As a fundraiser, your time literally means money – and we all know there are simply not enough hours in the day. Often charities will have small (but perfectly formed) teams with big goals – and sometimes we all need a little help. Here’s some of the top tools we use here at Pebblebeach to help us rake back some precious minutes.
If like us, you read and reread (and then re-read) an email or social post before hitting that daunting ‘send’ button, committing it forever to digital history, Grammarly is a free tool that goes one step further than the handy Spellcheck on Word. Once downloaded, it works across basically anything you write – online and offline. Not only does it make sure all your words are spelled correctly, but it also makes sure they make sense together! You’ll no longer fear ‘their/there/they’re’ or missing a letter to make what you ‘know’, what you ‘now’ 🙈. It’s never a bad idea to have a second pair of eyes skim over your writing so you can get back to the important bits – raising that money!
As you know from our previous blog, social media is more important than ever when it comes to Charity Comms. We’ve spoken before about how much of a headache-saver planning ahead and having your posts drafted for the next couple of weeks or even the whole month can be. But once you’ve got your planned posts approved for the month, how are you going to post them? Scheduling your posts all at once may seem like a huge time commitment, but trust us – being safe in the knowledge that your voice is chatting away on social without remembering to post at optimum times is a true weight off our minds – and, we think, a timesaver. The above tools vary in cost – but have a go and see which works best for you. Some even have analytical offerings, meaning you can delve deeper into what’s landing well with your audience, so you can continue boosting that all important engagement.
If you’ve ever worked with us, you’ll know how much we love Basecamp. It’s a secure hosting site based in the US, but perfectly compliant with GDPR rules. And, it’s so user-friendly. Essentially, you create a project, invite whoever you’d like to join (from any organisation), and bam – you’re ready to share files – and they’re available until you archive or delete. You can upload any format you want, leave comments on files for specific people, tag things so you can easily find say the print-ready version of your leaflet. It’s even got specific calendars per project, to assign certain meetings or tasks to people. Genius!
We’ve got a secret we’re going to let you in on – we’re obsessed with who is looking around our shiny new website. Building a website is a labour of love, and it’s amazing to know what pages people are visiting the most. Google Analytics is a super user-friendly, comprehensive tool that allows you to deep-dive into your website stats. It’s real-time, but can give you reports from a specific period of time; so let’s say you’ve got a particularly good, important social post, or feature in the local paper, you can see just how many hits to the website that hard work has generated for you, giving you insight for future planning. To be honest – we love it so much, we use it every day!
These are just a few of our favourite time-saving tools. But our best tip for charities looking to save time? Simple – use an agency. An agency may be an upfront cost, but as we’ve said – your time is money. You may raise a certain amount on a mailing or at an event, but how much has it cost you in your time? Let us help with the things we’re experts at – making money for charities like yours. Then you can concentrate on everything else you’ve got on your 12-hour to-do list for today 😉
Interested? Get in touch at hello@pebblebeachfundraising.com.
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