How to Create a Fundraising Flyer for Your Fundraising Event

Are you planning an event fundraiser? How do you plan to promote it? A fundraising flyer offers the ideal promotional tool for this task. Think about how many great flyers you’ve received in the past from businesses and other nonprofits inviting you to attend an event or capitalize on a promotion. 

Companies and organizations use flyer distribution campaigns because they work. It’s a tried-and-tested marketing strategy that delivers results. With the right design and distribution, a fundraising flyer drives community engagement and attracts donors to your fundraiser, helping you achieve your nonprofit goals. 

Flier fundraiser campaigns offer nonprofits tools to optimize the success of their revenue goals. These community-focused campaigns are ideal for all types of fundraising campaigns and are one of the fundraising essentials every nonprofit marketer needs to include in their strategy toolkit. Flyers are great, engaging fundraising tools designed to attract attention and boost the success of your community outreach.

Fundraising flyers are a versatile strategy compatible with all types of nonprofit events. They attract more attention to your events, improving your organization's outcomes. They work for any nonprofit organization, from churches to food banks. 

It’s one of the top methods for stirring awareness of your nonprofit in the community and letting people know about your organization and activities. Flier fundraiser campaigns offer your nonprofit a physical and online marketing tool that's easy to design and offers a great return on investment for your marketing budget.

If you have an upcoming event like a silent auction or summer carnival, flyers give you a chance to attract more attendees and encourage people to make a donation to your nonprofit organization. With the rise of social media and its widespread use, the limitation of flyer distribution to physical locations goes out the window. Now, you can create digital flyers and get even more reach for your fundraising and awareness campaigns for your organization. 

Fundraising flyers are one of the oldest marketing techniques in the book, and they’re still relevant in the modern era of event marketing. Give it a try, and you might find that this strategy provides results far beyond your expectations. Whether it’s a digital or physical campaign or a combination of both, fundraising flyers drive more awareness and bolster the annual fundraising revenues for your organization.

This post covers everything you need to know about fundraising flyers. We’ll discuss effective design tips, distribution, and follow-up to ensure your next fundraising event is a resounding success. 

Understanding Your Audience and Setting Campaign Goals

What is the goal of your fundraising event? Do you want people to donate to your organization and cause? Are you building awareness of your nonprofit and its mission? Your fundraising flyer should clearly state what you want to achieve from the event. 

Think of your flyer as a way to speak to your audience and convey your message. It should act as a medium that sets an impression on your audience. Make a clear statement of intent with your fundraising flyer, and use it to communicate with your target audience. 

The fundraiser flyer is a tool in your organization's marketing arsenal that helps you achieve your fundraising goals. Use it to make your event vision a reality and show your audience what your organization intends to offer at the event and how they can participate. 

Start by conducting audience analysis using that data to design a fundraising flyer that adds value to your campaign. 

Audience Analysis and Organization Goal Setting for Your Fundraiser

Your audience analysis is the cornerstone of planning your campaign. It should include SMART goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. What do you want to achieve in terms of foot traffic to your event? How much revenue do you expect to collect for your organization? What will the event do to spread awareness?

These goals are vital to measuring the success during and after the event. They should make it easy for you to track the progress of your campaign in the weeks leading up to the event and include metrics specific to your outcomes. 

Your goals provide the framework you need to make setting realistic fundraising objectives easier and provide a clear path to the tasks you need to set to achieve them. Campaign goal setting is critical to your marketing plan, providing clear direction on what strategies you need to implement. 

After completing your goal-setting tasks, it’s time to dive into the target demographic analysis of the audience you want to capture. Your donor's demographics are central to your organization's marketing strategy. Donor demographics include their age, gender, income, ethnicity, education, and marital status. These demographics give you an impression of how to cater to the market to optimize engagement with your campaign and yield the best results possible at your event. It forms a donor profile, and that information will make it easier to draft a great flyer.

Next, consider your donors' motivations. When targeting potential donors, you must consider existing and prospective donors. Different strategies are used for each, and you’ll need to know how to approach them if you want your fundraising flyers to appeal to both segments. Great marketing campaigns require a thorough analysis to achieve the best results for your organization. 

