Forty-seven per cent of local Age UKs have fundraising pages, encouraging visitors to sign up for a challenge or arrange an event to raise money for their local community. Find out what kind of content you could include on your fundraising page.

Be clear on who you are and what you want

Don’t assume that everyone visiting the fundraising page will know about your organisation’s work, or even what you’d like them to do.

Including a short description of your work in the local community and the impact that it has can motivate people to join in.

Have a clear call to action – what do you want people to do after reading this page? Take part in a challenge? Organise their own fundraising initiative? Help out at an event? Make sure that people know what you want them to do and that they have enough information to make a start without having to call or email you.

Events, challenges and campaigns

You may not have any upcoming events and challenges, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t encourage visitors to come up with their own ideas.

Age UK Plymouth’s fundraising page, for example, has an A-Z of fundraising ideas, covering everything from Fashion Shows to Ugly Tie Days. Age UK Calderdale and Kirklees provides a fundraising pack for their £40 for 40 Years Challenge full of ideas for people to get involved

Age UK Essex has included two interesting local events on their fundraising page – Fright Hike 2014 and Mud, Sweat and Gears – encouraging people to sign up and fundraise for them.

They have also included their own Challenge 65 – an Apprentice style challenge in which participants try to maximise returns on £65.

Finally, they’re promoting The Big Knit 2014 – a campaign with a national presence.

Personal stories and thank yous

Personal stories of people who have fundraised for you can help encourage people to participate and also acts as a nice way to acknowledge support.

Age UK Bristol have included a short quote from a local fundraiser on their fundraising page, which brings a personal, inspirational touch to the page.

If you won’t have time to update stories like these regularly try to avoid including dates in them – an out of date story can look worse than no story at all.

Don’t forget your staff! If anyone in your organisation is undertaking a challenge or organising an event you could include it on your website. Age UK Bromley and Greenwich have included information about a staff challenge to climb Snowdon.

Fundraising online

Some local Age UKs ask their supporters to fundraise at no cost to them as they shop online or surf the internet. Popular sites for fundraising while shopping online are EasyFundraising and Give as you Live, while EasySearch and EveryClick generate donations from web searches.

It can be difficult to persuade people to abandon their favourite shopping sites and search engines and even if you do donation amounts, in particular from searches, can be low. However, some local Age UKs have had success in raising money this way.