Virtual Fundraising Ideas for Hitting Your Giving Goals

Coming up with creative virtual fundraising ideas isn’t always easy. Nonprofits thrive when they’re able to build meaningful relationships with their donors and supporters, and that can be considerably more difficult through a phone or computer screen.

Overcoming this challenge is critical. In the digital age, virtual fundraising is essential for reaching supporters — especially crucial micro and small donors, who accounted for more than 87% of nonprofits’ total donors in the first quarter of 2024. How can you engage these donors in a competitive digital landscape?

The most effective virtual fundraising ideas often find ways to bridge the digital gap. Help your supporters feel connected to your organization from afar with these virtual fundraising campaign strategies.

Make the most of holidays and other key calendars moments

Leveraging holidays and other calendar moments that are relevant to your nonprofit’s cause is a great way to boost the visibility and success of a fundraising campaign.

Start by introducing the upcoming calendar moment through your social media content. Explain why the moment is important to your organization, when it’s happening, and why you’re creating a special campaign around it.

Posting short video clips can help bring your campaign to life. Consider filming 30-second interviews with staff and volunteers explaining what this moment means to them. Or, post regular video updates in the lead-up to the calendar moment detailing your progress toward your campaign goal.

The key to making holiday-centric online fundraising campaigns successful is commitment. Start planning your campaign months in advance to ensure you launch early enough to meet your goal. Build a content calendar for the campaign to help you keep track of what to post each week and refine your content as you go based on what’s resonating most with your audience.

As the day draws near, don’t neglect to engage with your supporters. Respond to their comments and share your gratitude for people who have already contributed. The more excited you can get your audience about seeing you hit your goal before the time limit, the more enthusiastically they’ll help you achieve it.

Let supporters choose their own path with Conversation Ads

Some people may be swayed to get involved with your campaigns immediately after receiving an outreach message, while others may take a little convincing. By running Conversation Ads on LinkedIn, you can empower potential supporters to choose their own path to supporting you — and learn more about what they want to see from you in the process.

Conversation Ads allow you to initiate interactive conversations with potential supporters at scale. You create an initial message, then add up to five call-to-action (CTA) buttons designed to create different paths for your audience. For example, one CTA could lead directly to a campaign landing page on your website, while another might trigger a second message that provides more information about the campaign and what you’re trying to achieve. At the end of this message, you can add more CTAs to create an engaging experience and continue moving the conversation along.

Conversation Ads can be a dynamic way to get potential supporters’ attention and encourage them to engage. Here are a few tips for getting the most out of these ads:

• Target strategically. Use your Ideal Donor Profiles to target audiences most likely to be interested in your campaign.

• Think carefully about the sender. While Conversation Ads can come from your nonprofit, ads that are sent from a person tend to have higher open and click-through rates. Consider who your audience might be interested in hearing from, whether that’s an influential leader at your organization or a member of the team whose inspiring story could inform the initial message. Whoever you choose, make sure their LinkedIn profile is up to date and conveys credibility and trust.

• Personalize your message. Conversation Ads allow you to seamlessly incorporate personalized elements like the receiver’s first and last name, job title, company name, and industry — without you having to manually input that information across hundreds of messages. 

• Keep it short and sweet. The best Conversation Ads replicate the cadence of a real conversation, so it’s best to keep your messages concise and allow your CTA buttons to answer follow-up questions from your audience.

• Learn as you go. Use Campaign Manager to monitor how your people are interacting with your ads, giving you deeper insights into what motivates your audience to take action.

Leverage live streams and interactive video 

One pitfall of virtual fundraising is that your audience doesn’t have the opportunity to meet your team in person and see how passionate they are. Including a live stream in some of your campaigns can help solve this, allowing potential donors to foster an invested emotional connection with your people and cause.

Keep in mind that audiences’ viewing habits have changed a lot over the past few years. While organizations were able to host 90-minute live streams in 2020 and 2021 without seeing significant drop-off rates, that may not be the case in 2024 and beyond. To encourage people to tune in and keep watching, try the following strategies:

• Spread the word. Depending on the size and nature of your event, you may need to start promoting it weeks in advance to attract the audience you want. Make sure that key details about the event are clear, including the time, date, platform, and what people will get out of the experience. 

• Make it a must-watch-live moment. Why should supporters tune into your stream live rather than watching the recording later? Look for creative ways to add interactive elements that reward live viewing, like responding to questions from the audience or shouting out people by name for their support.

• Keep it concise and focused. Your supporters are likely busy people, so an event that meanders or takes a long time to get going may cause them to drift away from their screens. Aim to keep your live streams highly focused, with clearly stated goals and calls to action. If you’ve collected RSVPs, you could then follow up with additional information and ways to get involved after the live stream has ended.

Video doesn’t have to be live to be engaging and interactive. If you find that hosting live streams is too time-consuming for your team, experiment with posting short-form videos on LinkedIn and other platforms. Why not ask your followers to submit questions for one of your leaders, then record a video of them answering some of the top questions that came up? Or, pose a question to your followers in one video and address some of their responses in the next.

Interactive content like this, even when it’s not live, can help supporters feel like they’re part of your organization’s journey — which may be the stimulus they need to make a donation to your cause.

Virtual fundraising can be tricky, but getting it right can open up a whole world of possibilities for your nonprofit. Learn more about how you can incorporate LinkedIn into your fundraising strategy today — and tap into the world’s largest professional network to find support.