From physical flyers to email blasts, be sure to instruct donors that by sending out a special text keyword to a specific number, they will be directed to a mobile-friendly online donation page. It takes 90 seconds to respond to a text, versus 90 minutes by e-mail. Some make a distinction between text-to-give and text-to-donate, believing that in a text-to-give process after supporters text a keyword to a shortcode, the donation amount is added to the supporters phone bill. Collect Donations. Create your signature and click Ok. Press Done. These campaigns provide critical funding for your institution and you can't afford to invest time and money into campaigns that might not work. 2. The goal remains to give each business at least $2,000. Claudia went on to be the top reader and got the most donations during her schools Read-A-Thon. Youll also want to find ways to excite students with the prizes and class competitions. This increases security by reducing the chances of breaches. The activity can be almost anything, from reading to running to bowling. Profit: Medium. ", so let's settle that now: 99Pledges is Free. From tracking key fundraising metrics to providing robust online marketing tools, Read-A-Thon has everything you need to dive into your most successful online fundraising program while still remaining extremely easy to use. So creating an event team of organizers is vital to the success of your walk-a-thon fundraiser. Text donors are most likely to be between 49 and 59 years old, female, married, and college graduates. Your first (and most important) step is to head to the Read-A-Thon platform and create your free account. Also, remember to store donors information in your donor management system and use it to strengthen relationships with these supporters in the future. We make it super easy on you (as the coordinator), your students/parents, and your donors. Click Home and then Create a Write-athon from your home page. We can help you prepare. Join 5,000+ schools around the world using Read-A-Thon. Read-a-thons are an excellent way to encourage kids to read and raise funds for your organization. Also, see below to get specific ideas from a few of the schools we've worked with. What contests will your read-a-thon include? Have your kids read instead of selling fundraising products! Nonprofits and schools support the students efforts with free books, free reading time in school, classroom contests, and prizes. Math-a-thon: Students receive a math worksheet at home based on their grade level and count how many math problems were solved correctly. Use our five-digit short code, 44321 (only on U.S. phone carriers), at no cost to your nonprofit. Like the first, the season stars Brunson, Tyler James Williams, Janelle James, Lisa Ann Walter, Chris Perfetti, William Stanford Davis and Sheryl Lee Ralph. Other, more complicated online fundraising platforms require upfront technical knowledge and extensive configuration. Here are some of our fav fundraising ideas to get those creative juices flowing. Remember to not stretch it too long, or else kids will lose interest. Sign up for free today! This has, however, been solved by modern-day text-to-give providers. You can never go wrong with a Read-a-thon fundraiser. Check out this example here. Launch fundraising campaigns in minutes with beautiful, customizable and responsive donation pages. In what ways can my nonprofit use Text-to-Donate? Set up a fundraising page with text, images and videos for your Text-to-Donate campaign. Inspire donors to give by tracking and presenting contributions in real time. And surprisingly, the typical text-to-give user is actually a woman between 49-59 years old who has a college degree. The Best Fundraising Ideas Idea # 8 A-Thon-a-thon There are several ways to do an a-thon-athon, but the easiest way is to give supporters a series of tasks that they have to do in quick succession, like a triathalon (biking, swimming, and running.) We help you make it hassle-free for them with an easy & secure online donation while they sit in the comfort of their home (Oh, and by the way.. our records show supporters donate 25% more through an online donation as opposed to cash/check). Remember me . Laura Magone, president of the Monongahela Area Historical Society, said $981 was presented to each of the merchants Feb. 24. Then, they followed up with a Quarantine Read-a-thon to support their city's local economy. Public schools around the country have struggled to address this issue due to financial difficulties. After donating, they will automatically receive a thank you note and receipt (if you are a 501c3 nonprofit organization, you can include Tax ID in the receipt). Text-to-give doesnt naturally facilitate building deeper relationships with donors, making it more difficult to retain supporters through this channel than others. First, seek out a crowdfunding platform or use your own crowdfunding website. Decide on what kind of signature to create. The customized shortcode that your donors will use to donate and the numbers they text it to should be short and easy to remember. This