Big Fundraising Ideas Online

Take advantage of trends and boost your sales online.

It’s incredible how this pandemic year has altered how we live. But it hasn’t stopped us. Even though we’ve dealt with social distancing, we’ve stayed connected through the internet. Schools and businesses have gone online and, in turn, redefined how and where we work and learn. And it may come as no surprise that online shopping increased by 44% in 2020.

And with this significant shift to using the internet for most of our lives, it makes sense also to take your fundraising online.

It’s time to move online fundraising to the front of the class.

As a fundraising company, we’ve often written about improving sales by using your online store to its maximum advantage. We’ve seen that adding an e-commerce component to brochure sales can be a lucrative aspect of your fundraising efforts. And, when you look at how online shopping increased in 2020, you might want to consider shifting more, if not all, of your fundraising to the Internet.

According to BigCommerce.com, COVID-19-related shopping generated the highest annual growth in U.S. e-commerce in at least two decades. This spending can be attributed to factors like:

• increased use of smartphones and mobile shopping
• social media and social commerce
• online marketplaces and
• a generational shift in shopping behaviors

Create a successful e-commerce site with our support

Moving all your fundraising efforts online can feel risky—especially if your brochure sales are strong. But before you decide, consider that now more than ever, people are primed to buy online. And you’ll want to take advantage of the trend for your school or group.

We understand that the idea of creating an e-commerce site can be overwhelming. Without a turnkey approach, you’ll need to build the site, add content and then promote the site to friends and family. Once sales come in, you’ll need to track everything and keep participants engaged in selling.

Whew! That’s a lot. And that’s why we make it easy to get set up and sell from day one.

For starters, there’s no programming needed on your part; it only takes three steps to get going:

1. Sign up for your group.
2. Forward the instructions to your participants so that they can sign up for their own sales sites.
3. Encourage your participants to invite friends and family to shop at your store by email, social media, and text.

We provide all the tools your participants need to help them promote their sites. And you get all the tools you need to track sales, run reports and send reminders to everyone to keep the sales momentum going.

With more and more people getting comfortable buying online, there’s never been a better time to make money using our virtual fundraising ideas for schools.

Author Bio

Clay Boggess has been designing fundraising programs for schools and various nonprofit organizations throughout the US since 1999. He’s helped administrators, teachers, and outside support entities such as PTAs and PTOs raise millions of dollars. Clay is an owner and partner at Big Fundraising Ideas.