When organizing a walkathon you will be well served by good online fundraising and organizing software. I’ve been scouring the web for the best online fundraising tools. I still have more research to do. However I’d like to tell you about a few options in the mean time, in case you are already deep into your walkathon planning.
This is worth doing because of time savings in collecting pledges, and also may well increase your total fundraising income by making it easier for those who prefer paying online to writing checks.
Whatever you choose, you’ll need a dedicated volunteer with strong technical aptitude, and time, to set up your system. As the walkathon chair you should not also handle the software unless you are very comfortable with online projects because this is a big job in itself. Instead let someone from the group be in charge of just online fundraising.
1. One of DoJiggy’s products, DoJiggy Pledge, is specifically designed for pledge driven events so that your walkers can build their own pages and then collect donations online. It has a whole set of features ideal for walkathons. It is reasonably priced.
Also, DoJiggy has a great new resource page. It includes walkathon checklists and also a sample participation waiver.
I played with DoJiggy and was impressed with how much was included and also the frequent follow up from the company. I haven’t used it for an actual event so would appreciate comments from you if you have.
2. Here is a useful article that gives you a good start in looking at other technology options; “A Few Good Tools for Online Distributed Fundraising” by Stella Hernandez from Idealware, March 24, 2009. She covers about a dozen options and gives a framework for choosing.
3. Finally, if your group is doing more than just a walkathon and online fundraising, and needs more generalized tools for group communication and organization, you might want to try the groupery. It’s free. They give you a nice online community building platform and also a supportive group for leaders of active volunteer organizations. It collects payments from group members, and organizes volunteer shifts, and has a host of other features. I used to work there. They are very dedicated to making you successful.
Learn more about The Walkathon Guide book.
Filed under: legal and insurance, technology | Tagged: fundraising, fundraising software, online donations, planning a walkathon, waiver form |
Walkathon Guide 
Hi – We met through The Groupery. Based on your advice, we checked out DoJiggy and they’ve been great. The pledge page formatting is wonky, but the site seems to work well. One gotcha: We have to switch from PayPal to a more robust payment processor if we want our donors to be able to pledge per lap. We’re doing this, but it adds some set up time to the whole experience.
Nice to hear from you Kate! Thanks for the info. This will be of help to the next people who are figuring out which services to use. If you have any more comments I’d really appreciate if you could add them here or send them to me.
Hi Kate – thanks for the feedback on DoJiggy. Please let us know if you have any suggestions on the pledge page formatting; we would love to improve that based on your experience. Regarding Paypal, it is pretty easy to setup, and their fees are good, but we do see that users get nervous/confused sometimes when they leave the site, so we always recommend a payment processor like IATS Ticketmaster or Dharma Merchant Services. It really improves the user experience to not have to leave the site to make payment. Thanks, Rod