A Guideline to Start Fundraising for Veterans

Nobility and fundraising are often connected. The problem with fundraising is not the lack of nobility but the lack of planning and the right tools. Those who are hoping to start fundraising for veterans may want to consider the following points.

Find the Core

The passion for those who served drives you, and it will propel fundraising endeavors forward, but passion is an uncontrollable feeling. Sometimes, this feeling is so chaotic that it makes fundraising ideas a little wild and hard to pin down.

One of the most important steps to take as you begin your fundraising plans is to first figure out your message. Break it down to something that could be easily explained within a few minutes.

A passionate person can throw out many ideas that don’t really connect and take a long time to explain it. The people who are going to support you don’t need all that, so consolidate as much as possible.

Understand the Market

Most of the time, a person who wants to help veterans think that desire is enough, but that is not the case.

You have to approach this like a business and actually figure out your market. There are a lot of questions to ask to figure out your market before you begin on this journey, but the most important is: what problem does it solve?

Usually, a person who is passionate about helping veterans thinks the passion to help is the answer to that question, but it’s not. Donors, volunteers, and people who are going to join the charity are going to be interested in what specific issue you are trying to solve.

Maybe you are trying to help homeless veterans get a home, or maybe you are just trying to make sure they have enough to eat. Maybe you are trying to create a PTSD fund to improve research on this ailment that affects so many veterans.

Get to Know You Audience

It is important that you understand who your audience is, which is a bigger concept than some people may imagine. This does mean you have to understand who you are trying to attract. You want people who will support your cause, but you also need to understand the people who are going to support your mission.

Fundraising is as much about finding donors as it is about finding passionate people who want to volunteer and make change.

Making sure you understand your audience allows you to figure out the way you are going to talk to the people.

You should be able to learn what aspect of your goal will excite or interest people. This is especially important when you are doing online fundraising because the people you are trying to convince are reading or watching your pitches online, making communication even more important.

The following are some types of people you need to focus on:

Impacting Investors

Investors usually give organizations a large sum of money that could help with overhead costs and other types of initial costs, which could be costly.

These kinds of investors are usually interested in the SROI or the social return on investment. What they care about is how their donation or investment is going to impact their business or personal brand. Try to approach these kinds of investors with this in mind.

Understand Small Donors

It is important to figure out who your small donors are going to be. These are the people who are most likely going to support your mission in the long run.

In essence, you are going to have to gather data from people who show most interest in your cause, and analyze who these individuals are. Once you can see a pattern, such as a particular age range or a political affiliation, you can start figuring out how you are going to target those specific groups of people.

Find the Volunteers

The next thing you have to do is figure out how you are going to find the right volunteers. It all starts with the clarity of your pitch, mentioned earlier. It is important that you can tell volunteers what you hope to accomplish and how their assistance would be crucial.

Volunteers love to be appreciated and love to make a difference. It is up to you to create a system where you’d make it easy for volunteers to see the impact of their work. You should also make sure you show your appreciation often and in many ways to help keep commitment alive.

Hopefully, this guideline makes it easier to understand how you are going to help veterans with whatever issue you feel most passionate about. Allow yourself time to plan things out as much as possible.