Fundraising for your campaigns!

Fundraising for your campaigns!

Build relationships with individuals and have them help you. To find individuals to help your campaign that are most passionate and that will do the most to help you, look to your Community Business Leaders/members. Make a list of Top Recruiters, Top Donors, and Top Fundraisers in your community, write them a message and call them to tell them about your campaign. Writing personal messages to your community members will greatly improve your chances of attracting these key people or organizations to your campaign. Once they decide to join your campaign, your next step is to ask them to donate to the campaign and to tell their friends as well. This can be very effective at jump-starting a campaign. Also during your fundraising events make them fun and memorable to you and your constitutes.

Feature the campaign on every one of your affiliate's causes. Featuring your campaign on affiliate causes is the second step of creating a fundraising campaign – be sure to carefully select every affiliate's cause. Since you are supporting these affiliates their views and what they stand for could effect your campaign process. Additionally, these affiliates could be and organization, a business, or cause for something. These people are some of your best contributors through marketing, donations, or time.

Send regular (once a week at least) bulletins/emails about the campaign. To send a bulletin/email, make sure your personal Facebook Profile is linked to your campaign site. Once your Facebook Profile is linked, you can go to any affiliate cause and contact those members that you feel should help you with your campaign.

Using Videos and Photos

Video and pictures are incredibly powerful motivators for individuals to donate to your fundraising campaign. If you have compelling, inspirational videos about your fundraising campaign, you can post them to your cause and send them in bulletins/emails to cause members while asking them to donate. You can also use the URL at the top of the page to spread the word and give people an easy way to promote your video or spread the photo around Facebook and other social networking sites.

Follow-up about the impact of the campaign, what worked, what didn't, how your affiliates can continue to be involved, and what’s next for the cause. Do this by sending emails to the key members with another message to get out in front of the people. Better yet, ask for input from your cause members and most active supporters and get a discussion going. What worked and what didn't work? Was there a member or group that did not support you correctly or caused problems? Did one of your messages that you sent out not interest the people? Did you contact the right people? Answer these questions and more to make your campaign successful for the next fundraiser.

What NOT To Do

1.Don’t link to anything outside the cause, except perhaps a link to more information in the first bulletin/email.

2.Don’t ask them to do 3 different things in the same bulletin/email. Choose one action you want them to take, and link to that several times in the bulletin/email.

3.Do not use your website’s donate page. Link to your cause’s donate page in the bulletin to take full advantage of the peer-to-peer fundraising aspects of causes as well as the viral effects of donating on Facebook. To get the donation link for your cause, click on the Donate button, then cut-and-copy the URL for that page into your bulletin/email.

4.Do not deviate from the message. For the duration of your fundraising campaign, don’t send bulletins/emails about other campaigns, other news items, or other petitions. Make sure all of your messages somehow tie back to your fundraising campaign.

5.Do not make your bulletins sound like press releases. Keep messages short, personal, and casual. Focus particular attention on the title, which will determine whether or not your members open the bulletin/emails.

Do's and Don'ts for Any Campaigns

Do's and Don'ts for Any Campaigns

Political Video Do’s

DO put your message up front! – Remember, the average voter will only listen to your video for 6 seconds before turning it off unless it sends the right message. Be sure to put your candidate’s name and the message of the video up front, before the person closes the window or goes to another video.

DO make it different! – Voters are more likely to listen/watch your political video if it is “different.” Have you thought about using a fun way to present your video? What about mimicking other successful commercials? Or you can make it sound like a radio newscast. How about making a video with a conversation between the candidate and a well known person? Think outside the box.

DO follow the rules! – In many places, political videos must carry political disclaimers (like those found on Newspaper ads and direct mail letters), and may be subject to restrictions or regulations depending on where your located or where your ads are being shown. Know the rules, and follow them!

Political Video Don’ts

DON’T annoy the voters! – Running the video too often is annoying. Make different videos, don't keep showing the same images over and over. Videos that are poor quality, hard to hear, or overly verbose annoy voters. You should have videos that are made in HD and are broadcast ready.

DON’T forget that the media is listening! – Never say anything in a political video that you wouldn’t want printed on the first page of the newspaper. Additionally don't show anything that you don't want on the news as well.

DON’T waste money! – Be sure that your political videos only go to registered voters (or, if you’re running in a primary, to registered voters in your own party). Running your ads made to people who can’t vote for you are a waste of time and money.

Although times have changed, campaigning is harder than ever! Today, there are simply too many voters, and too little time, not to mention money, campaigning. Simply put, trying to contact voters regardless of who they are is a waste of scarce resources. This may sound like common sense, but far too many local campaigns fail to follow this advice. Too many campaigns try “the more the better” approach to voter contact, which is not the best thing to do, be precise don't cut a piece of paper with a chainsaw.

Take Aim

Today's campaign relies on targeting – choosing, in advance, which voters to contact and devoting time and money to increasing the quality and quantity of that contact. This targeted approach applies to every facet of the campaign’s voter contact plan. Targeting relies on research and strategy, you must uncover the pockets that you serve and market to them. You can find all the information to make these decisions online. Additionally, don't go to every supermarket and shake hands because this could prove to be a waste of time.

Before starting any campaign, your staff or you should research past elections, voter demographics, turnout and precinct information to determine several key numbers. First, determine how many votes are needed to win this election. Second, determine how many of the votes are needed to come from each of the precincts in the district. The goal is to determine not only how many votes you need to win, but what types of voters you are looking for and what precincts those voters reside in. Once attaining all this information your on your way to a successful campaign, understanding who you're going after and why.

Make Contact – Over and Over Again

Once your campaign has determined which voters you need to target, it will need to focus its voter contact activities (Online Videos, Online spokesperson, Youtube Channel, Commercials, Social media sites, and most important your campaign site) on those targeted groups of voters. Remember visual advertisements work the best when promoting any product or service. Now since you have already established what number of votes you’ll need to win, target various groups of voters that equal (or exceed) that number, and contact them over and over again with your message.

Maintain Control

After your campaign has proven successful, determine what worked and what didn't. Exploit uncovered weaknesses, improve campaign messages, look at the competition, and always stay positive. Additionally give your volunteers specific tasks and objectives in your campaign. Lastly keep in touch with those that voted for or supported you. For more information please keep reading our blog!

By Brian Zippin