Donate for a cyclist

If you like to donate for a cyclist, please contact the person directly or its GBI Country Champion, who will give you more details about how to donate.

FUND RAISING ACTIVITIES

The participants of each GBI event are encouraged to support their local charities by raising as much funds as possible. For each event there are certain minimum funds to be raised prior to the tour. And many cyclists raise much more than the requested minimum.

We want to share some valuable fund raising activities with you in order to boost your donations next time.
Probably most often the participants pay the minimum donation by themselves, nothing more! But you can get much more donations, if you share your purpose with you friends, family and colleagues. Try to be a donation multiplicator! Most of your fellows will like the idea that you support those charity projects while cycling. And most likely people like to donate to an organisation someone well-known is engaged with, because they have a closer relationship to it. The experience shows that, if you do so year after year, the number of donators will increase steadily.
And if you know people, who are in the executive management of a company or even own a company, e.g. as freelancer, ask them for their contribution and explain them your purpose. Very often those people regularly donate a certain amount of money each year to charity organizations. You can make them feel good by supporting the Global Biking Initiative, and they even have a personal relationship.

After you have donators you have to nourish them. If they donate once, they will do it again next year, for sure. You only have to ask them.
The most important thing is to say thank you to them. This is self-evident, but you can do it in many ways. Here are some examples, which could have long-lasting memorization:

a foto of you (maybe at the GBI tour) with a personal thank you
a souvenir brought from the tour or reminding of some remarkable site/event of the tour (e.g. a bottle of french wine, original mustard from Düsseldorf, Ampelmännchen wine gum from Berlin, graved salmon from Norway, mussel shells, grabbed by you from the North Sea shore). It must not be an expensive gift, but it should be something special.
prepare your individual tour jersey with company logos and/or the names of your supporters and send your donators the photos of you wearing the jersey
keep them informed prior to and during the tour (e.g. using Facebook, Twitter or your own blog), you also could use these channels to promote their company while saying thank you and share this information
create a 'official donator certificate' and hand it over to them
companies are often interested in publishing their charitable activities on their websites or other media. Ask them whether you should write a short report with your experiences or stand by for an interview.
you could inform the local media (press, radio, local TV stations) about your project and try to promote your corporate donators or even find new ones.

To acquire new donators you have to spead your project as far as possible to friends, family and colleagues. Contact them personally or via individual mailing and describe what you are going to do and how it works. Inform them about the charity aspect and that all collected funds will go completely, i.e. without any administrative fee, directly to the supported charities. And don't forget to tell them about the tour itself.

You could also ask for a donation instead of a bithday or christman present or even offer self-made cookies or a breakfast with colleagues and ask for a voluntary (anonymous) donation (e.g. in a collection box).

There are so many thing you can do to get donations. You only have to do the first step!