We sense that over the last few years, things have shifted. It happened quietly, then all at once, and people stopped trusting institutions, governments, and influencers. While glossy mailers and corporate campaigns aren’t garnering the support they once did, national trust failed, but not local trust. In other words, people still trust their neighbors and people they know, which is essential for community fundraising.
For nonprofits, schools, and faith-based organizations, the crisis provides an opportunity at the local level, including community fundraising to support local efforts. Trust isn’t a feeling. It’s a decision based on what you see in someone or something. For instance, when parents donate to their school fundraiser, they’re not acting on faith but on trust for the educators.
What “Local Trust” Actually Means for Fundraising
The biggest asset of community fundraising groups is that they have people who know them. Supporters see them at school doors, at weekend faith services, at local beach clean-ups, at soup kitchens, or at after-school programs. Whatever the mission, Supporters get to see the people who do the work, and that builds trust, which is an undervalued asset.
Big corporate or national fundraising campaigns may outspend local organizations, but that doesn’t mean they’re deepening supporter relationships. They can’t replicate the moments when someone looks their community member in the eye and says to them that this fundraiser is for “our kids, our church, our community.”
The Problem with Traditional Community Fundraising
Traditional fundraising methods are exhausting, and people are tuning out. The fact is, at a time of declining trust in, well, just about everything beyond the community, work instability, disruption, and high inflation, traditional fundraising with all the door-to-door pressure, inventory, and sales of merchandise no one wants or needs is a lot of effort for little results.
In fact, continuing to push people to raise funds through product sales or continual “urgent” appeals is a great way to lose their goodwill and trust. When fundraising feels like a burden, Supporters will always choose to avoid or even opt out. And once you lose Supporters, you lose them for good. The good news is that community fundraising has evolved with the times.
A Different Model: TreeRaise
Again, community fundraising is based on trust, and that’s how TreeRaise positions itself for local organizations that raise funds in their communities. The mechanics of it are super simple:
- Your organization signs up to create your tree fundraising page.
- Determine how much you want to raise.
- Share the link with your community.
That’s it. There’s no asking for money. Instead, you’re asking people to support your cause by planting trees. There’s no inventory or high-pressure sales that involve people buying wrapping paper, cookies, or stuff they really don’t want or need.
With each contribution toward tree planting, your organization keeps 50%, which is a higher earnings than merchandise sales, and the other 50% goes toward tree planting efforts. Moreover, you and your supporters can view photos of tree planting and GPS coordinates.
Transparency Is the New Currency in Community Fundraising
Supporters of organizations don’t just provide fundraising revenue. They make a judgment about whether a community organization deserves the community at large’s trust. Based on research, TreeRaise chose to partner with veritree, which provides blockchain-verified proof for your supporters of the tree planting.
That’s a direct response to the single most critical reason people stop or pull back on their giving. Supporters, rightly, want to know where their fundraising dollars go. And with TreeRaise, you can share how the funds support specific initiatives and programs within your organization and plant trees in countries such as the U.S., East Africa, and Brazil.
Moreover, can track the number of trees ordered by your community fundraiser, CO₂ sequestration data, and the dollars raised. In short, every contribution to your community fundraiser becomes a verifiable act that has proof and transparency. These accountability tools were typically available to large institutions, but now any community group can access them.
Why the Timing Is Right
As many community organizations know, federal and state fundraising is no longer stable and is continually cut for other priorities. It has now become necessary for organizations to raise funds. While this is a challenge, it is also an opportunity to step into the gap at a time of significant trust failure in governments and national institutions.
Your organization can benefit from the loss of trust capital for faceless institutions that don’t know their supporters by name or on sight. This is a moment when supporters are choosing to go local and support their neighbors, which means local trust isn’t fading. It’s actually in the middle of a renaissance, if you will.
If your school, nonprofit, or faith-based organization is ready to try a community fundraiser that actually feels like one, get information to become a treeraiser.
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