactics like storytelling and a multichannel approach, you’ll make contact with new and existing supporters who are happy to support your organization with a pledged donation.