Online Fundraising Campaign in India

by Akshaya Patra NGO in India - Akshaya Patra

Fundraising is an important activity of NGOs. It is a way to gather financial support for the functioning and expansion of their service. Akshaya Patra, a mid-day meal NGO also conducts online fundraising activities to benefit more and more children with nutritious school meals.

Financial resource is a necessity to run any service, be it profitable or non-profitable. Non-profits or NGOs work for the betterment of the society and need funds to sustainably run their operations and expand their services in order to bring about an inclusive improvement in the society. Since their service is non-profitable in financial terms, these organisations need to raise funds to their programme implementation and administration cost. Hence, NGOs conduct offline and online fundraising campaigns at regular intervals to gather financial support from the community.

When and how can fundraising campaigns be conducted?

Fundraising campaigns allow NGOs to raise funds while creating awareness about their respective causes. Since it can be conducted both offline and online, the reachability of these campaigns can potentially garner significant support for the organisation. Many NGOs run thematic campaigns to raise funds and they also encourage supporters to create similar campaigns. With the growth of several digital platforms, it has become easier to reach supporters all across the globe. One can literally conduct these campaigns at any time of the year. Generally, fundraising ideas are generated based on personal occasions like birthdays and anniversaries; festivals such as New Year, Diwali, Christmas etc.; days of national importance such as Republic Day, Independence Day etc.; and from hobbies and groups such as art and craft, bikers’ group, students’ group etc.

How does fundraising campaign work?

Alike all NGOs, The Akshaya Patra Foundation encourages volunteers and supporters to conduct fundraising campaigns for its cause. It is an NGO in Bangalore with operational bases in 40 locations in 12 states. The Foundation provides nutrition-rich meals to more than 1.76 million children in Government schools, every day. It has a mission to feed 5 million children by 2020. A humongous task indeed but the NGO believes that if the entire community comes together, it is an achievable goal. Thus, aside from its regular donation platform, it encourages supporters to create fundraising campaigns. These campaigns can be created by anyone from across the globe. It is a simple 3-step process:

• Step 1: Start a Campaign - Sign in or register and create an online fundraising campaign by filling in the required details.

• Step 2: Create Awareness - Once you have created the campaign, share the link on your social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter etc. informing and requesting your friends and followers to contribute for the campaign.

• Step 3: Donate Funds – Once you have reached your targeted amount or completed the duration of the campaign (whichever is earlier), you can close the campaign and donate the raised funds to Akshaya Patra.

To start off, you can click here to view some of the interesting and successful fundraising ideas that were implemented by campaigners in the past.

Conclusion

The funds raised by these campaigns help NGOs in various ways. For instance, when you fundraise for Akshaya Patra, you help the Foundation with resources to expand their meal programme to benefit more children. These meals are crucial as for many children it is the only meal they receive for the entire day. This meal is an incentive for parents to send their children to school instead of sending them to work. It has been observed that school meals have tangibly increased enrolment, regularised attendance, improved academic and co-curricular performance among children and also positively impacted their health. Thus, by conducting an online fundraising campaign, you can provide the much-needed meals and education to children from challenging backgrounds.

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