Your first week of fundraising

The first week after creating your fundraiser is an opportunity to build interest and momentum. The amount of time you put into sharing your fundraiser and interacting with donors can have a big impact on your success. Let’s take a look at steps you can take in your first week: 

• Make a plan
• Share your fundraiser
• Invite team members
• Ask others to share
• Set up transfers

Make a plan

Making a plan will help keep your fundraiser on track and help you keep organized.

Try scheduling 20 minutes of fundraiser-related tasks every day. This might include posting on social media, sending texts or calling people you know personally, posting updates, or thanking donors.

Share your fundraiser

No matter how and where you decide to share, you should share your fundraiser multiple times in your first week of fundraising. GoFundMe provides sharing posters when you use the "Share fundraiser" button from your manage dashboard. These will include your main image, a goal bar, and a call to donate. We encourage using these posters for a great visual to share, and you can share in many other ways as well–check out this video for tips on sharing well on social media.

Some additional must-haves for sharing are: 

• Include your link
• Share a short message about why you're fundraising
• Consider the time of day - Most social media algorithms take recency into consideration, so if you create your fundraiser at night, you might wait to share until the next morning.

Invite team members

Team members can make fundraising less overwhelming. Team members can help with fundraiser maintenance so you can focus on your cause and putting the funds to use. We encourage you to invite 2-3 team members who you trust and have some time to help you out.

Ask others to share

Continually sharing your fundraiser is key to reaching your goal, and you can vastly expand your reach by asking friends and family to share your fundraiser with their own networks. We can expand our individual networks by tapping into the communities of our current donors.

Set up transfers

At some point in the first week, take a few minutes to set up your transfers. Fully setting up transfers, sometimes including submitting identity and bank documents, can take a few days, so the sooner you get started setting up your transfers the better.

Stay safe while sharing

GoFundMe and any social media platforms you share on are public, which means bad actors have the opportunity to view both your fundraiser and posts you make about it. Occasionally, bad actors may try to reach out through social media to advertise crowdfunding help. GoFundMe will never offer fundraiser promotion for a fee, and we don’t condone or suggest using any services that do.

Keep the following tips in mind when sharing on social media:

• Never share your GoFundMe account or personal and banking details over social media.
• Don't engage with individuals offering to promote your fundraiser for a fee.
• Don't click links sent in DMs unless you trust the sender.

Sharing your fundraiser on social media is incredibly important to reach your goal, and we want you to feel confident and safe while sharing. Following our tips will help you to avoid bad actors, but if you do come across something suspicious, please let our team know at accountsecurity@gofundme.com.