Whether you’re a member of a school, youth group or corporate organization, you might be looking for a fundraising opportunity to make a difference in your community or boost your Corporate Social Responsibility.
Here at Habitat for Humanity Halton-Mississauga, we offer a variety of ways for you to fundraise for charity, and we’re always happy to work with you to find a unique way for you or your organization to contribute to our cause. We sat down with Melissa Foley, our team experiences lead, to get her insights on fundraising for Habitat. Here are some of her tips!
1. Make it fun — and maybe a little bit competitive
We’ve had corporate teams organize a myriad of different activities to fundraise for us. Some of the fun ideas include holding a staff or community barbecue, picnic or bake sale, auditioning off an extra vacation day, having dress-down days on Fridays, holding a silent auction or going bowling or to a trampoline park. For events that have extra costs like a barbecue, you can ask staff to pay $10, with half covering the costs of the event and the other half going towards your fundraising efforts.
In addition to planning a fun event, you can also consider adding an element of competition. You can organize a sporting event, race or other event. You can even challenge employees to beat the donations made by other departments. As long as you keep your competitive spirit friendly, the sky’s the limit with possible fundraising activities for your corporate donation to Habitat. Not only can your event raise money for charity, but you can also engage your employees, and even your wider community, in the process.
2. Set a goal and know what you are aiming for
When you fundraise with Habitat as a corporate team, we create a fundraising website for your team. This means staff can donate automatically online, and receive charitable tax receipts instantly. Some companies choose to match employee donations, so this might be a consideration for your organization as well. You can track your progress towards your donation goal online.
Habitat Halton-Mississauga offers team building experiences for teams that donate $5,000 or more. These team building experiences can accommodate up to 20 people on a build site, or 25 in our ReVive Centre, which is our upcycling centre in Mississauga. In the photo above, a team from Apex Tool Group is shown at their team build at at our ReVive Centre. Having a team building experience gives your team something to look forward to, and it is a tangible outcome of your fundraising efforts. Plus, in addition to being an opportunity for corporate social responsibility, it doubles as a chance for your team to bond and grow in a new environment.
3. Use authentic promotional materials, and take advantage of social media
Choosing to fundraise with Habitat means we’ll supply you with all of the necessary branding and marketing materials for your fundraiser. Using authentic promotional materials demonstrates the validity of your fundraiser, and also helps spread your message faster.
Another way you can spread your message is through using social media. Here at Habitat, we’re active on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. Brand recognition is one of the many incentives we offer corporate teams. Our team is happy to connect online to promote your fundraising campaigns so that you can share your efforts with your customers and community. Throughout your fundraising process, you can share photos of your events and activities online and share it so we can share your progress to our audiences! You will also receive an album of photos of your team on Facebook when you take part in a team build day with Habitat.
4. Ensure you know where your donations are going
If people in your organization or community are donating money, it’s important that they know where it’s going and what it is supporting. At Habitat, we’re proud to say that 100 per cent of monetary donations go towards our build projects, to help us achieve our vision of a world where everyone has a safe and decent place to live. Habitat’s administrative costs are covered by the sale of donated items in our ReStores, which allows us to put your donations to work on one of our projects to build a home for a deserving family.
When your company donates to Habitat, you help us cover the upfront cost of purchasing land, materials and services which are not donated. By the time a home is built, all of those costs have been covered. That means that after a family has completed their 500 hours of “sweat equity” during the construction process and has moved into their home, the money from their mortgage payments — which are tailored to no more than 30 per cent of their overall income — goes back into the cycle of purchasing more lands, materials and services to build another home.
We have lots of information about our home builds on our website, on our blog and on our social media channels. You can share these platforms with your team so that they can learn about Habitat’s work and see the worthwhile cause that their fundraising efforts are supporting.
5. Consider a “give what you can” fundraising campaign
You might assume that it’s better to ask all employees to donate a set amount to attend a certain fundraising event, like a staff picnic. However, this puts a limit on donations and could prevent people from donating more than they might otherwise. Consider organizing your fundraising campaign around the idea of “give what you can” to allow employees to donate as much as they are willing to give. You can set a minimum amount if you’d like, but this may help your organization raise more money than if you set a limit on donations.
6. Stay updated after your fundraiser is finished
Your corporate team’s experience with Habitat doesn’t end when your fundraising or team build day is finished. We stay in touch to offer invitations to our groundbreaking and key ceremonies where we celebrate the beginnings of our builds or the beginnings of home ownership opportunities for families. We’re happy to share these milestones with your employees so that they can see our homes, meet our families and community partners and share the impact they made along the construction process.
If your company is interested in making a donation to support our home builds, or fundraising to spend a day on a build site with us, contact Melissa Foley by emailing mfoley@habitathm.ca, or calling her at (905) 637-4446 ext. 231. You can also find more information about making a corporate donation to Habitat by visiting our workplace giving website, or our team build website. We can’t wait to hear from you!