If you’re taking on a Tough Mudder for charity, you’ll probably be thinking of ingenious ways to increase your donations. Here are five ideas that will help you think outside the box and smash your fundraising targets.
Set targets within your targets
Before your Tough Mudder, draw up a list of things you’ll do if you hit your fundraising targets. For example:
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If you raise X amount of money, you’ll take on Tough Mudder in fancy dress
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If you raise X amount, you’ll get a tattoo to symbolise the achievement
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If you raise X amount, you’ll shave your head before the event
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If you raise X amount, you’ll dye your hair orange
The possibilities are endless and the more extreme the better as far as your fundraising efforts are concerned! Just remember that if you do hit these targets – you’ll actually have to follow through with them. Your donors haven’t given their hard earned cash for you to chicken out!
Wear your charity with pride
Don’t save your charity branded clothing for the day of your race. Make sure you wear it as much as you can during your training to get your message out there. You might think that heading out for a 5am run won’t bring you much publicity, but who knows, a generous big money donor could pass you by.
Think about it – the more your charity is seen, the more chance you have of increasing your donations.
Hold a sweepstake
Put all of your hard training to another good use and hold a sweepstake. Encourage people to guess the number of hours you spent preparing for the challenge. This fundraising idea will be easier to manage if you’re someone who tracks their workouts anyway, but to get a true figure you would have to start making notes from day one.
Make a table that includes realistic figures for your donors to pick from. Then encourage them to pay a set amount of money to ‘claim’ a number of hours. Then, once your training’s all complete, count up the hours and crown your winner. The winner gets a percentage of the money, and the rest goes towards your fundraising total.
Make a video
You’ll have already thought of using social pages to promote your fundraising efforts, but have you given much thought as to how you can get the most from them? In other words, don’t just set up a Facebook page and expect the donations to come flooding in. You need to keep your potential donors updated about your training progress and also about your charity.
Studies have frequently found that video is the most attractive and memorable form of content and you can certainly use it to your advantage. Engage your audience with a video that compiles training footage, a heartfelt message about why you’re raising money for your chosen cause and if possible, recordings from the event itself.
Show people a video of how you’ve put others before yourself on and off the course and people will be falling over themselves to donate to your cause.
Hold a ‘Tough Mudder warm up’ event
Tough Mudder is all about getting outside of your comfort zone and challenging yourself both mentally and physically, so why not invite your friends and family round before the event and get them to put you through your paces? While you won’t be able to recreate the obstacles exactly as you’ll find them on the Tough Mudder course, you can get creative to prepare yourself in some way for the experiences you’ll encounter.
You could ask people to donate, and in return they get to throw a bucket of cold water over your head to help you prepare for Arctic Enema. Or donate a fee if you manage to carry them a short distance to get you ready for Hero Carry. There are lots of ways you can encourage donations with this idea, just make sure you don’t try to recreate Electroshock Therapy – that’s definitely in the ‘don’t try this at home’ list of obstacles.