Promoting your Charity Challenge
Charity challenges are a fantastic way to boost your fundraising income, but knowing where to start with promoting it can be tricky. With that in mind, here’s our five top tips for promoting your event!
1. Social media
The easiest and most effective way to promote your charity event is through social media. Create an event on Facebook through the charity page, then ask those involved to share the event with their friends list and on their own timeline. You’ll be able to reach hundreds, if not thousands, of people at the click of a button.
Create a hashtag to use on Twitter and get people talking about the event, sharing what they’re most excited about, how their preparations are going etc. That way you’ll have easy to share content at your fingertips to create an extra buzz around the event as it draws closer. After the event, encourage participants to share their photos on Instagram with the hashtag to show how successful it was!
2. Press release
Get your event in the media by sending out an informative press release that includes all the details of the event and a call to action to encourage people to seek more information. Don’t forget to include fun, promotional photographs to help secure a place in newspapers and magazines. You may even want to send the release to radio stations, vloggers and TV channels - it’s important to secure press coverage of the actual event as well as the build-up, as this may make it easier to recruit volunteers in the future.
3. Open challenge
If you want to avoid the stress of recruiting people for your charity event, consider seeking help from those already in the know. We organise open charity challenges - such as walking challenges and cycling trips - that charities can join with no sign-up fee. We also provide free marketing, recruitment and support advice, so you’ll always have someone on hand to help you promote your event and build your fundraising group.
4. Build a website
You need somewhere to direct your audience when they want more information about the event. Build a website or add a page to your charity’s own website where people can find dates and times, contact information, photographs and videos etc. Social media may have a large audience reach, but posts are often lost in timelines, so instead direct people to a website on all your marketing materials so they have a reliable landing space that they can refer back to easily. It’s also a great place to link to a Just Giving page if you have an online fundraising option.
5. Distribute flyers
It’s also important to use more traditional methods of promotion. Create some flyers to put into coffee shops or post in store windows as well as other suitable places where footfall is high, and people have time to read. Make the design eye-catching and ensure all the key information is displayed clearly, so readers immediately know where, when and why the charity event is taking place.
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