5 Ways to Get People Involved in Charity

In the winter of this year, I saw a famous  actress with more than a million subscribers on instagram post about a boy who urgently needs a bone marrow transplant and who “refused all funds.

Follo5w us on facebook

 This is the key phrase in such posts, which, unfortunately, a lot.

“You know how badly these funds work, so all boy’s hope is only for us” – the message is approximately the same.

We discussed this post with colleagues, and it turned out that nobody refused. They found a bone marrow donor, and everything was ready. But at the last moment his mother decided that she did not want to perform the operation on her son in our country, only in Switzerland. Through such stories, people get involved in charity in the so-called toxic charity, when a huge amount of money is targeted.

How this happens, the channels through which contacts are transmitted and why celebrities were so attentive to the requests of this family and repeatedly placed this collection, it is still not clear to me.

What is clear for sure is the toxicity of this story: an incomprehensible collection is incomprehensible to that with incomprehensible reports.

With the presumption of no confidence in funds.

Someone from public people subsequently apologizes for participating in such stories, but this rarely happens. I realized that I need to talk to people who are really involved in charity process for various reasons. Someone from celebrities comes through a personal story, through, for example, a relative’s illness. And then wants to help other people who are in the same situation. With such people we did an interview about life, death and meaning. It struck me that people who you don’t expect are most often involved.

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For example, talks about how children with autism are raised. What Duchenne dystrophy is and how difficult it is to raise money for the treatment of children with epidermolysis bullosis . Words that nobody heard a decade ago, and no one could say it five years ago, are becoming famous today. Some celebrities are actively looking for a foundation.

I realized that the main thing is not a person’s rating and his fame, but a person’s involvement in the cause of charity, as far as his eyes are glowing. If he works not only as a person, but takes part in some meetings, developing strategies for the funds and can tell from the inside about what is happening – this is very important and interesting.

And after such an interview, we get a bunch of letters asking how to join this fund.

Tying shares to significant dates

The main thing in the action is this ideological component – learning the culture of help. The second in importance is the money that is going to help those in need. If we talk about involvement, according to the results of 2018. The number of people who expressed a desire to participate in the action has increased by almost 10 thousand.

Behind each of them can stand one person, but maybe an entire school, consisting of 500 people.

We can’t count the exact number of participants in the action, but the figure is colossal.

10 countries, 409 regions, 52 million collected. 

Interestingly, those who participate in the action once, as a rule, support it further.

In 2015, 200 schools participated in the rally, then we did not use modern registration methods. And these were those who showed independent initiative. A year later, there were 600 schools; in 2017. There were 1,152 schools and 40 million collected (funds are sent to various children’s hospices). This year the action was supported by more than 20 celebrities. Every student who participates in this action is an accomplice of charity.

Today, he does it unconsciously, and tomorrow he will become a full member of the charitable community and will promote the ideas of help as natural.

Conducting the lessons of kindness in schools, we tell the children exactly what effective charitable instruments exist. It is fascinating when a seven-year-old boy talks about how to properly help people. And formulates a unique solution, perhaps unique and new. The main difficulty was when the Ministry of Education issued a recommendation to participate in this action and many schools took it as an order. As a result, there was a negative attitude, as to any obligation.

But we tried by all possible means to prove that this was not the case.

And this year we ensured that the ministry did not send such notifications.

Creating new holidays in honor of charity

Ho-ho-ho

Generous Tuesday” – an international initiative and movement.

In five years, this movement began to operate in more than 100 countries. This is a date that brings together a huge number of funds, and this is actually International Charity Day. In which completely different players can take part: NGOs, business, municipal organizations, museums, schools, institutes, hospitals.

This is reminiscent of the Museum Night, when everyone knows that something great will happen in the museums, and they plan something for it in advance. And you can say with confidence that this year, on November 27, there will be something cool related to charity. You can go to any chain cafe and buy a cake with donations for charity.

Donate gas at a gas station, go to hundreds of charity concerts and performances, take part in hundreds of promotions. Last year, more than 2.5 thousand publications in the media about “Generous Tuesday” were released, including stories on federal channels. Huge coverage goes on social networks – we consistently enter the top hashtags.

In that year, the first in popularity on this day was # the first snow, and right after we, #generous tuesday.

Another of our tools is “The Week of Confessions,” a flash mob that we launch before Generous Tuesday.

