Support Survivors of Rape & Sexual Abuse To Tell Their Story (gofundme.com)
“Giving
is not just about making a donation. It is about making a difference.”
Kathy
Calvin
Having hired a Fundraising Coordinator several weeks ago (he’ll be making an appearance in a new Article very soon, but he’s also now featured on our Meet The Team page here!), one of his first tasks was to research different online platforms to use to fundraise for the Campaign. So, based on his research and recommendations, we’ve just created a GoFundMe and to launch the fundraising campaign; #FundraisingFriday for it, we thought we’d put together this Article which is full of everything you need to know…
Why We’re Fundraising
The funding
raised on GoFundMe will largely go to two expenditures:
Firstly,
it will fund marketing materials which may include banners and signs for
events, business cards, posters to provide organisations with an easy way of advertising
Shake My Hand, and other branded, promotional materials that are needed for our
training sessions and awareness workshops. We really don’t want people to see
this as having helped us put our logo on fancy paper! The way we would like you
to look at it and think about it, is that – according to businessdit.com
– organisations have had an 11% increase in business through having promotional
materials. Now, imagine that 11% is 11 people. And this means that having
promotional materials will help us to benefit ELEVEN MORE
individuals. Eleven more people we can help and support to tell their story and
report their experiences of rape and/or sexual abuse to the Police; and with the
2021
England and Wales Crime Survey stating that 63% of female Survivors of
these crimes, state they have subsequently developed mental health ‘issues’ –
imagine how many lives and minds we could save with that 11%! If anyone is
wondering, the ways in which we will offer help and support for Survivors, can
be found on this page of our website: Supporting | Shake My
Hand (shakemyhanduk.blogspot.com).
The
second expenditure being funded by your donations will be all other matters related
to our ability to provide awareness workshops and training sessions which we
talked about providing branded marketing materials for. These donations could
fund aspects such as venue hire where a person-to-person facilitation is more
relevant or appropriate and/or indicated or required over an online session. The
impact intelligence can have on a person’s empathy and understanding of a topic
and how this can materialise in a person’s response to relevant people, is no
great secret. For Survivors of rape and/or sexual abuse to truly feel
validated, informed, equal, and in no way ashamed or blamed for their
experiences by professionals and organisations who could be placed – but not
specifically trained – to help and support them; training and awareness-raising
events can be necessary and – at the very least – useful. For anyone wondering,
the training and awareness sessions we can facilitate can be found on this page
of our website: Speaking
Up | Shake My Hand (shakemyhanduk.blogspot.com).
Why We Chose GoFundMe
·
It
is the largest social fundraising platform: the leading crowdfunding website.
·
The
amount that the website has been known to have raised (£10 billion from over
120 million donations).
·
The
tools which they supply to create a Fundraiser are easy – it is an easy process
to set up a fundraiser.
·
There
is no fee to start fundraising compared to other websites which can be
expensive and require a lot of work to create.
·
There’s
no pressure to reach your fundraising target/goal – it is up to the fundraiser
to ensure the goal is achieved.
·
They
have a Trust and Safety Team which is dedicated to protecting organisers and donors,
so it is a safe and secure way to both raise funds and to make donations.
·
You’re
able to refund donors if something isn’t right.
The First 5 Steps To Creating Our
Fundraiser:
1.
The
basic login details e.g. email address and creating a password.
2.
Verification
steps e.g. an email and a text message to the phone number on the account.
3.
Creating
and adding the correctly sized graphics (this step took the longest amount of
time to complete) – fortunately GoFundMe tells you about the best size for the
two areas where imagery can be added; the cover/profile photo and then we also decided
to place an image in the ‘Campaign Story’ which provided more Campaign
information that seemed better and more attractively presented than a wealth of
text. All graphics/imagery were created via Canva, using their ‘custom size’
feature.
4.
Writing
the ‘Campaign Story’ – having used the graphic to convey a lot of information
regarding the services Shake My Hand provide and the statistics that motivate
the Campaign, creating this part didn’t take up as much time as it likely would
have if we had chosen to type everything.
5.
Finally,
adding a ‘Team’ member – since it was the Founder who created the Campaign, we
then had to add the Fundraising Coordinator’s email address (fundraising.shakemyhandcampaign@outlook.com
– if you ever need it!) to the ‘Team’ feature on GoFundMe so that he would have
access to the admin features and ultimately take charge of the account as is relevant
to his responsibilities/role.
Launching #FundraisingFriday
It’s no
secret that alliteration can go far in hashtags, so when we were considering some
sort of traction for our GoFundMe on social media, using alliteration in some
way seemed like a clever thought or idea! So, #FundraisingFriday was born! And
again, we used Canva in this instance too by creating a Reel for Instagram
using Canva’s ‘Your
Story’ template for the sizing and layout/design ideas and inspiration. In putting
Reels together these days, we keep in mind the statistics on the average
duration of a Reel that people will watch the entirety of, and we knew this was
an important thought to have in creating the #FundraisingFriday Reel together
because it had the potential to be quite lengthy as we felt there was a lot of
information appropriate to it. There were a lot of details we wanted to include
in the Reel, so we had to sit down and edit out everything that wasn’t 100%
necessary in order to make the Reel still of a standard that would lead us to our
ultimate goal of securing donations.
So, every Friday from this date (26th July) we’ll be posting the Reel on our Instagram and we’ve also downloaded a version for our Twitter account and our Facebook page!