will vary from one service provider to another. Challenges: Run/Walk/Bike, Jump Rope, Dance Tutorials, Kids Workout, & more. What kind of statement or impact do you wish to make on your local community? Purchasing any sort of fundraising software can be a significant investment for your nonprofit. Help your supporters give on the go, directly from their mobile devices. While this fundraising type can be a bit trickier and require some research, crowdfunding has the potential to bring in massive amounts of revenue for your school! Via email, text, or other means, keep a tight circle of communication for duties and delegate responsibilities to the appropriate team members. Download your adjusted document, export it to the cloud, print it from the editor, or share it with other people . Soon enough, you'll be making a profit while also encouraging school pride across your local community. You no longer need to spend days or even weeks coordinating faculty, staff, and volunteers and allocating precious school funds to host your next fundraiser. Thank you for making this the easiest and most successful fundraiser we've had! Parents Love not having to sell or deliver items. The kids can then promote their pages and collect donations. This has been used to help provide funding for fun events such as the end of . Campaign organizers or individual participants can enter activity results into the PTFundraiser system at any point during or after the fundraiser. Organizers. They dont have to write and mail a check. Unlike a fun run or a 5K fundraiser, you don't need to map out a racecourse or organize volunteers to man your event. To ensure the success of your school's future fundraising, you need to have a strong grasp of the steps and best practices for organizing your own online school fundraising program. Our platform has made this possible for schools, sports leagues/teams, music groups & more in all 50 states in the US. You can also hand out physical data forms to track reading progress. What kind of aid (ex: volunteers, investment funds) do you need and have available to you? The donor will have a defined amount added to their mobile cell phone bill. Put together a social media and marketing plan to promote your campaign. With minimal effort and setup needed from the school itself, read-a-thons simply require that sponsors donate money to your school for every increment (every 30 minutes, for example) that a student reads. Peer-to-peer and team fundraisers Explore popular topics GIVE LIVELY MEMBER NONPROFITS Start fundraising Manage your Give Lively account Integrate with Salesforce Set up and use Stripe Manage donors DONORS Support your cause Manage your donation FUNDRAISERS AND TEAM LEADERS Learn to fundraise CHARITY NAVIGATOR'S GIVING BASKET Grade level: Elementary school, middle school, high school. Edit Hit a thon fundraiser template. - In the past year, mobile giving donations have increased by 205%. Get unlimited creative control with PTFundraiser in your corner. Click on that and your file will appear in the editing area. Everything was very easy to navigate. It applies the a-thon fundraising formula to the concept of a canned food drive. These are just examples to get you started. To begin selling your own custom merchandise, create an online store on your school website. A small thumbnail of your template will appear. Wilson High School students took a page out of Penn State's playbook and danced to help fight childhood cancer. If your nonprofits work with cellular companies to run the text-to-give campaigns, the cellular companies will transfer the funds to the nonprofit once donors pay their phone bills, which means the money might take 30 to 60 days to reach them. There's no cash to handle or products to sell! The learning curve is low, so donors can give without much hassle. RAT is a no brainer when it comes to fundraising. Depending on all this, you have to come up with a fundraising goal. Part booster-thon and part book fair, library fundraisers encourage students to collect online donations for their school or local libraries and in turn gain access to virtual books of their choice. Baker PTA earns a percentage of sales from Scholastic, our book fair vendor. Start collecting pledges. Create as many unique text codes as needed for all your campaigns, events and more. As a nonprofit professional she has specialized in fundraising, marketing, event planning, volunteer management, and board development. Q: How are the daily book prizes paid for? The first group you should address is your board. Thank you so much! Create a code Create your own text codes that are catchy and easy to remember, like "EQUALITY", "GIVENOW" etc. Before starting your read-a-thon campaign, youll need to finalize the following details: Now you have all the details for your read-a-thon fundraiser. Text-to-Give Fundraising Statistics According to Nonprofits Source, these are essential text-to-give statistics: - 1 in 4 donors use mobile devices to discover nonprofits they were previously unaware of. This way, readers can give as soon as they read your letter or e-newsletter. Parents