Fundraising is critical to the success of any dance marathon in support of Riley Hospital for Children. The mission of dance marathon is to raise money and awareness for the children at Riley Hospital. Since 1991, almost $12 million has been raised, by IUDM and our affiliate marathons, and we only continue to make milestones by the different ways we fundraise. Every second we stand outside a restaurant asking for donations, every letter we send out to a local business, and every time we tell someone about dance marathons, we are doing it for the kids.
There are multiple ways in which your school can fundraise for Riley Hospital.
Fundraising Letters
- Go to www.iudm.org/fundraising/
- Click on a letter template suitable to send out.
- These letter templates provide you with great examples of what to write in your letters in order to be successful with your own personal fundraising.
- These letters are great to send out to family members and friends who would be willing to donate to such a great cause
- Sending a letter to a local business is a great way to bring attention to and hopefully be successful in raising money for Riley Hospital
- Make sure to personalize the letter with your own reasons for participating in Dance Marathon
There are instructions on how to donate through “Donor Drive,” some schools also use FirstGiving.
- These sites where you can create a personal fundraising page where people can electronically donate money to your cause.
- This can be sent out through your Facebook or Twitter page as well as through email.
- Anyone can donate through this website, so this is a perfect way to bring awareness to as many people as possible.
- Tips for Making a Personal Fundraising Page. In order to make your page most effective, here are a few suggestions to consider:
o Tell your story. Not sure how to start? Include answers to these questions in your ‘personal message’ on your fundraising page:
o Why are you fundraising?
o Why is the Riley mission important to you?
o Set a fundraising goal. Donors want to see their friend succeed. In fact, some will donate again if they know their friend is close to reaching their goal.
o Give updates on the status of your fundraising goal.
o Raise your goal once you reach it. Then update your donors again.
o Add a picture. Add an image that speaks to your donors (eg: a photo that represents the reason you are collecting donations).
o Spread the word. Share your fundraising page with family, friends, colleagues or anyone in your community. Firstgiving provides e-mail templates you can use in your account.
o Thank your donors. Firstgiving automatically e-mails a “thank you” message to your donors. When editing your fundraising page, take time to personalize the “thank you” message. Tell donors what it means to you or how their donation is helping Riley.
o Keep sharing. Send updates to your family and friends on your fundraising success or personal experiences at Riley. Sharing stories about challenges and achieving milestones makes donors feel like part of your fundraising efforts. Firstgiving provides an e-mail template you can use in your account.
o Link or add your page to your social media site(s).
There are many more ways one can fundraise:
- Creating a percentage night at one of your local restaurants where a certain percent of everything that restaurant makes that day is donated to Riley Hospital
- Canning, another term that means ‘asking for donations’ using the Riley buckets, with permission around popular locations in your town.
- Promote your mission as much as possible to everyone everywhere you can in order to get the word out there about how important this is
- Something as simple as setting your homepage on your computer to GoodSearch which is a website that donates $0.01 every time someone uses the page as their search engine – make sure to specific your donation to IUDM.
