A lot of musicians decide to use their profile and their platform to raise money for charity. Getting involved with a charity can be a way to get more involved with your audience, build your brand, and give something back. Here’s how you can do it.
Choose Your Charity
Pick a charity that you want to walk with. Choose a cause that matters to you, whether that’s fundraising for cancer treatment, or working against racism in music. You can take inspiration from Joey Armstrong who has worked with his band to help several causes.
Crowdfund
Use crowdfunding sites to raise money for your charity of choice. Set a fundraising goal and track your progress, and keep an eye on who is donating. Set up different levels of giving, offering rewards in return for their support.
Benefit Concert
This is a brilliant way to get your music out there, at the same time as involving people with your cause.
Make sure that there is a clear way for people at the concert to donate. Make it clear how your concert will be used to benefit your cause, whether that’s donating some of the ticket proceeds, or donations on the night.
You could connect with other musicians who have a similar cause and work together to be able to raise even more money and reach your goal sooner. To get more people to attend, you could also offer prizes or merchandise giveaways.
Social Media Campaigns
Social media can be a very effective way to get people to take an interest in the cause that you’re trying to help. Some social media platforms, like Facebook, even have built-in ways for you to raise awareness and money. When you start doing this, keep in mind some important things:
- Be clear about what your goal is with your fundraiser. People will want to know why you are supporting this particular cause, why they should support it too, and what will be done with the money they donate.
- Obviously display a way for people to help, such as a link to the charities website or a direct donation link.
- Recognise and thank donors and supporters. It goes a long way to say thank you.
- Keep supporters up to date on your progress.
- Use relevant hashtags or start your own.
- Schedule posts to reduce your workload
- Boost posts to get them in front of more pairs of eyes. You will need a budget to do this.
- Invite your friends and family to support and share.
- Work with other organizations and artists to get the message further.
- Create a video of yourself talking about your cause and campaign. You can use this in social media posts, in newsletters, and more.
Twitter is a great tool to help you raise more money for the charity that you want to help because unlike Facebook, it’s considered normal to post a lot more often in the same day. This will help you to keep consistent with your audience engagement and drive more traffic to your fundraising sites.
