By contributing to a nonprofit, you invest in the world you want to live in. Your financial gifts make it possible for organizations to provide much-needed services and to execute their mission. For New York Blood Center, it is all about saving lives, impacting the local and national community through research and STEM career opportunities and supercharging the community’s life science industry through groundbreaking research.
You likely want to get the most return on that investment, but you may not be in a position to contribute more money. Fortunately, there are several ways you can boost the impact of your contribution without spending another dollar.
Here are five things you can do to amplify your financial gift and expand your personal fundraising efforts. While some of these practices may only take a few minutes, others demonstrate a more significant commitment.
How to Amplify Your Charitable Financial Gift
1. Peer-to-Peer Outreach
For good reason, peer-to-peer fundraising has created quite a buzz in the nonprofit world. Most people want to support the excellent work of organizations, but they are not sure which organizations to support. When someone they know and trust has vetted an organization, that removes some of the hesitancy.
Your friends, family, and colleagues may share similar values and also be interested in supporting the exact causes that you support.
One of the easiest ways to engage in a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign benefiting New York Blood Center Enterprises, for example, is to encourage your friends to “text to give.” This easy and familiar-feeling entry point can be great for younger donors as they can seamlessly contribute $25 simply by texting “NYBC” to 20222. The financial gift appears on the supporter’s mobile bill or is deducted from their prepaid balance.
Another example of peer-to-peer fundraising can be through Facebook Fundraiser, a quick and easy way to encourage your peer network to support your favorite nonprofit. Many people set one up in honor of their birthday or for a national awareness month. Leveraging your social media outlet can extend your desired reach further and faster. Additional insight is provided further down in the article.
2. Crowdfunding
Crowdfunding takes the peer-to-peer approach one step further. When you set up a crowdfunding campaign on behalf of a nonprofit, people beyond your extended social circles have the opportunity to give.
Your campaign may have more impact than any individual financial gift if you also take the opportunity to share the human side of the cause. Do you have personal experience that led you to support the nonprofit? If so, use the campaign to tell your story.
Share photographs and videos if you have them. The more exciting and human your content is, the better your personal fundraising results will be. People are not only more likely to give, but they are more likely to share the fundraiser with their extended circles.
3. Social Media
Bolstering the nonprofit’s social media posts is another economical strategy to help the cause. Social media networks likewise offer content with substantial engagement and additional exposure.
When an organization publishes a post, only a fraction of the followers see the post in their feeds. If enough followers comment, react, or share the content, then the platform’s algorithm rewards it by serving the post within more of your followers’ feeds.
Your friends and contacts may potentially see the content you share or otherwise interact with in addition to the algorithm boost.
4. Volunteering
Your time is your most valuable resource, as we only have 24 hours daily. Contributing your time, energy, and talent is one of the most powerful ways to affect change.
Many people find it incredibly fulfilling to combine a financial gift with volunteer work. For example, if you support a blood bank, you could volunteer to help at one of the blood drives.
Volunteer opportunities range from meeting and greeting the donors in canteen, observing donors for reactions, ensuring that donors drink fluids prior to leaving the blood drive as well as preparing the tubes for the blood donations. If you or someone you know shares the NYBCe’s mission, through a variety of leadership skills, a committed volunteer can help increase capacity to save lives by freeing our medical staff to focus on their specialist training.
5. Employee Matching
Many employers offer a matching gift program to amplify their employees’ charitable gifts. If your employer has such a program, your financial gift can sometimes be worth two times the amount you invested or possibly even more. Many even provide monetary donations for donating blood as a form of volunteering. You can search our database to see if your company will match your donation or if they provide volunteer grants for your hours, including your time for donating blood.
Your financial gift is the lifeblood of your favorite nonprofit. Competition for funding is fierce, with many worthy causes needing financial support. You may maximize your donation by volunteering, peer-to-peer fundraising, crowdfunding, or your employer’s matching gift program.
Amplify Your Financial Gift
At New York Blood Center Enterprises, our top priority is to provide valuable and, personal peer-to-peer fundraising opportunities. As an industry leader, we would be happy to jumpstart your strategy to raise money for our cause, build relationships with supporters, and boost visibility in your community.
Reach out to us today to speak to an NYBCe Fund Development team member to empower your supporters to fundraise using their networks and help us fulfill our lifesaving mission with a financial gift.