Veterans organizations rely heavily on fundraising to provide essential services and resources to veterans in need. The best fundraising ideas for veterans organizations inspire action and generate crucial resources for veterans and their families.
Fundraising ideas come in many forms that bring military families and wider community members together for a shared cause. Be prepared to think outside the box and use every fundraising tool available to maximize the impact of your fundraising events.
1. Viral Challenges
Organizing a viral challenge is one of the best ways to spread awareness about your appeal. The greatest advantage social media offers nonprofits is the limitless possibilities to share your appeal and receive donations from people far outside of your network.
The key to a successful viral campaign will be your choice of challenge. Physical challenges like a push-up challenge or ruck marches are great choices, but skill-based challenges are also fun fundraising ideas. Why not try a building challenge with a military theme, a camouflage competition, or even creating artwork inspired by military history?
Your viral challenge should have a specific monetary target to motivate participants, an established start and end date, and clearly thought-out rules. You must also make it easy and safe to donate by offering various payment methods and using a fundraising platform with trusted payment processing capabilities.
How to Organize a Viral Challenge Efficiently
Organizing a viral challenge is easier than it seems. The key is to let a nonprofit fundraising platform do the heavy lifting for your campaign.
A leading nonprofit fundraising platform like Kindsight will offer your organization an extensive donor database to pinpoint potential donors before the challenge begins. AI-powered content creation tools with 80 prompts then help you create persuasive website content, social media posts, and email marketing campaigns up to 16 times faster so you can focus on physically preparing for the launch or your viral challenge.
The same software platforms can be used to power a crowdfunding campaign or to approach individual donors for large gifts. Utilizing the most up-to-date technology takes your fundraising efforts further.
How to Market a Viral Challenge Online
Try the following strategies to spread the word about your viral challenge online:
Leverage Social Media
Boost your viral challenge on social media using these tried-and-true strategies:
- Create a unique hashtag: Hashtags make it easy to track participation and share content.
- Use high-quality visuals: Create engaging videos and images to secure social media users’ attention.
- Encourage sharing & nominations: Encourage participants to share their videos and nominate others.
- Engage with participants: Respond to comments, share participants’ content, and show appreciation.
Partner with Influencers & Organizations
Contact influencers or other influential individuals who have a personal connection with the U.S. Armed Forces. This could be veterans or military families with a significant online following, other veterans organizations, or celebrities or businesses with a known connection to military or veterans’ issues.
2. Fitness Challenges
Fitness challenges are fun, healthy, and very relevant to veterans’ military service. Combining fundraising with physical and mental resilience is something that reflects military personnel’s fortitude.
Physically challenging events encourage participants to stretch their limits and demonstrate how far they can push themselves—qualities that are highly valued within the veteran community.
Fitness-based challenges underline the importance of teamwork and camaraderie. This mirrors the strong sense of unity and shared experience among veterans. They’re also engaging, inclusive, and easy to promote in your community.
Fun fitness events that are great for fundraising include:
- Short-distance runs: Short runs are a fitness event most people can take part in, even if they walk some of the way. Make it a fun run with a fancy dress theme and entertainment at the finish line to make your challenge a day-long event for the whole family.
- Long-distance cycling events: A more physically demanding challenge is a long-distance cycling event. Offer a live stream video to receive online donations during the event.
- Adaptive sports: Hold a sporting event designed around adaptive sports like wheelchair basketball or blind soccer. These events are fun while offering young people an important lesson about the sacrifices military personnel make and the great risks they take to serve their country.
3. Patriotic-Themed Events
Take advantage of the most patriotic times of the year like Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and the Fourth of July for fundraisers with extra meaning and impact. These could include:
- Parades or ceremonies: Partner with local communities to organize parades or ceremonies honoring veterans.
- BBQs or picnics: Sell tickets to family-friendly events with food, music, and activities to honor veterans in your area and raise awareness of veteran-specific issues like PTSD or homelessness among ex-military personnel.
- Concerts or performances: Feature patriotic music or performances by veteran artists or local artists with an affinity for veteran or military issues.
- Silent auctions or raffles: Charity auctions are great ways to raise funds from donated items or experiences. Selling raffle tickets for valuable prizes is also a tried and tested way to get involved for a relatively low price.
- Galas or dinners: Host formal events that include dinner, live entertainment, and speeches from prominent veterans or community leaders.
- “A Day in the Life” experience: Offer civilians a glimpse into military life through interactive exhibits, demonstrations, or simulations.
- Virtual Events: Utilize online platforms to host virtual concerts, auctions, or fundraising campaigns, expanding your reach to a wider audience.
4. Need-Specific Events
Create fundraising events that are specific to an issue veterans face, such as mental health problems, homelessness, or challenges finding employment post-service. The most effective fundraising ideas for military personnel will raise money while educating people about the challenges many veterans experience after returning to civilian life.
Mental Health
Raise funds specifically for mental health services for veterans, addressing issues like PTSD and depression. These types of events are invaluable for raising awareness about the mental health crisis among our veterans. Offering yoga or mindfulness classes with proceeds going toward veteran mental health initiatives is a great way to educate participants about mental health while helping the cause.
Housing and Homelessness
Create a fundraising event specifically geared toward providing housing assistance and support for homeless veterans. Sadly, it’s reported that 32,882 veterans experienced homelessness during January 2024. This statistic highlights how much work is required to help veterans adapt to civilian life, stay healthy, and make good use of the skills they learned in the military.
Volunteers could raise money to help with homelessness among veterans by spending a night sleeping rough and documenting their experience on social media or even via the local media. This experience would get people talking and focused on the widespread issue of veteran homelessness.
Job Training and Entrepreneurship
Organize corporate fundraising events together with local businesses to support initiatives focused on job training, employment opportunities, and support for veterans who want to start their own businesses. Many veterans struggle when adapting to civilian life and may not know where to start or how to showcase the skills they developed while in the military.
Corporate fundraising could come in the form of a fun outing like bowling or an in-house bake-off with a talk about post-service employment challenges and how your organization helps. Get the participants’ networks involved by inviting pledges (a popular peer-to-peer fundraising technique) tracked on a dedicated donation page, and report back after the event on how the funds raised were used to support veteran employment and entrepreneurship in your city.
Get Creative to Support Your Local Heroes
Supporting our veterans’ physical, mental, emotional, and financial needs is a continuous and vital task. These fundraising ideas offer a toolkit to serve those in our communities who have bravely served our country.
Creative events, engaging campaigns, and initiatives focused on specific issues will help ex-military personnel receive more of the resources and support they need and deserve. Be brave in your military fundraising campaign and use the most effective tools for maximum exposure and impact.