consistently worry about whether their children read enough. Speaking of educational fundraising, library fundraisers are another great way to support a love of learning while bringing in critical funds for your school. Customize your mobile-responsive donation pages with logos, fields, and gift amounts. Thank you!! If you decide to plan this event yourself, here are some tips . Read-A-Thon charges nothing to your institution upfront. At the end of the contest, reward the winners and let all kids have a pizza party to honor the hard work of every student involved. Read-A-Thon is a literacy based fundraiser that helps schools and groups raise more money than any other fundraiser with minimal effort involved. Say goodbye to raffles and bake sales! Your read-a-thon is finished and kids and parents helped you fundraise. In case youve opted for a more traditional text-to-give vendor, theres usually a $5-$10 caps on all donations. Promote the event. Heres a glimpse of how its interface works intuitively for you: And, heres an example of how conveniently your donors can give via text: Keywords are the words donors text to donate. Shes passionate about meaningful work, sustainability, and social movements. Easily add and highlight text, insert pictures, checkmarks, and icons, drop new fillable areas, and rearrange or remove pages from your paperwork. Finally, encourage students, parents, and your supporters to share this page across the internet. This information is then easily exported into your donor database. Thank-a-thon calls should be short, but that doesn't mean you should ignore the donors' responses. No matter what activity you choose, the premise is the same. You can share this picture on social media, in the local press, and in the organizational newsletter that goes out to all supporters. Additionally, these widgets also offer tips for students to find and attract sponsors, allowing them to funnel attention to their fundraising webpage and expand your network of supporters. Whether you're choosing to host a walk-a-thon, a hit-a-thon, or (our favorite!) To begin organizing a read-a-thon fundraiser, you should review your options with your organization. Auctions are a popular and highly lucrative type of fundraiser, and now modern auction software has made it possible to not only make your next auction completely virtual, but also mobile-friendly!Online auctions work in much the same way as a regular auctionexcluding the cost of a venue and catering. 2. If your text-to-give provider is PCI-compliant, the software should be secure. A: Your support of our twice annual Book Fairs pays for all of the book prizes. Create an online fundraising page for this fundraiser and let all kids, teachers (if applicable), and parents know about it. It is the simplicity of this fundraising method that makes it a successful fundraising method and popular among nonprofits and donors. Give Lively does capture and securely store some non-payment data about donors, for instance a donors first and last names, email address and donation date, among other data points. Since youll have a lot of kids collecting pledges and donations from people, it is advisable to turn your crowdfunding campaign into a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign. Revolutionizing fundraiser for teams and groups. Here is how you can sign-up and get started! The GiveSmart subscription gives you the freedom to add a variety of fundraising elements to any of your events and campaigns, all powered by online fundraising. It started . Since its inception in 1998, Penn State Fayette students have raised $1,617,050 for THON. They can choose easy per-unit pledge or make a flat donation. Everything You Need To Know to Run Your Read-a-thon. Turn this timeless event into a fresh and inventive online fundraising idea by using platforms like Facebook Watch Party or Teleparty to host a virtual watch party. We recommend using a multichannel approach when it comes to promoting a text code. They will never be charged any more than that, even if the per-unit pledge activity exceeds their limit. Start Early A bowl-a-thon isn't organized in a few days or even a few weeks - rather, it takes months to plan one. 03. Online donations, for example, tend to involve more deliberation. The Ultimate Online School Fundraising Program, How Read-A-Thon's Online Fundraiser Works, many companies that match gifts for schools. Some marketing materials have local and short-term appeal, while other approaches are more far reaching and have a life that can touch donors over the long term. Join a 30min Live Demo to see how Donorbox can help you reach your fundraising goals! About the Author 99Pledges runs thousands of successful fundraisers every year. Facebook Group Page). Donorboxs Text-to-Give lets you start fundraising within a few simple steps. It comes as no surprise that more and more nonprofits are exploring text-to-give as a way to empower people to donate. Instead of gathering together physically, supporters gather online, using technology like live-streaming, video, and peer-to-peer fundraising software.