How to Collect Money Online
Having a money collection for an office party or a leaving gift can often be a nightmare. People rarely carry cash these days and the shift to employees working from home or hybrid working has made office collections much harder. Fortunately, there is a way to manage this remotely as you can collect money online. Whether you are organising a charity collection, a leaving collection, raising funds to give your colleague a gift, or doing something completely different, virtual fundraisers offer a simple way to raise money so your colleagues can contribute to your collection with the click of a button.
What you Need to Know About Virtual Collections
A virtual collection, also known as a money pool or money pot, is a great way to collect multiple individuals’ money in one place.
- Online fundraising means that no matter where people are geographically, they can easily donate. This takes away an element of difficulty if you’re working remotely across the country, for example.
- It takes away the inconvenience of having to ask people in person. A share of the link acts as a good prompt and takes away any awkwardness.
- There’s no secretive envelope being passed from desk to desk. A simple round-robin email of the link to the fundraiser means everyone knows exactly where the collection is.
- It’s far more discreet.
- It doesn’t require physically having cash and means people can donate whenever is convenient to them.
How to Collect Money Online For a Gift
Leaving collection online and gifts
GoFundMe is a great place to raise money, whether you’re doing it for friends, colleagues or family. You can raise money easily for charities too – another option for office collections if you or your colleagues have a cause close to your hearts.
As you start your fundraiser, it’s important to set a goal for how much you want to raise. Don’t worry though, this can be raised at a later date if it’s appropriate. You should also think about your fundraiser story which is the part that tells people why you’re fundraising. Try and put in as much detail as possible about why the cause is important – from a special birthday or wedding gift to a good cause. Use a good picture or video on your fundraiser, if you can too.
Once you’ve started your fundraiser, make sure to share it amongst family, friends and colleagues on social media. If it’s a surprise, be mindful of this before you do! Emailing it around the office is also a good way to spread the word, as is putting up physical posters with QR codes. The beauty of online collections for things like this is that people don’t have to have cash on them at that time – and the fundraiser can be running for weeks or months before the event, meaning everyone that wants to contribute can. Make sure to share a couple of times during the fundraiser duration.
When you’ve started accepting donations, it’s also important to thank your donors. You can do this on your GoFundMe page but a personalised thank you email or text never goes amiss either. Keep people updated with how the fundraising is going every time you meet a goal or hit a milestone in your fundraising too.
You can also visit our how it works page for more tips on how to set up a fundraiser which will help you collect money online.
How do I get started?
Using a crowdfunding platform is the easiest way to launch your virtual collections. You can create a fundraiser in a matter of moments. We timed it, it takes less than five minutes to set up and less than 60 seconds to donate, which means it’s quick, straightforward and easy – no awkwardly having to run to the cash machine to put into a donations tin.
Set a goal
Setting a collection goal is a good way of giving people something to aim for. If you already know what gift you want to give someone, set the goal as the price of the gift. If you haven’t decided yet, set a rough goal, you can always adjust it later. On GoFundMe, you can change your goal at any time and once you’ve reached your goal you can still fundraise. You will also be able to withdraw even if you don’t meet your goal.
Make sure the money goes to the right place.
You can easily invite someone else to become what we call a beneficiary by clicking ‘someone else’ when asked ‘Who will withdraw the funds?’ in your dashboard. You can also withdraw the funds yourself. This means you can either distribute them personally (keeping the surprise going) or use them to buy a gift and present it. If you do decide to go down this route, make sure you are transparent in your fundraising story about how you plan to do this and update your donors using our update button once it’s done.
The video below explains how to set up transfers.
Charity collections
If you are raising money for a charity, you can select your chosen charity from a drop down menu when you set up your campaign. Once you have selected a charity all the money raised including 100 per cent of gift aid will automatically be sent to that charity as part of your charity collections. The gift aid is processed for free. It is a good idea to say in your description why you have chosen to raise funds for your chosen charity and what it means to you, either as an individual or a company.
It can also be good to explain the impact of donations. For example, if you are fundraising for a foodbank explain that every £50 donated can feed a family in need for a week. Or if you are fundraising for a cancer charity, a £10 donation could fund equipment for use in research.
A good way to get people donating to charity collections is to hook it on an event of your own – maybe it’s your birthday and you want to suggest donating to a charity instead of being bought a drink or a present? If there’s an awareness week – like Mental Health Awareness Week for example – you could also always start a fundraiser to coincide with that. It means you can hit two good things at once – raising money for the good cause and also talking about it to get people thinking about why you are fundraising, raising the profile of the charity and the cause.
Sharing is caring
Once you are happy with your fundraiser, the next step is to read our blog on how you should share it on social media. This helps people who would want to contribute to see it and do so!You can do this through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Whatsapp and emails. Let people know that your collection exists and watch the money roll in. If you’re not on social media or don’t want to share there we have some offline fundraising tips. You can also get sharing in ways offline too – with QR codes to print off and pin around the office or by sending out an email.
Work collections
If the collection is for work, don’t forget to share it on any work intranet and/or email it around to the team (except the person it’s for!). In the past, fundraisers have had success sending calendar invites reminding colleagues to donate. This can work particularly well if it’s timed around payday. You could also put up physical reminders in the office with the link to donate or QR code (unless the collection is a surprise and the person will spot it!).
Now that working from home has become more commonplace, having a virtual collection like this makes it easier for everyone to contribute. The link is there and accessible at all hours of the day; whether you’ve got a spare minute between meetings or in the evening after you’ve logged off. It means you don’t need a specific amount of cash handy (no running to the shop for change!) and people can easily be reminded about the fund and donate instantly.
Wedding and honeymoon pots
People generally want to give gifts to celebrate the wedding of a loved one. But maybe you’re someone with everything you need already and would prefer to take any generous donations and put them towards something you want to do, like a honeymoon? Well, a virtual collection could be perfect for that as well. Once again, it’s easy to circulate the link and people can donate in their own time, before or after the wedding, and as much as they like.
Or, if you’ve got a special cause in mind, you could raise money for charity and have people donate to that in honour of your wedding instead if you are fundraising for yourself.
Collections for a congratulations
Maybe someone in the office is about to have a baby and everyone wants to contribute to get a gift to show they care – but no one can decide what would be useful to the new parents. Why not start a collection pot on GoFundMe so that you can see how much has been raised and decide on that perfect useful gift? Or even let the new parents decide themselves what they most need, so you can really see that everyone’s contribution has gone to something that will not only be appreciated but really help. Whether it’s maternity or paternity leave, start the collection in plenty of time when you know the approximate date the baby will arrive and get circulating the link on email (without them copied in if it’s a surprise) or hidden on your social media.
Start your Virtual Collection today
So what are you waiting for? Why not start your virtual collection on GoFundMe today.
It couldn’t be easier to set up a fundraiser, and start racking up donations from supporters. It’s easy to donate via PayPal too.
Our experts are on hand to offer help seven days and week, and you can use our mobile app to check in on your fundraising progress on the move.