Money hacks Six ways to raise funds for a community project

Whether it is sprucing up your local park's play area, adding solar panels to your children's primary school, setting up a community cafe or putting on an arts festival, keep the pitch - and the title - short and focused.

- Mabel Banfield-Nwachi

Nail your pitch

People will only get behind a project they can understand, and the pitch is one of the first opportunities you have to communicate your idea.

Misha Dhanak, the chief executive of Spacehive, a crowdfunding platform that specialises in community fundraising, says: "If you need to explain it twice, it's probably too vague or complicated."

Beyond explaining what the project is, why it matters and who will benefit, and giving an initial estimate of how much it will cost, try to tell a story.

"Rather than saying: 'We want to improve the local park, it's much more powerful to say: 'Local families want to turn an overgrown park into a space where children can learn about food and nature'. That way, you create a story, and a future that potential backers can really buy into and see themselves getting involved in," Dhanak says.

Build your crowd first Successful fundraisers do not usually start with strangers. Most early backers come from personal and local networks - friends, family, neighbours, parents at the school gate, and so on.

Once you have the support of your close circle, try sharing your idea in community WhatsApp groups and local Facebook pages.

The team you work with tends to come from this initial group, and people may have expertise, or want to offer to help. For Daniel Jones, the chair of Myddleton Road Community Benefit Society, his small "team of doers" was key to raising funds to turn a former bar/restaurant in Bowes Park, north London, into a community venue called The Hillbilly Social.

"You're going to face a lot of challenges, and you're going to need the right team of people...with a mix of skills," he says.