Raise More

Every nonprofit is trying to figure out how to generate revenue right now. Here is an overview of ways to can use GiveSignup to potentially make some money. Here is a quick list:

• (Free) Virtual Events with Donations and Fundraising
• Replace/Extend Your Event with a Virtual Event
• Facebook Fundraising
• Processing Fees
• Ticket Events
• Donation Forms and Websites
• Referral Rewards
• Sponsors
• Multi-Event Registration

(Free) Virtual Events with Donations and Fundraising

It’s easy and free to create a free virtual event with donations and fundraising to engage your supporters and raise money during this challenging time for nonprofits. Why should your nonprofit do a free virtual event?

• Engage your community, and make it easy for everyone to get involved.
• Raise money: Make a soft ask for donations and incentivize fundraising.
• Save money: None or limited operating costs to put on the event. With GiveSignup/RunSignup you get a free website, free Facebook Fundraising, free email, free results, free online bibs and finisher certificates, free text messaging, etc.
• Grow and cultivate your donor pipeline.
• Replace/Extend Your Event with a Virtual Event

Replacing an event that has to be cancelled with a virtual event has become a popular option. We saw the Crescent City Classic sign up 1,000 people to their virtual edition after they had to cancel the physical race. Komen Twin Cities’ Race for the Cure has had more 3,000 participants register and raised more than $100,000 since converting to a virtual event. While the numbers are not where they were last year for any of these events, it does at least provide a way to make some money. You can also lower your costs to operate your event.

Facebook Fundraising

GiveSignup’s Facebook Fundraiser integration is 100% free (we don’t charge for donations made on Facebook) and available to every nonprofit (there is no fee to enable the integration). We are seeing a number of no fee or low fee virtual events where the participant agrees to fundraise for the nonprofit. They get a beautiful Fundraiser Page on GiveSignup, and then can auto-create a connected Facebook Fundraiser that allows fundraisers to easily share and raise money directly on Facebook at no cost to your nonprofit.

Processing Fees

Increase your processing fees. GiveSignup charges the lowest fees in the industry. Other platforms like Classy and Eventbrite have higher processing fees for donations, registrations, and tickets. Charge an extra fee or change the percentage. Read more detailed ideas on this blog.

Ticket Events

While discussing pricing, let’s mention that the GiveSignup Nonprofit Ticket platform can also be used to do low overhead virtual events. Many nonprofits are stuck with Eventbrite, which does not allow easy donations, and their new policy of holding all funds until after the event isn’t helping nonprofits raise money.

Donation Forms and Websites

Elevate your donations from Paypal to GiveSignup’s donation websites and donation forms to take advantage of free reporting, free CRM, free email, free analytics, and free websites. Donation Websites and Forms automatically apply your nonprofit’s branding and custom domain or subdomain, giving your nonprofit a 100% white-label solution to collect donations. Donation Forms are both powerful and easy to create so that your nonprofit can raise more and save time.

Referral Rewards

One of our most powerful tools is Referral Rewards. It allows you to incentivize supporters to get their friends to sign up. The most successful events are using this to get 15% and more of their participants are incredible ROI’s of 1,000%+. In fact, use this downtime to educate yourself on how you can use all of our powerful marketing features.

Sponsors

Sponsors are a major source of revenue for many events. While it may be difficult to get sponsors, special creative thinking can help during this tough time. Partnering with local restaurants for take-out to go along with your virtual event is just a simple idea that can help your race and your local community. There are countless others. And we make it simple with our Sponsor Platform that allows you to easily track and invoice sponsors, as well as provide them lots of ways to get visibility via the website, email, txt messaging, RaceJoy announcements, virtual bibs and finisher certificates, and more.

Multi-Event Registration

Get creative with your packaging and pricing. Using our Multi-Event registration capability, offer 5 events for the price of 3. Or bundle a package of a virtual event this year with next year’s event. There are tons of creative ideas on how to generate revenue today – and your supporters want to find ways to support you and find motivation for the hope of future fun so their long solo walks and runs are more meaningful to them.

