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Overcoming the Challenges of Nonprofit Fundraising During a Pandemic

One of the biggest challenges that nonprofits are facing is fundraising. They already devote much of their resources to the research and planning for their work. They invested many hours and manpower. This is to understand the issue areas that they want to address. And this is also to plan out programs that would help their target beneficiaries. But they also need to invest even more time and effort to raise the funds that would help them implement their programs and fulfill their mission.

Unfortunately, their struggles with fundraising were heightened even more by the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s already difficult to raise awareness about their advocacies. Thus, it’s been more challenging to raise awareness when people around the world are fixated on the global health crisis.

But nonprofits are able to work around this challenge. Even amid a pandemic, they’re able to raise funds to implement their programs and serve communities in need. Here’s how they’ve been fundraising ever since the pandemic started.


Enhancing Their Online Presence

If there’s one thing that rose during the pandemic, it’s people’s usage of social media. With the need to practice social distancing, it has become crucial to stay online to stay connected with friends, families, and colleagues. Much like businesses in the private sector, nonprofits took advantage of this by enhancing their online presence, too.

They’ve become much more active over social media, engaging with people to raise awareness about their work and the issues that they’re trying to solve. Many of them have also started investing more in professional web design services and digital marketing. This has become the most effective way of sharing with the world the work that they’ve been doing. It’s how they’ve been sharing the impact that they’ve made in their target communities.


Holding Virtual Fundraising Events

Mass gatherings have been banned for months now. Some areas around the world are starting to become more open to gatherings. But many are still adamant against this. But fundraising events are crucial to nonprofits. It’s the perfect way for them to gather individuals and foundations, and convince them to make donations and grants for the projects.

So what nonprofits have been doing in holding virtual fundraising events over Zoom or other video calling platforms. Virtual fundraising events have also been the perfect way for nonprofits to raise the voices of communities in need during the pandemic. The target beneficiaries are able to directly address possible donors to share their experiences. Nonprofits can talk about their model and programs all day long. But it’s the stories from the beneficiaries themselves that would give the efforts a more humanized view.


Highlighting How COVID-19 Worsened Their Issue Areas

At first, one of the biggest problems that nonprofits worried about is people’s interests in different social causes. Obviously, the global health crisis took center stage. It’s the most urgent, visible, and impactful crisis that everyone is facing now. But this also meant that some issues took a back seat in people’s interests. Foundations and individuals were then more concerned about raising funds for vaccination research, food donations, and healthcare rather than focusing on, say, gender-based discrimination.

But nonprofits worked around this challenge by reframing their causes to capture the attention of possible donors. For example, instead of just focusing on gender-based discrimination, they highlighted how reports of domestic abuse, mostly on women, rose during the time when quarantine restrictions were strictly enforced. Thus, nonprofits are highlighting the fact that the pandemic worsened the issues that they are trying to solve. So, at the same time, this rose the urgency of their causes.


Strengthening Existing Partnerships

The last crucial thing that nonprofits have been doing in the last couple of months is strengthening their existing partnerships with foundations and individuals. They made sure to thank these donors for their generosity and hard work. By doing so, they are raising their chances of gaining more funding from their partners. So yes, they are pursuing prospective partners. But they also need to make sure that they stay connected. They must maintain a healthy relationship with the people they’ve worked with in the past.


As we all know and understand by now, every single one of us struggled during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yes, our struggles varied. Some faced the challenges of losing their livelihoods. Some, on the other hand, felt their mental health struggle because of the social distancing restrictions. The same went for nonprofits. Their struggles varied and they faced unique challenges when it comes to fundraising. But what’s great is that they were able to get past the struggles to continue their work. As a result, they’re able to continue helping more people during these trying times.