How to Prepare for Diwali Fundraising
April 2025
Diwali — the Festival of Lights — is one of the most meaningful times for Hindu communities, celebrating light over darkness, renewal, and generosity. This shared spirit of giving also makes it an important fundraising period for temples, charities, or community initiatives.
Providing the right resources to support your community during this busy time is essential. With more people moving away from cash, digital donation solutions like Dona are becoming an invaluable tool for religious organisations. With a host of fundraising features, we make donating simple, secure, and accessible — whether by card, contactless, or QR code — helping Hindus give generously during this auspicious season.
Here’s a step-by-step guide to preparing your Diwali fundraising campaign, with both traditional event inspiration and modern digital tools.
1. Create Inspiring Fundraising Campaigns on Your Donation Terminals
Before you launch your campaigns, clarify what you are raising funds for and who your target audience is.
- Communicate your goals: Whether you’re raising money for temple maintenance, food distribution, or community education, explain clearly how the funds will make an impact. Donors are more likely to give when they understand exactly how their contribution helps.
- Create individual funds on your Dona donation machines and online giving page, to make it easy for your community to choose where their contributions will go this Diwali. Sharing a range of campaigns can inspire greater generosity, helping your supporters engage with your mission.
2. Plan Your Diwali-Themed Events
Events are a powerful way to engage your community, celebrate culture, and raise funds. Consider incorporating elements of Diwali traditions to make them meaningful:
- Host a Diwali fair: Include stalls with traditional music, dance, rangoli art, and cultural displays.
- Offer traditional foods: Sell samosas, ladoos, or festive sweets at your temple or through pre-orders.
- Create handcrafted items: Diyas or clay lamps, handmade jewellery, and gift hampers are popular festive purchases.
- Sell Diwali treats: Prepare boxes of sweets or dried fruit hampers for your community to share with friends and family.
- Host a performance: Organise a Diwali concert, dance showcase, or fireworks display, with ticket sales contributing to your fund.
- Position self-service digital donation kiosks around your site: make it as easy as possible for visitors to give as they shop, eat, watch performances and enjoy the celebrations.
3. Engage Your Community
Clear communication and great preparation can make a huge difference to how successful your fundraising events can be.
- Promote your campaigns: Use social media, WhatsApp groups, and temple newsletters to raise awareness. Include QR codes to your Dona online giving page for easy digital giving.
- Partner with local businesses: Ask for sponsorships, raffle prizes, or in-kind donations such as food or decorations. Share posters or leaflets to expand your reach and welcome the wider community to engage with your Diwali events.
- Involve volunteers: Encourage youth groups, community leaders, and families to help with crafting, setting up stalls, or sharing marketing content. There are so many ways to give, and people love to help in different ways.
- Keep supporters updated about your fundraising progress: Tools like Dona’s ‘Keep in Touch’ feature let you thank donors, share progress on your campaigns, and encourage future engagement and repeat giving.
4. Handle Logistics and Legalities
A well-organised campaign inspires confidence and maximises impact.
- Create a budget: Estimate expenses and projected income for each fundraising activity.
- Secure permits: Check with local authorities for any licences required for fairs, food stalls, or public events.
- Insurance: Consider coverage for liability or equipment, especially for large-scale gatherings.
- Prepare for the increase in visitors: To avoid queues and ensure everyone has a chance to access your fundraising devices, aim for 1 donation machine per 50 attendees. This avoids bottlenecks and ensures everyone can contribute conveniently.
5. Leverage the Spirit of Diwali
Celebrate the richness of Diwali and traditional Hindu heritage while empowering generosity:
- Decorate festively: Use bright colours, rangoli, marigold garlands, and diyas to create a welcoming atmosphere.
- Encourage traditional dress: Celebrate cultural heritage by inviting attendees to wear traditional outfits.
- Highlight your cause: Clearly display your fundraising goals, community initiatives and impact stories at your event and on your donation devices to help your visitors connect with your mission for the long-term.
- Blend tradition with technology: Use QR codes on posters, event tickets, and even sweet boxes so people can donate anytime, anywhere via your free donation webpage.
How Cashless Donation Solutions Are Empowering Temple Fundraising
With fewer people carrying cash, it’s essential that temples and Hindu centres empower their communities with contemporary ways to give.
By integrating one consistent digital giving system across your buildings, website and social media, a spirit of generosity can be celebrated and encouraged, while also enabling you to maximise Gift Aid collection and keep your followers informed easily.
- Inspire spontaneous giving and higher donations, even when people don’t carry cash.
- Maximise Gift Aid: after registering once, your donors’ future donations will automatically be collected with Gift Aid, increasing your donation income by 25%.
- Reduce admin for your team with easier Gift Aid declarations, HMRC reporting and future forecasting.
- Keep in touch with your followers.
- Safer, more secure donations without the risk of theft or loss that cash can bring.
- Free up time for your volunteers: Dona’s unattended donation kiosks enable donors to donate independently, without the need for a volunteer to programme or manage fundraising devices.
- Expand opportunities for both in-person and remote donations with a complete, integrated fundraising solution – joining up your online giving with your in-person card donations.
Successful Diwali fundraising is about balancing tradition with innovation. By creating clear fundraising campaigns, hosting inspiring community events, and providing cashless donation options, your temple or organisation can inspire greater generosity during this sacred time.
Whether through a ‘Light a Lamp’ campaign, handcrafted diya sales, or QR codes on festival posters, inspire your community to give with heart and help your cause shine brighter this Diwali.
When does Diwali take place this year?
This year, Diwali takes place on Monday 20th October 2025.
Amavasya Tithi – the day of the New Moon in the Hindu calendar – is starting from Monday October 20th at 03:44 pm, and ending on Tuesday October 21st at 05:54 pm.
Lakshmi – Goddess of fortune, prosperity and wealth – is the key deity worshipped during Diwali, which can also be called Deepavali or Deepawali. The Hindu festival of lights, is honoured in different ways by a range of Indian religions, including Jainism and Sikhism. Diwali symbolises the spiritual victory of Dharma over Adharma, light over darkness, good over evil, and knowledge over ignorance.