Every nonprofit is trying to figure out how to reduce expenses right now. Here is an overview of ways to can use GiveSignup to potentially save money. Here is the quick list on how your nonprofit can Save Money with GiveSignup:

• Free Websites
• Free Email
• Free Supporter CRM
• Free Analytics
• Free Photos and Text Messaging
• Free and Unlimited Access
• No monthly or subscription fees

Free Websites

Many nonprofits are paying hundreds or thousands of dollars for hosting a single website. Or paying a web company to do design and updates. With GiveSignup’s free websites, your nonprofit gets:

• Free websites that you create in minutes for every event, donations, and fundraising campaigns
• Mobile and SEO optimized websites – no work on your part
• Free hosting – no charge for SSL, no charge for hosting – just bring you own URL
• Beautiful cover pages
• Fully integrated data like top fundraisers, price changes, countdown clock, email signup, results, photos, and more

You may as well use this down time to create your own website – you can get started by creating a free virtual event to engage your supporters and collect donations. Visit https://runsignup.com/Services/Free-Website for more information. As a side note, even if you are using another registration or fundraising platform, you can still use our free website capabilities and simply point to the other registration/donation forms.

Free Email Marketing

Yes, we know our analytics and templates are not as good as Mailchimp and Constant Contact. But it is free (and our analytics will be better than anything else in the market within a year). If your nonprofit is spending money on email marketing, this is another simple one to transition to. Just upload your contacts into our email marketing system. Copy and paste your HTML template code. Simple. And saves you money…

Open Platform with a 360 Degree View of Your Supporters

GiveSignup makes it easy to engage your supporters and cross-promote across your revenue generating activities: donations, fundraising, run/walk/rides, and ticket events. Your affiliates, volunteers, and event coordinators get a 360 degree view of supporters across all of your revenue generating activities with simple CRM notes to facilitate communication across teams, flexible management options, and in-depth reporting. Easy-to-build filtered lists with simple email make targeted messaging and drip campaigns easy for any team member.

One of the most important philosophies as well as technologies of GiveSignup is our open platform. Every report from participants to donors to fundraisers to financials has easy export capabilities built in. Countless customers and nonprofits use this to export data to their own CRM. GiveSignup | RunSignup has an Open API, making it easy for your CRM vendor to integrate with GiveSignup. Learn more here.

Free Analytics

Many nonprofits use Facebook and Google ads for their events and donations. You can optimize your ad spend with the use of custom tracking tokens in GiveInsights to measure which campaigns are paying off and which ones are wasting money. Whereas Facebook’s analytics overreport conversions with cookies that are stored for long periods of time to boost attribution, GiveSignup uses a last-click conversion reporting model giving you more accurate marketing analytics. Using GiveInsights coupled with our free email and free website, you will find out the real numbers. See our blog on using our CRM and RaceInsights to track ROI.

Free Photos and Text Messaging

Virtual events and races are probably better off using Facebook and Instagram for the social sharing of photos. But once real events resume, it makes a lot of sense to have a volunteer and/or professional photographer take photos and upload them to GiveSignup’s free Photo platform. These photos are nicely integrated with results. We also have a release coming in June that will enable participants to create their own albums and upload their own photos – all for free.

Likewise, we offer free texting for events, virtual, and timed races. This means that events can more actively engage with their participants through texting and they can upload results easily. Texting can make the virtual seem more real, and gives you the opportunity to engage and support your participants during a virtual event. And when you are back to having real, timed races, participants can get their results quickly.

Free and Unlimited Access

Your nonprofit gets unlimited, free, and flexible user permissions to enable your team, your volunteers, and your supporters to control, view, access, and export the information that they need. GiveSignup’s user permissions are flexible and work well for national-affiliate nonprofit structures, as well as local nonprofits that rely on volunteers for support and operations. 

No Monthly or Subscription Fees

We only make money from processing fees (4% including merchant fees for donations) that you can absorb or pass on to your supporters so that you get free websites, free domains, free CRM, free email marketing, free Facebook Fundraising integration, and free DIY fundraising. No setup costs or monthly or subscription fees.