Before you can use easyfundraising properly, you need to understand the idea behind it — because once it clicks, you will wonder why everyone is not doing this.
Here is a question. If someone you knew was going to buy their weekly shopping from Tesco anyway, would you want them to do it in a way that also raised money for your trip — at absolutely no extra cost to them?
Of course you would. And that is exactly what easyfundraising makes possible.
easyfundraising is a free platform that works with over 8,000 UK retailers. When someone shops through easyfundraising — whether it is Tesco, Amazon, TUI, or hundreds of others — the retailer donates a small percentage of the purchase value to your fundraising cause. The shopper pays exactly the same price they would have paid anyway. Not a penny more.
Here is where most people get this wrong. They think easyfundraising is about their own shopping. They sign up, do a couple of shops themselves, raise a few pounds, and then forget about it.
That is not how to use this properly.
The real power of easyfundraising is your adult network. Think about the adults in your life — parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, family friends, neighbours. Every single one of them shops online. Every single one of them buys insurance, books holidays, and does their weekly grocery shop.
If you can get just 10 of those adults to use easyfundraising every time they shop, you could raise hundreds of pounds per year — completely passively, while you get on with everything else.
Let's look at what easyfundraising can actually earn. These are real cashback rates from real retailers on the platform:
Add those up across a year for one engaged supporter and you are looking at £75–£100 per person, per year. Multiply that by 10 supporters and you have a very significant sum — raised without anyone spending a single extra penny.
Most fundraising requires effort every single time — organising a bake sale, running a sponsored event, sending letters. Those are all great, but they take time and energy.
easyfundraising is different. Once you have set it up and got your supporters on board, it works in the background. Your supporters go about their normal lives — shopping, booking holidays, renewing insurance — and money trickles into your fundraising pot without anyone having to do anything extra.
The fundraisers who truly understand this are raising hundreds and hundreds of pounds through the platform. Not because they are lucky — but because they took the time to set it up properly and explain it clearly to their supporters.
That is exactly what this course teaches you to do.
In the next lesson, you will set up your easyfundraising account — and you will learn why the name you give your cause is more important than you might think. Get this right and you will be connected to the right support team for your specific trip. Get it wrong and you might miss out.
It takes about ten minutes and you will have a working account by the end of it.