In recent years, there have been a lot of “unprecedented” events—from the pandemic to the postal strike that we find ourselves managing today. This climate of uncertainty has challenged the charity sector to make multiple pivots, often at very short notice. While there’s no way to predict what happens next, charities can prepare for uncertain times by diversifying their fundraising.
Instead of focusing all-in on one or two channels, ensuring your fundraising mix provides would-be donors with multiple ways to give, provides more predictable funding, minimizes issues if a funding source is affected and future-proofs your charity against changing giving trends.
This article outlines how you can diversify your fundraising, and ensure donations continue to flow during the postal strike and beyond. If you’re looking for more guidance, check out our postal strike resource page.
1. Optimizing your online fundraising
The first place to look is your online fundraising. Looking at what we’ve learned in the past, online fundraising has typically grown in times of crises, with its most rapid growth during 2020. During that time, online giving close to doubled from 563,000 to roughly 1.1 million donors giving $412 million.
It is especially critical now with the current postal strike in the lead-up to Giving Season. Our research estimates that $266 million was lost in donation revenue for charities during the previous Canada Post Strike.
So, if you are just getting started, register with CanadaHelps, and we’ll guide you through the process and towards optimizing your online fundraising.
Activate your Charity Profile
An active CanadaHelps Charity Profile connects you with over 5 million donors who are ready to give right now. While mail disruptions continue, this visibility is one of the most effective ways to protect your fundraising results. Getting started is simple. All you need is a brief description of your charity, your logo, and a few images. Set up your charity profile.
Set up a Custom Donation Form (CDF)
A CDF offers significant advantages during this disruption: lower fees compared to Charity Profile donations, immediate processing without mail delays, instant CRA-compliant tax receipts, automated thank-you emails, and a branded experience your donors will recognize and trust. Set up your custom donation form.
Optimize your Custom Donation Form
If you’re already fundraising with a donation form, now is the time to maximize its potential. Activate features designed to increase giving: let donors cover processing fees so more goes to your mission, use suggested donation amounts to guide giving decisions, and add a fundraising thermometer to show real-time progress that inspires supporters to help you reach your goal. Optimize your custom donation form.
During service disruptions, encouraging donors to give online instead of by mail is the most effective way to protect your fundraising results this Giving Season.
2. Cultivate your monthly donors list
Monthly Donors are the MVPs of the charity fundraising world. They provide steady, predictable funding so that you can plan ahead for your programs. The good news is that monthly donors are a growing giving trend! In 2023, monthly giving in Canada continued to grow, with revenues on CanadaHelps.org increasing by nearly 6% year-over-year, reaching over $75.8 million.
To start building your list, create a donation form that puts monthly first and list “single” donation, and “monthly” donation as different ways to give on your site. Even if your current form already allows people to donate monthly—setting it apart as an option and highlighting it as a specific program can guide people towards monthly donations even if they had not considered it before.
The average monthly donation made through CanadaHelps donation forms is $50!
3. Make your tribute/in honour of giving prominent
The reasons we give and get involved with charity are often deeply personal and tied to our values. What better way to honour somebody than by giving to a cause they care about?
CanadaHelps Donation Forms gives your charity an easy way to capture those with this sentiment with Tribute First forms, which prioritizes the “In memory of” or “In honour of” section of the donation form. You can even upload custom pictures for your eCards so that they are more closely tied to your charity and mission.
List this as another way for people to support your charity on your “Ways to Give Page” and embed a tribute first form so supporters know they are in the right place.
4. Aim high with donations of securities
Donations of securities are another growing trend in donor giving that can mean remarkable growth in fundraising revenue for your charity. Gifts of securities vary in size but are often larger in value. The average securities donation through CanadaHelps, excluding outliers, is $7,815!
Securities donations have been increasing and are part of a wider trend of more strategic donors. The value of securities donated in 2024 was over $57.6 million, up 5X from 2018, and up 39% from 2023!
It’s a win-win situation with donors feeling good because they can make a bigger impact and eliminate capital gains tax, while your charity receives the full fair market value when the security is sold.
CanadaHelps makes it easy to accept securities—with no additional brokerage accounts or in-house expertise needed. With every gift of securities or mutual funds, we facilitate the sale of the gift, issue a charitable tax receipt, and transfer the proceeds right into your charity’s bank account, using the banking information submitted when you first registered with CanadaHelps.
In fact, it’s as easy as making and embedding a donation form and comes with nearly all the same customizable features.
We hope this article gives you some ideas on ways you can diversify your fundraising, tap into growing trends of strategic giving and ensure you have a successful end-of-year.
CanadaHelps provides a variety of fundraising tools and opportunities to help you diversify your fundraising quickly and easily, without the need to set up new accounts or steep learning curves. We take care of the technical side of donation processing so you can focus on communicating the message and educating your donors about their impact.
Cindy Lee is a Digital Marketing Manager at CanadaHelps, supporting charities with resources and education to succeed in a digital world. CanadaHelps is Canada’s largest online giving platform. Since 2000, CanadaHelps has been used by over 5 million Canadians to give over $3 billion dollars.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s alone and do not necessarily represent those of CharityVillage.com or any other individual or entity with whom the authors or website may be affiliated. CharityVillage.com is not liable for any content that may be considered offensive, inappropriate, defamatory, or inaccurate or in breach of third-party rights of privacy, copyright, or trademark.
