Fundraising to Support Our Movements + Raise More Money  

Fundraising to Support Our Movements

Raising the money we need from our community and allies

Need to raise more money from your supporter base? If so, this training series is for you. Foundation funding can be helpful, but can also be hard to access, fickle and limiting. It takes resources to organize. This course will help you ramp up your ability to build sustainable support from within your community and its allies.

This series was designed to meet the needs of activists who are building from scratch, as well as staff of organizations looking to correct an over-reliance on foundation funding.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• How to build a grassroots funding base that grows year to year, that we control.
• What works to raise the money we need: donor segmentation; setup, implementation and training staff and leaders for 1:1 campaigns, special considerations for peer-to-peer campaigns and crowdfunding, identifying fundraising moments before, during and after campaign moments.
• Crafting the fundraising pitch and narrative.
• Story of self, us and now, and why that’s so important.
• How to best use digital tools and tactics, and what to avoid.
• Using fundraising email and evaluating the best use for it given your list size and qualities.
• When events make sense for small organizations or activist groups, and regardless of your organization’s size, how to craft them to be less work and more community-building.
• Specific examples of groups doing effective grassroots fundraising will be shared.
  

Raise More Money

Where should online fundraising fit in your overall fundraising picture? We all know that in general more money is now being raised online, but what actually makes sense for your organization and your list of supporters? This course will help you figure that out.

We also cover best practices for using email to raise funds, including a close look at email series, narrative arc, cadence, rapid response opportunities, and tracking. And we cover ways to use online channels to support your major donor or other offline fundraising work. Campaign examples are provided throughout.

Instructors:

Ertha E. Luma, Fundraising Coordinator, Workers' Dignity/Dignidad Obrera

Christine Miranda, SMT Staff Partner and Digital Campaigner at Movimiento Cosecha. Christine has a diverse background in Latinx community organizing, web and graphic design, non-profit data management, digital storytelling, and social media strategy. She is an organizer with Cosecha, a decentralized movement fighting for permanent protection for all undocumented immigrants. Her field coaching and digital strategy work supported the May 1, 2017 “Day Without Immigrants” campaign and escalated actions protesting the repeal of DACA. She also developed a Snapchat strategy that has helped Cosecha reach hundreds of thousands of people through Geofilters and trending live stories. Previously, Christine was a Fulbright Scholar in Panama, assisting Afro-West Indian advocacy groups with local organizing projects and digitizing community knowledge.

Will Easton, SMT Staff Partner, Email and Online Fundraising. Has managed email programs for progressive causes since 2005. Currently directs fundraising and email strategy for the Mozilla Foundation. Previously, Will served as an Email Advisor for NextGen Climate and Vote.org, Director of Email Engagement for the Bernie 2016 campaign, and as a Senior Manager at CREDO. Will’s offline organizing experience is in the electoral arena – including leading barnstorm meetings as the Midwest Distributed Organizing Director for Bernie 2016 and as a co-founder of San Francisco for Democracy.

Hannah Roditi, SMT Executive Director.