Our Charity Champions webinar series run a session called Virtual Events, Real Results: 5 steps to driving cost effective online fundraising on Wednesday 22nd April at 10am. We covered the key success factors in driving impactful online fundraising from virtual events. With thousands of physical events and activities cancelled because of the coronavirus, our webinar looks at how important it is to move to virtual events now and how to get things up and running.

Virtual events themselves can be anything at all – what’s important is getting your supporters excited about combining their fitness goals, personal aspirations or hobbies with a passion for your cause. Then they can participate wherever and whenever they want, allowing them to engage through online channels with the wider event community. While the need for virtual events has accelerated due to this pandemic, they are here to stay.

Here’s a quick look at a summary of some of the key points we will cover:

Communicate quickly and with empathy

Everything from linking to live current government advice to keeping your annual events but making them virtual this year – Christian Aid Week is a good example of this.

Make it action-based and trackable
Making your event action based and trackable is important to motivate your supporters and give them measurable goals to focus their engagement. Integrating with trackers like Strava enable participants to undertake your challenge in the garden (recording activity indoors), or outdoors, like the British Heart Foundation.

Engage your supporters
It’s not just about fundraising, as a pure ask doesn’t work well online – it’s also about coming up with that challenge and activity to really engage your supporter base, like the WWF has.

Embrace the Fundraising From Home revolution
The fundraising from home revolution means individuals may have more time in their daily routines to engage with an activity or challenge – no commute, no gym access and for many there are now children to entertain! Support Dogs have done a really fun activity for those missing Eurovision.

Put your cause centrestage
Too often in the digital fundraising space, branding is an afterthought, and though it might be tempting not to focus on your branding right now, it’s been proven time and time again that companies and charities who don’t invest in their brand during the hard times, take longer to recover. The National Trust has put together films and images about their parks and properties to virtually experience them, and provide a positive hopeful message.