DemonTHON: How to Ask for Donations!
Hello DemonTHONers! Shriya Malisetty (Fundraising Director) and Sarah Feroz (Finance Manager) here - again! This week’s blog post is about how to ask for donations!
Now, if you are anything like us, asking the waiter at a Chili’s for an extra ketchup packet is already a daunting task, so asking someone for money is a whole other matter. Thankfully, we have come up with a couple of tricks to make a smooth, persuasive, and confident pitch to your potential donor.
First off, you have to choose a platform. You have plenty of options like emailing, texting, or using social media. If you would like more information on the different places you can fundraise, check out last week’s blog post!
There’s two ways you can go about asking for donations:
Create your own “ask” or
Use a template that DemonTHON has already created in case you need help finding a starting point.
You can access them at the bottom of the blog post! For the templates, it is important to remember to address your donor by name and personalize as much of the ask as you can in order to make it more meaningful.
To make your own custom “ask,” explain what DemonTHON does in a brief sentence, why you are in DemonTHON and For the Kids, and how the person you are reaching out to can help you reach your fundraising goal. You can also explain exactly where their money will go. This is super important and will really show donors that their money is being put to good use. For example, $25 can provide a Comfort Doll for babies in the NICU that are separated from their parents, and $50 can provide a child spending their birthday at the hospital with a fun and memorable celebration. You can also explain how their donation can be used to support programs like Molecular Oncology so doctors can analyze tumors at the DNA and RNA level. You can also pick a fact about Lurie’s that is near and dear to your heart!
After that mention that even the smallest amount will always help! You want to give them a way to donate money to you, so make sure you don’t forget to add your venmo or your DonorDrive link. For your older donors, mention how your DonorDrive link is “safe” because that tends to be an issue when it comes to technology and asking for money over it.
If you ask your fellow peers, and they reply with the classic “I really want to, but I’m broke” then encourage them to spread the word and share your link with others that they know could donate. Not only is this a great way to keep fundraising, but it also gets more people involved in DemonTHON. That being said, don’t be discouraged if people decline to donate, it is important to persevere! Also, venmo fundraisers work like charm when reaching out to peers because they’re usually only asking for a few dollars!!
Finally, when you get your donations, don’t forget to thank your donors!!! This can be an excellent way to ask for donations again, and it makes them feel appreciated. You can choose to give them a shoutout on social media to thank them publicly and spread the word, or write them a hand written note! This idea is especially nice because so much is online, especially right now!
Yeah, that’s the whole process! It may seem complicated, but we promise, it’s super simple! You can always reuse your ask templates or use some of the ones we have provided!
Feel free to reach out to us at demonthon.fundraising@gmail.com if you have any questions! We would love to help :)