“If you don’t do this now, you will never…”

I said these words to myself before signing up for a 100km race in the UAE. Soon after making this commitment I decided I’d use this opportunity to fundraise for my favorite charity. Full of optimism and excitement, I searched google for an online fundraising platform in the Middle East that would allow me to collect donations in the UAE. YallaGive was the top search result, and so began my fundraising journey!

Getting Started with YallaGive

As a newcomer to the world of charity, I needed a user-friendly platform that would make the whole fundraising process quick and easy. Luckily, creating a profile on YallaGive was simple and efficient. Setting up a personalized fundraising page took less than five minutes, and the platform even allows users to sign up using either a Google, Facebook or email account. All that’s required is to then select a good cause, write a short description of the goal, and illustrate the campaign with photos and videos. To fundraise for an approved charity, the charity will then approve your campaign page. And so, before I could finish a mug of coffee, I had created a YallaGive online fundraising campaign and I was ready to tell the world!

The Ups and Downs of Fundraising

With my YallaGive profile live and my marathon training underway, I set about sharing my goals with my friends, family, and social media network. Initially, I chased the low hanging fruit; sending direct messages to loved ones inviting them to support. Of course, they responded positively and gave willingly and generously to my campaign. However, after an initial flurry of contributions, my fundraising efforts soon slowed down. Far from reaching my fundraising target and with new donations reducing quickly, I started to ask myself “how am I ever going to hit my fundraising target? ;

Fundraising with a Strategy

Through this experience, I learned the importance of developing meaningful and inspiring communications to engage with both current and potential donors. Simply asking for a direct donation is not going to persuade anyone to hit that donation button (except perhaps your wife or husband). From this moment forward I began communicating with my target audience

consistently, sharing updates about my fitness, charity, activities and even posting photos of each training session.

Using your Social Network

I decided to also interact with my social network frequently by sharing good news, bad news and everything in between; ensuring everyone was kept up to date with my goal. Slowly but surely, with every campaign update I posted, new donations arrived. I discovered that building familiarity and trust, in addition to demonstrating the effort and passion you’re dedicating to the campaign will ultimately have a far greater impact on your audience and their decision to support you.

Getting the most out of the YallaGive Platform

What I liked most about the YallaGive fundraising experience was the ease of use. To simplify the entire fundraising process YallaGive has kept the user in mind at every step of the journey. The innovative dashboard allows you to view and monitor every aspect of your fundraising campaign, letting users to track donations, start discussions, respond to comments and even share campaigns across many digital channels. The platform has clearly been designed to offer the user the greatest potential for fundraising potential; so be sure to utilize its full capabilities for maximum success in your campaign.

What Donors like about YallaGive

The YallaGive platform also allows donors to give with ease and confidence. Donors seem to like the fact that giving isn’t a direct debit commitment. They also appreciate that they are in control of when they give and how much they give. Most importantly they love that it’s new, different and exciting. Donations can be made using credit and debit cards, in addition to many different cryptocurrencies too. Donors can view your campaign page on a laptop, tablet or mobile, and even message campaign owners directly with questions, comments or words of encouragement.

The Outcome of my First YallaGive Campaign

My first experience as a fundraiser with YallaGive was truly humbling. It feels great knowing that your campaign is creating positive change in the world and that a charity will benefit as a result of your actions. You may be wondering about the outcome of my efforts; well after a few months of fundraising, I exceeded my campaign target collecting more than 3,000 AED for Emirates Nature-WWF. As for the 100km endurance race in the UAE, following 21 hours of running, hiking and walking, I completed 86km of the race before happily retiring early for a hot meal and some well-earned rest.