When you understand your audience, you’ll find it easier to create great design elements in your flyer that resonate with your donors and prospects. Your marketing plan should include every aspect of your donor profile and use that information to design a flyer that speaks to them. The donor profile acts as your guide and forms the backbone of the flyer design campaign, which we’ll go over in a minute. 

But before we start with how to design a great flyer that spreads awareness of your event and gets more people through the gate, you need to consider your goals and how the flyer helps you achieve them. Without undertaking this basic first step of goal setting and building a donor profile, your flyer campaign has no direction, which shows in the results you achieve with your event. 

Make Your Fundraising Flyer: A Step-by-Step Design Guide

Effective flyer design involves understanding the fundamental elements of design theory. Start by looking online for examples of flyer designs for your nonprofit event. There are dozens of flyer designs to sort through. You don’t need to be totally original with your design concept; leverage other people's designs that offer successful results. 

Sure, you’ll need to change the design elements for your flyer to make them unique to your organization and event. However, use proven concepts in the overarching flyer design to guarantee a better success ratio. 

Use a platform like Canva to design your flyer. It has easy drag-and-drop features that make it easy to create a flyer. You can choose custom color schemes and text to make your flyer design pop. 

If you’re not creative and you don't have a design specialist on your team, consider hiring a design professional from a site like Fiverr. Thousands of design professionals on the site are willing to help with your project for an affordable price. 

Let’s go over the design principles to include in your flyer.

Key Design Principles to Include in Fundraising Flyer Design

Step #1 - The Layout

The layout determines the space you have for text and images on the flyer. There are four proven techniques for effective flyer design.

Classic Poster - This design is about the size of an A5 piece of paper. It’s a versatile format and suits physical and digital flyers. 

Mailer-Style - This flyer is a good choice for digital flyers, offering an easy download for your email or social media recipients. It’s also a good choice for direct-mailer campaigns where you want to spread awareness. 

Unique Shapes—Flyers don't always need to conform to the classic rectangular or square shape. Using unique shapes can help emphasize the message of your flyer. For instance, a heart-shaped flyer is a great way to promote a Valentine's Dance fundraiser. 

Step #2 - Color Theory

The color of the flyer matters. Use proven color schemes that capture attention. If people see you handing out flyers on the corner or scrolling through social media posts, the color is what draws the eyeballs first. They might not see the text or imagery, but their brain recognizes the color. Bright yellow contrasted with red is a real eyeball puller. Research color schemes and see what works best for your event theme. For instance, if it’s a spring festival, bright green colors contrasted with black font create color schemes that capture attention. 

Step #3 - Typography

Text and typography are critical design components. Don’t use archaic fonts like cursive in your flyer design. Readers need to pick up what you’re trying to promote as soon as they lay eyes on the flyer. Complex font choices don't work; they just confuse the reader. Use bold elements and underlining when you want to accentuate words or CTAs that form the crux of the message you’re trying to deliver to the reader. 

Try to convey your message to the reader in as few words as possible. Remember, the real estate available on your flyer is limited, so use it wisely. Don’t include anything that is not relevant to the event or the goals you want to achieve. 

Step #4 - Design Aesthetics

The design aesthetics of your flyer should match your branding, your message, and the event theme. Overall, you’re looking to use the flyer to promote an event, so that's the key design aesthetic to follow. Going back to our Valentine's Day dance theme, would it make sense to use green colors and images of trees? Obviously not. Your design aesthetic should create an emotion of love and romance, not inspire people to think of the environment.

Incorporating Visuals & Branding for Nonprofit Flyer Design

Images speak a thousand words. We’ve all heard that saying, and it rings true, especially with flyer design. Using high-quality images and consistent branding are vital in impactful flyer design. Think of it as a visual storytelling exercise where you use images to inspire emotions and get your message across, complementing the text you create.

Step #5 - Imagery 

Compelling imagery adds to the text in your flyer design. It creates a value-added design element that brings the entire design together. Sure, we’ve all seen flyers that only contain text, but how did that make you feel when you looked at the flyer? Our minds naturally gravitate to imagery, so use it to your advantage. For instance, right now, don't think of a pink elephant. We bet you instantly thought of a pink elephant, even if you tried to resist it. Play on this psychology and use imagery to your advantage. 

Step #6 - Brand Identity

Logo placement is critical in your flyer design. It not only spreads awareness of your organization, but it positions your organization in the mind of the reader as the host of the event, connecting your nonprofit to the flyer content and the event. Branding in nonprofit materials and 

brand consistency in flyers is vital to ensuring your audience knows who’s hosting the event and what to expect from the day.

