If you’re part of a fraternal organization, or an alum of one, you know that an important element of Greek life is raising money for your organization. But coming up with fundraising ideas for fraternities and sororities isn’t always an easy task. Don’t worry: we’re here to help.
Here at CauseVox, we’ve seen plenty of sororities and fraternities create amazing and successful fundraisers.
To help you out, we’re going to share examples of the types of fundraisers you can try, as well as some of the best practices we’ve learned through those fundraisers. Let’s take a look at how you can find the perfect fundraising idea for your fraternity or sorority.
8 Best Fundraising Ideas for Fraternities and Sororities
- Volunteer Together
- Campus Event
- Spirit Wear
- Dance Marathon
- Walkathon or 5k Run
- Alumni Ask
- Building Expansion Or Improvement Campaign
- Founder’s Day
Here’s the fun part: let’s talk about what types of fundraisers you can run. Don’t be afraid to get creative. The more your fundraiser stands out, the more people will be excited to participate. Here are some of our favorite ideas.
(For more inspiration, be sure to check out our full list of 200+ fundraising ideas after this post.)
1. Volunteer Together
It’s common for organizations to volunteer as a group. But you can also turn that volunteer work into a fundraising opportunity for your fraternity or sorority.
Plan a volunteer activity together and ask your friends, family, and other connections to donate in support of the volunteer work.
Think about how you can tie the two together: let’s say your sorority decides to plant trees. You could ask for a set amount for every tree you plant.If you host your fundraiser on CauseVox’s platform, you can even include an activity metric to show how many trees you’ve planted.
2. Campus Event
Campus events are a fantastic way to build community, get the name of your organization out there, and raise money. Everyone loves a good reason to participate in an exhilarating experience like a Polar Plunge!
You could create faux Olympic games as a peer-to-peer fundraiser, do a sleep-out, or host a costume contest. There are tons campus event fundraising ideas your fraternity or sorority can host to engage fellow students.
3. Be Visible
As an organization that lives on a campus, you have a built-in audience. Don’t miss out on that audience by only advertising to members or alums. What does that mean? Let’s use an example to explain.
The Little Black Dress Initiative is something that Junior Leagues around the world do. They encourage fundraisers to choose one black dress and wear it for a full week to raise awareness of poverty. This event is specific to Junior Leagues, think about how you could use a similar fundraising idea to draw attention to your fraternity or sorority.
If you have colors, logos, pins or other clothing specific to your chapter, encourage members to dress in spirit wear for a week. You can use this push to gain attention on campus, while also asking for donations in honor of your chapter pride.
4. Dance Marathon
A dance marathon is a classic fundraiser. Snag a space on campus, set a time frame, and see who can keep dancing the longest. You can ask each participant to fundraise and award prizes to the top fundraisers (like a chance to take a break for a song).
5. Walkathon or 5k Run
A 5K is one of our favorite versions of the peer-to-peer fundraiser, and it’s one that goes over really well on a college campus.
Recruit runners from the student body and have them serve as your champions, raising money in support of their run. If you want to make it a virtual event, you can offer a specific time frame for people to walk or run the 5K, or you can host the event on campus on a specific day.
Participants can set up their fundraising pages and raise money from friends, family, and other supporters.
6. Alumni Ask
Alpha Delta Pi alumnae organized this fundraiser to support the sorority around certain requirements.
Don’t forget to include your alumni in your fundraising work! While your current members probably aren’t rolling in dough (welcome to college life) those who have graduated may be in a better financial position to support your fraternal organization. Consider asking your members to make personal phone calls to alumni asking for donations and sharing updates on what’s happening in the organization right now.
7. Building Expansion Or Improvement Campaign
We touched on this concept earlier when we talked about focusing on a specific ask: creating a fundraising campaign around adding to or improving your fraternities or sororities house is a wonderful and targeted way to bring in donations.
Alpha Gamma Delta ran a fundraiser to support updates to the house.
Especially if your chapter is growing and you need to expand your building, you can use your success to fuel your fundraising. Ask alumni, friends, family, and connections to help support your organization.
8. Founder’s Day
Here’s a fundraising idea that draws on tradition and will work for any sorrority or fraternity.
Especially if you currently celebrate the day that your organization was founded, a Founder’s Day fundraiser will go a long way. Identify the day that your organization came into being, and focus a fundraising campaign around it.
