Strategies of Grassroots Fundraising
There are several methods of undertaking grassroots fundraising, including:Reaching Donors
Peer-to-peer fundraising growth has been promoted by the increased use of affiliations and donor networks. A younger peer group may view age mates as role models who can be trusted for advice. Peer networks have continued to expand in many ways, extending towards the traditional door-to-door or solicitation at places of work. Grassroots in the modern age involves extensive use of e-mail communication, internet websites, and social media for monetary support.Recurring Contributions
Mixing Advocacy and Grassroots Fundraising
Most people prefer to support in different ways hence this strategy provides them with multiple calls-to-action in the campaign communications. For example, a campaign was done from the international Rescue Committee to reach out to its supporters as a response to former president Donald Trump's refugee ban. These supporters might engage in one of the following: * Advocacy: to tell the president to end the refugee ban. * Fundraising: Donate to help support the refugee family relocation fees.Timely Campaigns
These aspects go hand in hand with the present events and the news cycle. Research has shown that content is most viral when the message makes people angry. The call-to-action and campaign should be: * Specific * Inspiring * Timely * UrgentEasily Understood Data With Segmented Outreach
Understanding what inspires the supporters is key to engaging effectively with them. Information is targeted to those it might inspire to action through use of communication methods they prefer. These methods might be based on gender or sex. Data is kept to determine the efficiency of these and other, less understood demographics. This strategy allows greater understanding of what supporters want. Not all campaign messages should be sent to every supporter group.The organization's data can be used to segment the supporters into sensible groups.Focusing on a Single Campaign
As there are more than 1.5 million legislative actions each year, there is a need to be selective in approach.How to Plan
1. Understanding the Macro-Perspective
The two questions that must be answered before you start fundraising are "How much money do you need to raise?" and "Who do you plan on raising it from?" Each demographic will most likely donate different amounts, making it important to understand how much money is to be raised. Examples of demographics include; individual donors, small businesses, earned income, and it is critical to have multiple, diverse sources of revenue. Once you have identified the sources, create strategies and tactics for each one. For example, have ready a script when talking to individual donors as to why they should donate to your cause. If you're dealing with small businesses, remember that there are such things as non-monetary donations such as a table, sound system or even catering for events.2. Understand your Financial Situation
Understanding the expenses you will accrue is equally as important than understanding how much money you need to raise. Non-monetary donations can be just as effective as monetary donations, especially for a grassroots fundraising endeavor. You cannot make money without spending money so building a budget is important.3. Create Objectives
Objectives are useful because they can keep your grassroots fundraising efforts on track. Make deadlines for the objectives to ensure they are completed in a timely manner. For example, objective 1 could be to build a strong team of volunteers. Come up with a tactic to get that done and set a deadline to ensure it gets done. Objective 2 could be to build a strong annual fund program to ensure a steady stream of donations throughout the year. A tactic could be to build a prospect list of 5,000 mailing addresses and 10,000 email addresses.4. Allocate Responsibility
Once you have come up with a list of objectives, you will want allocate the responsibilities amongst your team. If you are leading the grassroots fundraising effort, do not do it alone, make sure to involve your team. If you are a volunteer or a fundraising team member, speak up and ensure you put your name forward for the roles and tasks that you think best suit your skills. Some common roles for grassroots fundraising teams include; Director of Marketing, Director of Development and Director of Finance. For example, if one of your objectives is to build a prospect list of mailing addresses and email addresses, the leader should allocate this role to the Director of Marketing.5. Creating a Prospects List
Door to door canvassing is the best way to do this. You do not want to send your team to individual donors' doorsteps if they aren't going to donate. Create a canvassing team to go door to door a month or two before an election to ensure that when the campaign starts, you know who's door to go to. This will ensure you are not wasting time canvassing. Canvassing requires a certain etiquette, especially at the doors. You will want to make sure that the documentation of these individual donors are streamlined and easily editable - donors are known to change their minds.6. Continue the Success
The most important part of ensuring that your grassroots fundraising efforts remain a success is to review your documented plan and results with your team - at least annually. After your fundraising period, your team will have notes and suggestions to improve the plan. This means that your fundraising plan is a fluid document that is subject to change. Someone might have a note about individual donor patterns, your Director of Marketing might have a suggestion about gathering and communicating with individual donors via email. Without a doubt, you will have to change or adjust some of your tactics to objectives within your plan for the following fundraising period - It's all apart of the process. Having an annual review of your plan with your team is crucial for sustaining success in the future and it also allows you to emphasize the things that made your grassroots fundraising effort a success.Sources of money
Ways to make money
There are many ways to make money at the grassroots level other than individual contributions, including things such as fees for services rendered and the sale of merchandise. This is an area where the leadership and volunteers can get creative and brainstorm. Merchandise can include hats, shirts, mugs, calendars, etc. and putting a logo on it will help market the organization, foundation or even political party. Services that could be provided include; carwashes, bottle drives, bake sales, lawnmowing, driveway shoveling, etc. Fundraising services like these at the same time get the name of the organization, foundation or political party out in the community.Fundraising philosophy
