10 Tips for Promoting Your Fundraiser on Instagram

Setting up a fundraiser is the first step to raising money for your organization, but promoting that fundraiser is just as important. Promotion is key for sharing information with people and attracting new supporters to your event. Social media is a great tool when doing this because it allows you to connect with a large amount of people with one single post and can be shared through others to reach a larger audience. We’ve talked about how to create a Facebook event for your fundraiser, now we will cover how to promote your fundraiser on Instagram.

10 Tips for Promoting Your Fundraiser on Instagram

1. Create custom assets: Having custom assets (pictures and graphics) for your fundraiser helps it stand out and stay unique. Having pictures to share with your fundraiser information is a great way to draw people in and promote your fundraiser on Instagram. When hosting a fundraiser with Chipotle, we provide assets to share on Instagram as well as Facebook and Twitter to make it easy for our fundraiser partners to promote their event.
2. Put fun copy together: Along with having custom assets, make sure you have fun and engaging copy when posting your fundraiser information on Instagram! Since an Instagram post works differently than an Instagram story, have two sets of copy created. Your post copy can be longer with more information, while a story should have fewer words and highlight key information and details of your fundraiser.
3. Create sharing templates: Stay organized and create a template for sharing fundraiser information on Instagram. Having a template for anyone to use will benefit you and your supporters. Be sure to include photos and copy in your template so people can easily copy and paste into their own account.
4. Encourage supporters to share on their Instagram pages: The more sharing the better! Send your templates out to your organization and ask them to help promote your event. When your supporters share their post to their followers, it will reach a larger audience. One of the greatest benefits of Instagram and all social media is having the ability to communicate with people that you may not talk to on a daily basis, making it a big advantage for promoting your fundraiser.
5. Have all information in one place: Be sure to include all of your fundraiser details! Instagram fundraising can be very successful as long as people know what the fundraiser is for, who it is benefitting, and how and when they can support. Try to make it as straight forward as possible.
6. Put the link to your fundraiser in your Instagram bio: For the fundraiser host and supporters willing to share on their own Instagram pages, encourage them to include the link to your fundraiser (if applicable) in their own Instagram bio. By including a link, people can click on it and be directed straight to your fundraiser page without having to search for it on their own.
7. Promote weeks and months in advance: This is important for any type of fundraiser promotion. Stay consistent and keep a posting schedule ahead of your event. The more content you share, the more top of mind it will be to your audience. Just make sure you don’t overwhelm them with information!  And remember that we don’t permit promotion of the fundraiser at the restaurant site, in order to avoid impacting the experience of other guests.
8. Create a hashtag: Hashtags are used often in social media to collect all posts and put them in a central spot. Create a unique hashtag for your fundraiser and use it on all of your posts relating to that event. When people click on the hashtag, they can see all relevant posts using the same hashtag.
9. Use Instagram stories: Stories are a great tool to post temporary, 15-second photos or videos. Use this feature to share information in real time. Stories can keep your supporters engaged with new content without feeling overwhelmed with too many posts on their feed. If you have supporters tagging you in their stories, reshare those stories for extra engagement!
10. Share results: Use Instagram to not only gain participation and support, but keep the conversation going post-fundraiser. Share with your followers the impact their support had on your organization and how much you raised through your fundraiser. Following up is important to keep people engaged and can lead to continued support in the future.

We hope this list helps you start a fundraiser on Instagram and teaches you different ways to use Instagram to promote your event. Be sure to tag us in your next Chipotle fundraiser post and use the hashtag #ChipotleFundraiser!