Fundraising Tips
Tips and tricks to maximise donations and impact.
Fundraising can be tricky, but there are plenty of simple things you can do to raise funds for NKH.
Help with your fundraising
Your fundraising for the Mikaere Foundation is a great opportunity to spend time with your friends and family and have loads of fun doing something different.
To help your event run smoothly and ensure that everything is safe and legal, please follow our fundraising guidelines.
If you’re not sure where to start, or if you’ve stalled, then here are some tips to get you to your fundraising goal.
Tip: How to ask for donations
It can feel odd to ask for donations. The easiest way is to be polite but direct in your ask, and to ask a friend personally for a donation. Here is an example:
“Hi [add name], I’m doing a [add your challenge], and raising money for children with NKH, a rare and terminal metabolic disorder. Any donation will help make an impact – so we can give kids with NKH a future. Would you please consider donating £25 to support my challenge? Thank you!”
Don’t forget to include your fundraising page link!
Tip: Sharing on socials
If it’s not a direct, personal request, people usually need be asked three – five times before they’ll consider donating. Make sure your ask is specific – “Please donate £10 today” is more effective than “Please donate”. Make sure you ask in every related post – and post frequently. With your training runs, or fundraising prep or just – literally anything. The ask be as simple as a line “As always, I’m fundraising for children with NKH – please donate £10. Thank you!”
We have challenge images that you can use to share too, find them here:
Social Media Guide
General Fundraiasing Images
Sports Related Fundraising Images
If you would like alternative social images to share, please request them by emailing hello@mikaerefoundation.org – we’re happy to help!
If you’re doing a challenge that requires training, you have an opportunity to use story telling as a fundraising hook. We reached out to a friend who fundraised for an endurance race. We asked for a fundraising tip that surprised her:
“Taking people along for the ride ended up being really great for repeat donors. I’d share weekly updates on my training, and things about the charity. I made a point to say X amount raised this week, and Y amount to go! I kept my voice – made it quirky and funny and a little self-deprecating. I posted short updates to my fundraising page, and on socials, but the most important thing? I would email weekly updates with photos to people who donated. People saw that I was putting in the work and I got many so repeat donors this way. It really made a difference!”
Tip: Wait, and then ask again
If you’ve set up your fundraising pagr and already asked everyone you know for a donation weeks ago, what do you do? Are there people you’ve asked who didn’t respond, or never donated? Research from Enthuse shows that 25% of potential donors didn’t donate because they either just forgot (19%) or didn’t have time when they got the request (6%).
25%! It’s worth sending a follow up, and sharing your fundraising pages regularly through social media, email, and WhatsApp messages.
Here is some sample text you can use to send a request: ”Hey, I’m raising money to support children with NKH. I know I’ve asked before, and I understand if things are tight, but if you’re able, would you consider sponsoring me £20? Totally understand if now’s not the right time – just wanted to ask. Thank you so much either way 🤍”
Add the link to your fundraising page on the end, and bonus if you send it on pay day.
Stretch goal – go through your contacts list and find those people outside your immediate circle who you haven’t asked for a donation yet. Friends you see occasionally, old colleagues, extended family, gym/running friends, your neighbours, people from your church or coffee groups. People who you haven’t seen in a while. Send them a text. If you can make a list of 30-40 people, and a third them donate £20, that’s £200. This step can builds the momentum with your fundraising.
Tip: Sweepstakes are a low effort, easy win
Amazon sells Lucky Duck cards for £4 (or Bunny ones, for Easter). There are 100 spots – £5 each, with £250 to your pot, and £250 to the winner. Sell tickets via socials and WhatsApp messages, even to people who have already donated. £250 is 10% of your fundraising ask. If you did two, thats £500 towards your goal.
Buy the card, and send this message with a photo:
”Hey. I’m fundraising for The Mikaere Foundation and children with NKH. I haven’t hit my fundraising goal yet, so I’m selling sweepstake tickets. It’s £5 a ticket, for chance to win a prize of £250. What name do you want?”
Tip: If you want to do one big thing, hold an event.
Holding an event can bring in £850-£1,000, and the best kind of event leverages pre-event donations with on-the-day donations, and the easiest (in our opinion) is to hold is an NKH Race Night, with 8 races.
You can find an in depth how-to here, but in short:
– Find a venue with a TV that can hold 30+ people. Book it.
– Invite as many people as you can, get the date in their calendars.
– For each race, find a race sponsor (£25), horse owners (£5) and a jockey (£3). For 8 races, at 8 horses a race, that’s a take of £712. If each winning owner wins £15, and jockey £10, that’s £500 for your fundraising before the event has even begun.
– On the evening, you sell bets for each race, at £1 or £2 a bet. For each race, half the pot goes to your fundraising, and half is to the winnings, which is split between everyone who bet on the winning horse. Once the bets are closed, you show the race on the tv. It’s very very exciting.
As far as events go, it’s simple to organise, low-cost to run, and guarantees fun, high-energy fundraising with minimal setup.
Bonus – run a raffle, or a ‘find the wine’ game for extra funds.
Lets be partners?
To become a corporate partners, please email the team at hello@mikaerefoundation.org – we’d love to chat with you.