There are huge holes in lots of charities budgets at the moment both locally, nationally and internationally. I have been trying to help charities that I want to support and have discovered these hopefully useful tips and income streams for charities to use.  

You might think that while a lot of shopping is going online that your charity or community building is missing a trick. Well there are many ways and means that your charity can also raise funds on the world wide web. It might be an idea to try and get some help from some more IT literate members of your community that might be able and willing to show you the digital ropes on how to use some of the applications mentioned below.

1)    Online events such as a presentations, talks, a local musician and/or band could all possibly be used as online ticketed events to raise money for your charity/community building.   

Tickets could be sold online through an account on ticket sales platforms such as Eventbrite (there will be a small charge for ticket events that you charge attendance for).  

Once you have sold your tickets you could then invite them to attend through a platform called Zoom where, so long as the person that has bought a ticket has an ok internet connection, they should not have problem joining and enjoying the event.

2)    Charities can sell items on the online auction site called eBay and receive payments for transactions through PayPal (including gift aid for those eligible to opt in). On eBay you could sell items by auction or even  set up your own digital charity shop to sell items.

Make sure you sell items that can either easily be posted out to winning bidders such as DVDs, CDs or books. Or you might want to sell more difficult to post items locally and advertise items as local collection only. You could make an event of it locally for your charity if you have some special items that would mean a lot to people in your local community, such as locally produced art, craft or local produce or gift vouchers donated to your charity. You could advertise with social media posts or emails or in your local parish magazine about the upcoming auction, when it will be and what will be for sale, so that people in your community can know what to bid on and when and where.

Also, where payment goes through PayPal, buyers can opt into gift aid, so you can increase your income by a further amount that you would be entitled to. If you want to find out more about charities and raising funds on eBay or payments though PayPal just contact eBay or PayPal directly and they will be happy to answer your questions.

3)    Finally for all you budding Amazon Parcel purchasers did you know that you can donate to your own charity by setting up an Amazon Smile account. Again, go directly to Amazon and ask them how to set up an Amazon Smile fundraising account for charities. Then ask your supporters to register with Amazon Smile and away you go. Amazon will donate a small percentage of all future purchases to the charity at no cost to the buyer.