What is a Community Hub?
A community hub is your charity’s home for your always on fundraising - showcasing all the different ways people can get involved and support your mission.
Here’s a few ideas to get started.
Events Listing
Bring together all your fundraising event options in one place. Give supporters the flexibility to choose the right event for them, or return as a repeat fundraiser.
Event Ticketing
Create events without fundraising pages such as gala balls, golf days or webinars, where people can register to take part or attend. Collect RSVPs and registrations or sell tickets.
DIY Fundraising Themes
Have your supporters fundraise their way, by setting up their own personal challenges and events such as birthdays, in memory and sporting pursuits using our flexible DIY themes.
Giving Days
Create time-limited giving days dedicated to need focussed causes. Create a sense of urgency to incentivise donors to give more and hit a target before the clock runs down. A great way to engage your corporate partners with matched giving too.
Appeals
Run your tax appeal, Christmas appeal, regular giving or capital campaign within your hub. Use bespoke dollar handles and tell your story with one of the many content templates available within the Visual Builder.
Unique Donation Pages
Experiment with your site and create unique donation experiences such as donation display walls, or by creating dynamic, personalised pages with PURLs.
Assets
Share your expertise and arm your supporters with downloadable assets. Help your fundraisers promote their fundraising, get ideas or thank their friends and family.
Shop
Give your supporters the chance to represent your charity and be part of your team by selling event merchandise in your own online store. Sell things like t-shirts, virtual gifts and more.
Raffles
Incentivise your supporters by offering the chance to win a prize. Exchange fundraising is a great way to capture extra donations, just make sure to check your local legislation.
FUNRAISIN FLEXIBILITY
Start with just one or two of these options - and build out your community hub over time
with no additional platform costs.
Get inspired by sites we love
The way you build your Community Hub and what you need for your cause will be unique to you. However there are often a few common elements that all great hubs possess. Here’s a few sites we love to get you thinking about how to create your own. We’ve included what you can apply to your own site and the key features they use. Check them out below.
Cancer Council AU
Pancreatic Cancer UK
Greenpeace CAÂ
Prostate Cancer NZ
Camp Quality AU
Combat Stress UK
COMMUNITY HUB IDEAS
Which themes should I include?
Ultimately, this depends on your audience and their online fundraising ideas. The most common themes we see on our community hubs are:
Something Active
A dedicated theme for all fitness-based challenges. Your supporters can connect Strava, Fitbit, MapMyFitness, Garmin, or manually update their fitness activity. You can also set up triggers within the platform to acknowledge fundraisers as they hit milestones towards their targets.
Celebrate
This theme centres around fundraising in lieu of asking for gifts for a birthday, an anniversary, a wedding or other special occasion. This theme is all about the day and not about a challenge, so the design of the registration flow, supporter journey, and content pages should reflect that. We recommend creating unique emails pre-loaded with copy supporters can easily share to ask for donations in lieu of gifts.
Create your own
This theme is ideal for an event that doesn’t fit neatly into a dedicated theme or for a supporter who wants to undertake a challenge unique to them that few of your other supporters would do. If you do see several similar events created under this theme (or hear interest from your supporters) it might be worth building a designated theme.
In Memory
Supporters will create a tribute page in memory of a loved one to ask for donations for your cause. The In Memory theme - which should be part of every community hub -Â focuses on the person the tribute page is in memory of, not the person who has created it. The registration flow, page name, search functionality, and donor journey should be customised to reflect this.
COMMUNITY HUB Tips
What makes a Community Hub great?
1. Give your supporters choice.
Make sure you're capturing that 'always on' fundraising feeling by bringing all your fundraising activities together in one place. With every option available at their fingertips, your supporters will have the freedom to choose how, when and where they help your cause - on their terms.
Ideas you could try:
- Create an events listing so supporters can see what’s on, where and when so they can easily sign up for their next challenge.
- Create a variety of creative and unique DIY fundraising themes to attract a diverse range of fundraisers.
- Highlight your latest appeal showing what could be possible with their help. A collective total showing the faces behind it will make supporters feel valued.
2. Create a clear call to action.
The best community hubs give fundraisers the freedom and flexibility to organise their own events, without any fuss. However, you still need to have a clear call to action to avoid losing registrations. Simplify the sign up process by providing straightforward event and participation guidelines - keeping everyone in the loop - with a support resource library that is bursting at the seams.
Ideas you could try:
- Segment ideas by challenge types to suit different groups
- Make it clear what your supporters will get out of your challenges
- Make it easy to get started with how to guides and best in class examples
3. Focus on what works.
If your past fundraisers have done well, why reinvent the wheel? Your returning supporters will want to jump right back into where they left off and new registrants will love learning from their experience. This doesn't mean that you pat yourself on the back for a job well done - always look for ways to improve your event offerings to keep things fresh and exciting.
Ideas you could try:
- Highlight the most successful challenges from your legacy fundraisers
- Share success stories and recommendations with new fundraisers
- Create best practice toolkits based on specific events features
4. Build your community.
Your supporters are more than just money makers, they are your chief brand ambassadors and your voice in the wider fundraising community. So, why not utilise their insight, expertise and passion to drive forward your mission, together. Bringing supporters into the fold to be part of the team will help foster meaningful connections among your tribe, and fortify an unmistakable call to action to smash your fundraising goals.
Ideas you could try:
- Create leaderboards to encourage competition between fundraising teams
- Sync your social media feed to showcase what’s happening in real time
- Connect fundraisers in a supporter community group
5. Test and learn.
Once your site is live, monitor how your community is responding and experiment with new ideas to keep your hub thriving and give supporters a reason to come back. When analysing data it can be difficult to find exactly what you’re looking for. Save yourself time, hassle and confusion by implementing robust practices and reporting fields before an event goes live.
Ideas you could test:
- Your sign up journey - which journeys have a better completion rate vs the quality of supporters and the data you capture?
- Your calls to action - do your supporters respond better to direct, or more emotive ones?
- DIY formats - do your supporters respond better to open and flexible categories, or more guided ideas?
6. Build a unique fundraising experience.
There are thousands of fundraising events a year - what makes yours different from the competition? Providing a personalised experience from the get go will delight and motivate your supporters. Whether it’s triggered emails, gamification badges, exclusive leaderboards or catwalk worthy merchandise options - always make it memorable.
Ideas you could try:
- Create unique and shareable badges to celebrate fundraising milestones
- Keep fundraisers engaged by connecting with them at influential moments
- Show off your charity’s personality and decide what you want to be famous for
What are you waiting for?
A community hub should be part of every charity’s fundraising mix. Providing a thoughtful experience for your supporters makes it clear how they can fundraise for you and feel supported and acknowledged along the way. Be sure to regularly evaluate how you are doing and what can be improved.
Don’t feel like you need to get it 100% right on the first try and remember that we're there to help whenever you need it.
