Raising money for charity can be one of the most fulfilling things you do in your life. It can be of huge benefit, too, as even a few hundred pounds could make a considerable difference to a charity – I think we all know that a mosquito net for a child in Africa costs just five pounds, so if you managed to raise £500, that’s 100 mosquito nets you could buy to help save lives.

But as fulfilling as charity fundraising is, it can be extremely hard work. It doesn’t matter what scale it’s on or how much influence you have, it can take a tremendous amount of planning, preparation and organisation.

Take this year’s Children In Need event as an example. They managed to raise over £26 million on the night alone, but this involved a huge amount of hard work and months and months of planning.

Part of the reason CharityKick was setup was to actually assist with this aspect of charity fundraising. We know how great it can make you feel when you’re able to raise money for a charity, but we also know that not everyone has the time required to raise even a relatively minor sum of money.

By using charity dares, however, you really can take the hard work out of charity fundraising whilst still keeping all of the benefits – and these three points explain just how this is the case.

1. They can instantly involve your community

What’s the one thing that so many people struggle with when it comes to raising money for charity? It’s getting people interested.

The whole concept of charity dares allows you to get people involved in charity fundraising who otherwise wouldn’t. Although daring someone directly is a great way to do this, it’s not the only way you can get others involved.

For example, imagine you dared your local mayor to carry out a task for charity. As one of the most notable members of the community, they’ll essentially be able to get the town behind them – and even for a small town of a few thousand people, if they all pledged money to the charity dare, the final amount could be huge. Without backers, dares cannot come true or raise funds, this is why selecting the right person to dare and cause is key to starting a successful dare capable of involving a wider community than the one of the starter alone.

2. They allow you to reach a wider audience

When it comes to charity fundraising, getting people involved and interested initially is always a difficult hurdle to overcome – but it’s not the only hurdle and continually trying to attract new audiences to expand the reach of your event can be a continuous battle.

However, with the right charity dare, you could find that it very easily benefits from the snowball effect, with you able to see it grow by the day.

Take the above daring a town’s mayor as an example. Sure, it will attract the attention of the whole community, but it’s also extremely likely to catch the eye of the neighbouring town’s mayor too, in turn becoming prominent within their community. It could essentially be a never-ending spiral of increasing popularity.

And as the more popular the dare becomes, the more money that will be pledged, it means a charity could soon be in line for a potential donation of hundreds of thousands of pounds, all thanks to a well thought out dare.

3. They can be instantly – and indefinitely – memorable

You can raise money for a charity in a vast array of different ways. You could abseil down a mountain or jump out of a helicopter. You could have an eating contest or run a marathon. You could attempt to swim the English Channel or you could fly around the world in a hot air balloon.

All fantastic charity fundraising events, the one thing that links them together is that you as an individual have to do the work – and unfortunately, as a member of the general public, you’re unlikely to be able to attract enough media coverage to make the dare ever-lasting in people’s minds.

The ingenious thing about charity dares is that by daring the right person to do the right thing, you could create an event that proves to be one that’s never forgotten.

If you created a celebrity dare, for example, you could dare any celebrity to do anything and it’s going to gain publicity – but if you dared Johnny Depp to dress up as a clown for the day, however, the whole event becomes much more attractive as Depp is said to have a huge fear of clowns.

Therefore, the more people know this, the more money that will be pledged to the charity dare as people will not only want to see him overcome his fear, but they’ll want to see him doing so for a good cause.

But it’s important to note that memorable dares don’t just have to be on an international scale and the right local dare can have exactly the same impact.

Keeping on the mayor theme, take the fact that Rob Ford, the current mayor of Toronto, Canada has been seen using his phone whilst driving. Although he has apologised, he still upset the community – so imagine just how successful a charity dare could be if Ford was dared to not use his car AND his phone for one week. You can pretty much guarantee that the whole of Toronto would be pledging money!

And if you’re considering daring a business and looking for something memorable, that’s easy. Start thinking about the hero you could become for getting your own company’s C.E.O. to join your team’s yearly pizza eating contest, or to open the company karaoke night by singing Marilyn’s “Happy birthday Mr. President” for charity…

There’s plenty of inspiration around – you just need to look at what you feel would make people truly stop in their tracks.

Charity fundraising events are fantastic, but they so often require such a lot of hard work. We know that more and more people simply don’t have the time to dedicate to such events and it’s for this reason why charity dares can be such a good option – they really do take all of the hard work out of charity fundraising without affecting the end result.