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Therefore, it is important that we tell each other about how we participate in charity. This is what happens during the “Week of Recognition”, mainly in social networks. Last year we collected more than 11 thousand confessions. This year we will expand it with one option: it will be possible not only to admit a penchant for charity. But also tell a story about our charitable experience.

The three best stories will be selected by a general vote.Their authors will receive three grants,which they can send to any NGO to their taste. It is important that this holiday is not only about people’s awareness, but also about fundraising. On this day, online donations are doubled compared to any other day of the year. Another study of ours suggests that over the past five years, the volume of online donations has grown 15 times.

It seems to me that in our country nothing grows so fast. This is really a golden bottom. People are willing to help.

Volunteer fundraising

A year and a half, from the beginning of 2017 to August 2018.

We did a rather technical thing — an infrastructure to make it convenient for people to collect donations related to some event in their lives. We did not deal with the informational or substantive development of this platform; For the time being, we simply adjusted its good work. All the money that was collected there during this time is a side effect, let’s say. At this stage, the number of participants for us is more important than money. During this period, 1155 events were created and 29 million were collected. Since August, when we began to develop the very idea of ​​volunteer fundraising, 273 events were registered (out of 645 for the whole 2018 with 13 thousand donations).

People enjoy using the mechanism even without a campaign for its mass promotion. The platform is open to all NPOs that have passed the primary verification with us. We can say with confidence that these are not fraudsters, that the money will indeed go towards the organization’s statutory goals.

Volunteer fundraising is when a person not only uses an event to collect money, but comes up with various activities.

Basically it is, oddly enough, offline activity. People go and talk with their friends, why help any NPO, why they support it and how to do it simply. We had a group of volunteers who took the first blow. Now they already teach the following groups of volunteers and tell how easy and happy it is to collect money.

An example of a large event based on volunteer fundraising is a football tournament  with the participation of. Each team registering for this tournament has pledged to collect donations from their fans. And in the playoffs will come the teams that raised the most money. We had a rather tough debate, because many teams said:

“No question, let us give money ourselves and go to the playoffs.”

We categorically banned it – it was necessary to ask to donate our friends and foes, that was the whole point. In total, we had 35 teams registered with 200 participants – they all constantly told people about what they needed to help, donate, and so on. Each team was led by a volunteer mentor who came up with explanations, texts, and so on. In the playoffs eventually went ten teams.

These are our “first pancakes”, and it is clear that they are not so effective in terms of fees, the number of participants and other things. We are working on technology. It is no secret that in the United States most of the funds for charity are collected that way.

Run For Charity

Having plunged into the statistics of the field of sports and charity, I realized that it simply does not exist. I myself am from the world of sports: I participate in many competitions and organize sports events. In this regard, I decided to conduct my own little research on how compatible these two things are, and I received very interesting data.

99 non-profit organizations were interviewed, 60% of which answered me that they have a sports program for their donors or volunteers. Those who have such a program, as a rule, receive more than a million from it per year. Those who do not have a special program still manage to attract about 50,000 on average through the personal initiative of volunteers who are fond of sports.

And it would be interesting for organizations to develop this area in the future. Many do not understand the concept of “benefactor.” Most people think that this is a charity runner, but it’s not. A charmer is a person who aims to raise a certain amount of money in support of a non-profit organization for which he will run his race (most often this is not a charity race).

The charity runner declares the amount he wants to raise in favor of the foundation. And using special platforms, the foundation’s website, social networks, does a great deal of information to raise these funds.

 We still do not have such a large community, although they say that the increase in people who are interested in running is 300% per year (statistics for 2015). In the United States, 17–19 million people a year take part in sports, while 48 million people go jogging.

I spoke with the charity foundation “Love Syndrome” about their statistics. This foundation has its own project “Athlete for the Good” – one of the most famous in our country. So, according to their data, in 2016, when the project was just launched, there were only two “athletes for good”, in 2017. The foundation was supported by more than 40 people.

At the moment, cumulatively more than 100 “athletes for the good” opened up their actions on the platform of the Sport for the Good Foundation and raised funds for support programs for people with Down syndrome. That is, the fund has a 100% increase in such active philanthropists every year. I believe that it is more effective to interest people so that they not only participate in charity races.

But motivate their surroundings to make donations. To attract athletes to run for the fund is best to create specialized programs. Fundraising can be organized on the platform ” Make ” or on the website of the fund. And, of course, you need to work with amateur running teams and corporate teams. Retaining amateur athletes is simple – they like new routes, goals, distances and sports.