It can be particularly fun to play with numbers here: if your organization has been around for 50 years, ask folks to donate $50. Think about how you can connect to the past of your organization and incorporate it into your fundraising.
Best Practices For Fraternity and Sorority Fundraising
As a member or alum of Greek Life, this may be your first time dipping into the world of fundraising for your fraternity or sorority. That’s ok! There are some helpful tips and tricks that can help you be successful.
Plus, having the built-in structure of your sisters and brothers makes this a great place to start in your fundraising journey. Here are 5 of our best practices that will supercharge any sororities or fraternities fundraising campaign:
1. It’s Who You Know
One of the things that sets sorority and fraternity fundraising apart from other types of fundraising is that you have a built-in audience. Current members plus alumni are all motivated to support your organization. You can take advantage of this network by asking members and alums to become peer-to-peer fundraisers.
Peer-to-peer fundraising is an incredibly powerful form of fundraising because it relies on the networks of your supporters. It becomes exponentially more powerful as each fundraiser reaches out to their networks. Your members and alums can act as those fundraisers with very little effort on your part.
2. Tradition!
One of the hallmarks of Greek life is tradition. These are institutions that have existed for decades, if not centuries, in some cases. You’re proud to be a part of that tradition, and you can tap into traditions to help raise money.
Alumnae of Delta Sigma Theta tapped into the spirit of tradition for their Founders Day Challenge. They shared “ We want to continue the legacy of scholarship and public service established by our 22 founders, while continuing to meet the needs of our community.” They also relied on a tradition that had been around for over a hundred years: their Founders Day.
If you have a similar event or tradition that is a part of your chapter, consider adding a fundraising component. Your members and their networks will be familiar with it, and the sense of history will help the fundraiser to have gravitas and importance.
3. Be Specific
Some sororities and fraternities fundraising campaigns are simply to support their organization. They ask for donations, but those donations go into the general pot of operating funds, programs, and anything else the organization may need.
Those kinds of fundraisers aren’t bad, but it’s much more effective to be specific when you’re raising money.
If you need to update your chapter house, fund scholarships, or complete a particular project, a fundraiser that’s dedicated to raising those funds will be quite effective.
Sigma Alpha Epsilon at Western Kentucky University created a fundraising campaign dedicated to making adjustments to their house. They shared that they would be using the funds to make updates to deal with the pandemic, and to add a new roof. These specific and tangible details helped donors understand what they were giving to.
4. Competition
Who doesn’t love a bit of healthy competition? You know that the members of your chapter love each other, but also love games and competitions. You can use that love of competition to make your fundraisers even more effective. When you add in your alumni, that competition can grow even larger.
Run a peer-to-peer fundraiser and offer prizes for the top fundraisers. Maybe the winner gets first choice of bedrooms next year, or gets to choose the theme for your next mixer. Think about what things your members really care about and offer those as prizes. You’ll be surprised how fast they start bringing in dollars. You could also consider pitting graduating years against each other to bring in your alumni and offer something like the graduating year with the highest fundraising total gets to name a room in your updated building, or something of that sort
You could even partner with another fraternal organization to run a competition. Who wouldn’t love to see a frat vs. sorority fundraising showdown?
5. Information Is Power
Once you’ve created a fundraiser that you think will be effective, the best thing you can do is provide strategies and details to your chapter members.
Especially if you’re planning a peer-to-peer fundraiser, you want to arm your members and your alumni with all the tools they need to be successful fundraisers.
Our favorite way to do that is with a fundraising toolkit.
Check out our downloadable examples of top-notch peer-to-peer fundraising toolkits. Plus we have a customizable template that has all of the information, tools, and strategies your fundraisers need.
As a sorority or fraternity, you can even go one step further. Since your members are all located in the same place, you can have a meeting to train your members in fundraising.
Think about scheduling this during your weekly meetings where you check in with participants to see how their fundraising is going and answer any questions they may have. When you give them more information and show that you’re just as invested as they are, it helps to maximize everyone’s fundraising.
Power Up Your Sorority or Fraternity Fundraiser With CauseVox
CauseVox helps you raise more with less effort for any fundraiser your sorority or fraternity is running. We’ll help you:
- Launch a branded campaign with no IT person required
- Get your chapter members and alumni to fundraise with ease + seamlessly collect registration fees
- Get more donors with < 15-second donation forms + Apple/Google Pay options
- + more
Book a 1-1 Demo with our team to chat about how CauseVox can help you raise more for your chapter through your virtual fundraising event.