To help form fundraising ideas, it is important to ask why the fundraising entity exists? Fundraising entities can include, non-profit organizations, foundations, political parties, to name a few. If the entity is a non-profit seeking to help the community, the philosophy is community outreach. Therefore, ones optics within the community and getting and remaining involved in the community are important. If the entity is a political party, the philosophy will be mass spread of information. This will involve prioritizing the development of a prospect list, mailing list and email list to ensure fundraising messaging reaches the potential donors. It is best to use the philosophy of the entity to dictate how they go about fundraising.Ethical Grassroots Fundraising
The Fundamentals of Fundraising Ethics
Little research and literary works have been done on this topic. However, from those limited sources one could breakdown fundraising ethics into three fundamental theories: "1. Protection of public trust: Trustism; 2. Serving the donor's needs, wants and aspirations: Donorcentrism; 3. Service of philanthropy".Trustism
The way to ensure public trust is to achieve and maintain high ethical standards and stay consistent with communicating that goal to donors and potential donors.Donorcentrism
Donorcentrism ensures that the donor is at the center of the fundraising strategy. This is because some fundraising consultants say one can maintain fundraising ethics by ensuring the donors interests are put first. Prioritizing this messaging is crucial for securing the trust of the donors. Also, putting the donor at the center of the fundraising strategy allows for 'relationship fundraising' to thrive. Relationship fundraising is about nurturing a bond between the donor and the organization's cause and ensuring that the bond doesn't break. In grassroots fundraising, relationship fundraising is important because of how personal the interactions between the organization and the donors can be. When interacting with donors and potential donors, ask; is what I am saying going to reduce or increase donor satisfaction? Is what I am saying going to jeopardize the donors trust and connection to the organization? Is what I am saying going to make this donor want to contribute in the future? Asking these questions will help guide interactions with donors and potential donors in an ethical way.Service of Philanthropy
This theory suggests that an organization should never forget that it is a vehicle in which donors can use for philanthropy. Without the organization, the donor would not be able to donate to the cause. Philanthropy brings justification to fundraising, therefore the organization's top priority is ensuring that the donor's interests and needs are met.Grassroots fundraising for political campaigns in Canada
Rules and regulations
In 2003, Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chrétien introduced Bill C-24, which was An Act to Amend the Canada Elections Act and the Income Tax Act - which referred to political financing. Bill C-24 drastically changed the way in which political parties could collect donations and from whom. Some of what Bill C-24 does is; prevent federal political parties from receiving contributions from corporations and unions, limit contributions made by corporations and unions to Candidates and local Electorate District Associations (EDA) to $1,000/year, and individual donor contributions are limited to $5,000. There can be severe penalties for not following these election laws.Shift in political fundraising
Because of the Chrétien reforms in 2003, the ways one could fundraise and the sources of funds for political parties became more limited. Therefore, political fundraising shifted to grassroots fundraising. In the subsequent years after 2003, The Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) raised more money in individual donations, on average, than any other federal political party combined. A big reason for this is because the CPC in the early 2000s had just combined thePermanent campaign
A permanent campaign is when a political party keeps advertising and fundraising outside of an election period. The permanent campaign has its roots in the commonality of minority governments from 2004 and onward. The reason is that minority governments were at risk of being defeated in the house more regularly than in a majority government. Therefore, they always had to be ready for an election, hence the permanent campaign. The permanent campaign includes consistent advertising and outreach to donors. It also involves having a permanent campaign manager, rather than hiring one a year before an election. the permanent campaign mixed with the 2003 Chrétien reforms created an environment in which grassroots fundraising could take over and thrive.Role of modern technology
Social media
Because grassroots fundraising has become a prevalent theme for non-profit organizations and political parties, - to name but two - social media has taken a big role in the marketing outreach and communications tactics of fundraising entities. Grassroots fundraising is personal, many times one on one interactions are what is needed to gather donations. Since a vast majority of the population has aHistory in the United States
In the 2000 elections, 66.1% of campaign contributions of $200 or less came from American households earning less than $100,000, who make 86.6% of the general population, but only 14.3% of the contributions over $200 come from these households.2004 Democratic presidential primaries
In 2004, presidential candidate Howard Dean built up his campaign around grassroots fundraising. In an interview with Jeff Howe, Dean described a $2,000-per-plate fundraising lunch organized by Vice President Dick Cheney for George W. Bush's re-election. In response, Dean challenged his supporters to come to their computers with him "for lunch". Dean was able to match the amount raised by Cheney's fundraiser. He remarked, on his use of the Internet to raise funds for his campaign, "The Internet isn't magic, it's just a tool that can be used to do things differently."2008 presidential primaries
According to Spencer A. Overton, a professor atSee also
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