10 Creative Fundraising Events for Your Nonprofit Organization

Adam J. Cheshier
5 min readAug 14, 2021

As you get started on the nonprofit journey, you’ll probably be scratching for creative fundraising event ideas. We know we were. Here, we have compiled a list of them to get your mind in the right place. However, feel free to put your own creative take on them!

Creative Fundraising Ideas for Your Nonprofit Organization

Here are some fun ideas for your organization:

1. Themed Pub Crawl

Ever host a pub crawl to raise funds for your organization? It can be a great way to have fun and raise money at the same time, but sometimes they grow old.

Instead, why not add a theme to it? Perhaps, turn it into the Olympics. Create teams or ‘countries’ and host different events. That’s just one idea, but we’re sure you can come up with something even more creative!

2. Costume Sporting Event

Hosting a sporting tournament is always an attractive fundraiser, especially for the sports-lovers of your community. But how about throwing a twist on it — a costumed event.

What do we mean? Why not host a superhero capture the flag contest to raise money? Or a famous character’s from Hollywood movies pool tournament.

Anything you can do to throw a twist on the norm will bring more attention to your fundraiser.

3. Gala

Gala’s may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but they’re a hell of a way to bring awareness and needed resources to your organization’s cause. But if you’re going to do it, make sure you do it right!

There’s usually a level of expectation at Gala’s that doesn’t exist at a number of these other fundraising events.

4. Clothes Drive

This may only be applicable way to raise awareness and resources for a handful of causes, however, it’s a great way to promote reduce of waste and resourcefulness. For example, maybe you can collect lightly worn old shoes or old…

Adam J. Cheshier

Documenting obscure pockets of the world across long-distance overland expeditions. Recently celebrated 7 years of nomadism. https://linktr.ee/adam.cheshier