Writing Compelling Content for Your Fundraising Flyer

The content is the design element delivering the message to your audience. Great fundraising flyer design includes a balance of text and images, with other design elements like QR codes to make a holistic impression on the audience. Let’s unpack the content strategy for your flyer design to ensure you use the right text and images to capture attention and improve conversion for your organization. 

Crafting Your Message for Your Fundraiser & Flyer Design

Your fundraising flyer must effectively convey the message with limited text and images. Since there is only so much space on the flyer, it’s important to consider the language you use and how it affects your audience's emotional heartstrings. If you don't get it right, the flyer may end up in the trash instead of on the door of your target donor’s fridge. 

The flyer is a storytelling tool providing emotional appeal to your audience to ensure they consider attending your fundraising event. As mentioned, you only have so much space for images and text on the flyer, so use it wisely. The flyer must present a unique value proposition to the audience, convincing them to attend your fundraiser. You’ll make a bigger impact on the reader by using emotional language to achieve this goal. 

Some of the words to consider when drafting the text for your flyer include those that inspire emotions like joy, love, and surprise. Love words might include those that build passion and a sense of caring in the reader. Surprise words include those that make the reader feel moved, touched, and awe-struck. Joy words include those that create emotions of happiness, affection, excitement, and delight. 

The images you use on your flyer must also convey these emotions to the audience. Images are powerful tools, and every fundraising flyer must include image elements to optimize its success. 

Images can include your organization's brand identity, such as your logo. However, you should also include images relevant to your event. For instance, if it’s a Valentine's Day fundraiser, images of hearts and Cupid stringing his bow and arrow are good choices. 

Images and text require careful consideration, so it’s a good idea to experiment with several flyer designs to see which resonates most with your target audience. 

Effective Calls-to-Action for Top Engagement Rates

The text in your flyer design must include a “call to action” (CTA), inspiring your audience to take action and commit to attending your event. Persuasive copywriting involves creating text that drives action through urgency creation. Crafting compelling CTAs is an art form unto itself, and researching what CTAs work for other nonprofits is a good place to start when drafting your CTAs.

CTAs create donor incentives that drive engaging narratives and capture attention while motivating potential donors to attend the event and contribute to your cause. The images and text in your flyer and the careful use and placement of CTAs boost engagement with your flyer and the likelihood that you’ll reach your event goals. 

Innovative Distribution Strategies and Effective Follow-Up for Fundraising Flyer Campaigns

Maximizing Reach Through Strategic Distribution of Fundraising Flyers

Let’s get into the nitty-gritty of the distribution campaign. You could have the best flyer design ever, but if your distribution fails, your campaign fails, and fewer people will walk through the gates of your fundraising event. 

The distribution campaign has two strategies - physical distribution at locations around your town or city and online distribution. Both serve important purposes. While many nonprofits focus on the social media side of the campaign, don’t discount the importance of the physical distribution drive. The physical strategy piques more interest when people see your social post and then a representation of the flyer in the real world. 

To start your physical distribution campaign, round up volunteers who are ready to commit their time to get out into locations to hand out the flyers. These individuals should be motivated to spread the word; you don't want them tossing the flyers in a bin or lowering your distribution rate. When you have your team ready to go, send them out into the world to spread the word.

Some of the top destinations to hand out your flyers include event distributions at churches after services, in mall parking lots, busy streets, and posting them on community bulletin boards.

Online distribution strategies for your fundraising flyers will bolster your distribution success. Social media is the key focus of your distribution because it drives better engagement than the physical strategy. You get access to a bigger audience and the people you miss in your physical campaign when you're out in the community. Social media also provides an opportunity to monitor the statistics and data of the campaign's success in real time, giving you immediate feedback on its progress. 

The Importance of Follow-Up for Your Fundraising Flyer Campaign

The goal with your flyer design is sustaining donor interest and engagement, pushing them to take action on your request that they attend your event. Using a QR code in your flyer design is a great way to achieve this for the physical distribution side of the campaign. The readers scan the code, and your online nonprofit management platform, like PayBee, captures this information. This strategy allows you to continue the follow-up process online through push notifications to the prospect's device. 

Online distribution campaigns offer far more follow-up opportunities and strategies. Your social media engagement strategy should involve replying to comments and everyone who likes your post. These tasks build momentum, and the platform algorithm will actively promote your flyer.

After the reader engages with the campaign. Your email distribution campaign to your list should include email follow-ups using a drip campaign to remind the prospect of the upcoming event continually and why you need their support. Feedback collection is critical to success. Treat every piece of feedback, whether it's an email response, a comment or like on social media, or a direct message, as an opportunity to get more feet through the gates at your event. Engagement is the cornerstone of managing the post-distribution process; don’t slip up with it and fail to capitalize on the engagement you generate. 

Plan your outreach strategies with your team and ensure someone is ready to reply to social media engagement to expand your nonprofit's reach into the target audience. Effective engagement techniques are only as good as your ability to execute them.

Conclusion: Bringing It All Together for Fundraising Success

Designing a flyer isn't rocket science. Using the concepts discussed in this post, create a flyer design that pops, with plenty of use of color, without it being distracting. You want your flyer to catch people's attention but not confuse them. 

Using the right font size and bolding specific keywords in the text is critical to getting your message across as fast as possible. The prospect should form a basic idea of your fundraising event and its goal within the first few seconds of looking at it. The brain is hardwired to recognize some colors over others. That’s why McDonald's uses yellow and red in its logo design. These colors attract the attention of readers and make the logo more recognizable and appealing.

Have fun with your flyer design and play around with ideas. Chances are you won’t create the perfect flyer on the first try, but you can use your online flyer design platform, such as Canva, to create at least five renditions of it. Get a “focus group” of volunteers to decide on the top three designs and then promote the three on social media. Monitor your analytics to see which flyer design gets the most engagement from your target audience in the first week of release. Then, cut away the other design posts and focus on promoting the top-performing flyer. 

Key takeaways for successful flyers is not to marry yourself to any specific design; what you think might perform might not be what your target audience finds engaging. The flyer's goal is to get people to your event and inspire nonprofit growth. Your flyer should inspire positive donor relations and compel them to visit your fundraising event. 

Plan an effective flyer distribution campaign and use motivated volunteers. Remember the importance of promoting it online. Your flyer campaign will yield amazing results with the right design and distribution strategy. 

How to Create a Fundraising Flyer for Your Fundraising Event - FAQ's

Q: What essential information should be included in a nonprofit fundraising flyer?

A: Essential information to include in your flyer design includes the date, day, and time of your event. Ensure the design theme matches your event, and use bright, bold colors to catch the eye of readers. Ensure you use large, bold font to promote the key info you want to pass on to the prospect. The secondary information can be in smaller, less defined font.  

Q: How can I distribute fundraising flyers to maximize their impact?

A: With regard to physical flyer distribution, get your volunteers to hit the streets in a flyer distribution campaign on the weekends. Start three weeks out of your event date and target places like parking lots at malls (although you may need to get permission from the mall operator to do this, and they likely won’t let you do it in the mall, which is why the parking lot is a better choice). Other locations involve posting the flyer on local message boards or collaborating with local business owners to leave your flyers in their store and hand them out to customers, especially those who leave tips for services - these are prime prospects for your event.

Q: Can fundraising flyers be distributed digitally, and how?

A: Yes. You can create online flyer designs through design sites like Canva and download them to your workstation. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and X make ideal mediums for reaching wider audiences and spreading awareness of your fundraiser. Remember to work on your captions. Include a call to action (CTA) that spurs your readers to take action and engage with your post. 

Q: What are cost-effective ways to produce fundraising flyers?

A: Partnering with printing firms is a great way to reduce the costs involved with producing your flyers. Make a list of printing companies in your area and ask if they offer discounts for nonprofits. Some companies might offer preferred rates to nonprofits because they claim tax breaks relating to their corporate social responsibility commitments for the tax year. You can also reduce costs surrounding the design of the flyer by using free software tools like Canva to design the flyer in-house. 

Q: Are there any legal considerations for nonprofit fundraising flyers?

A: When marketing your fundraising flyers online, nonprofits must comply with the communications laws surrounding solicitation. These rules include the CAN Spam Act and the basic principles regarding data privacy and protection adherence. Organizations must also follow state regulations surrounding fundraising for charitable organizations.

‍