DIY — Elementary Fun Run

There are many great ways to raise money for elementary schools — a Do-it-yourself Fun Run is one of the best!

Photo by Jessica To'oto'o on Unsplash

SuccessFund is the best way to manage a Fun Run and keep all the proceeds. That’s right 100% of the donations funnel right into your program. We’ve got a number of thoughtful tools that make the do-it-yourself process simple. Here’s what you need to know:

Draft Your School-Wide Campaign

It’s easy to breeze through the wizard to create your new Fun Run campaign, so I want to call out a few things to consider as you do so.

• It’s a good idea to make the start date for your campaign a few days before you expect the first donations to be made and leave it open for a few days after the actual Fun Run event.
• Set a reasonable goal that matches your expectations. (You’ll have an opportunity to set stretch goals as you go along)
• Customize your link. /abcdefghijklmnopqrstuv12345 is not very user friendly. change it to something more exciting like /superherofunrun.

After the wizard is completed and you’ve created your draft, there are a few pro tips that will put you ahead of the game — all of these are found when you edit your campaign:

• Customize the comments! Select the Options button and customize the field on the donation form to say something other than “Comments.” A few suggestions would be “Student’s Name & Teacher’s Name & Grade.” Mark it as required and then donors will be helping you to be sure you are tracking and rewarding properly
• Customize the Name! By default the name on the campaign will match up with the user who created it. Most often that’s a good thing because Donors know they’re in the right place. In this case, however, you’ll probably want the name on the campaign to align with the school not an individual. In edit mode, click on the name & photo section and change the name to something like “Westridge Elementary” and upload a photo of your wildcat logo.
• Add Collaborators! You shouldn’t be working on this all alone! Click on the Add Collaborators icon right next to the settings button (it’s a little person with a plus next to them). Your collaborators must be SuccessFund users, so if they aren’t yet, you’ll need to ask them to sign up first. Collaborators can help edit the campaign and have access to all the sharing features and functionality. The best way to manage these campaigns is with a strong team, so don’t forget this step!

Click save and you’re good to go. Remember you can make edits for as long as you want.

Get approval

Submit for approval to your principal as soon as you’re ready. It’s a good idea to do this quickly because sometimes (depending on your organization) secondary approvals are necessary and can take a day or two to get completed.

Launch!

Go Live with your campaign as soon as you can! Don’t forget that until you Go Live your campaign is not accessible by anyone but you, and you won’t be able to accept donations. Going live just means that your campaign is out there in the wild— but it doesn’t mean that anyone will find it. You’ve got to spread the word! Here are some great tips for doing this:

• Principals — Email all the parents! Not just once. The most successful campaigns are those that involve the principal sending an email at least once a week, and then every day on the last week of the campaign. Declare the accomplishments and milestones achieved — especially if they include rewards, and always call out the next reward milestone on the horizon!
• Teachers — Send home flyers! SuccessFund provides automatic flyer creation tools that make it easy to print full-sheet or half-sheet flyers that you can send home with your students. Reinforce this message with an email at the beginning of the campaign, and then again when there are only a few days left.
• Social Media — Any social media channels that you use as a teacher, PTA organization, or school should have your campaign link posted and pinned to the top (maybe even in the bio — we’re looking at you instagram).
• In Person Flyers — Any events when parents come to the school (especially the day of the fun run) have flyers on hand. These flyers have QR codes that smartphone cameras read automatically. With these flyers, parents can pull out their phones > Camera open > tap and open the link> land right on your campaign page > tap donate > pay with Venmo > done!

Offline Donations

Of course, SuccessFund tracks and logs all donations that are processed on the platform, BUT it also allows for the input and tracking of ALL donations you receive (even cash and check) so you have a centralized complete record! We call donations that happen outside of SuccessFund Offline Donations. It’s important to log offline donations for a few reasons:

• Reflect your progress in your progress bar! You may receive a large donation in the form of a check that puts you right up to your goal. If you record that donation, everyone will see and be encouraged by your progress.
• Keep a complete record. This keeps everyone involved safe and accountable for all donations that come through. Having a centralized complete record means that every students gets appropriate credit, and every dollar is accounted for.
• Hold on to donor contact info for next time. You should record donor information as much as possible so that next year you can grab those email addresses to thank and reach out to your previous donors for future campaigns.

Rewards and Prizes

Remember that it’s all about the rewards and prizes for these kids. Before we get into some of the creative rewards we’ve seen schools do, we need to show you how simple it is to measure and distribute the rewards. Remember, each and every campaign tracks and logs the donations that come in and any offline donations you record. On the donations detail page of your campaign you can sort and search through these donations. Using your custom comments field, you can easily search, filter, and aggregate by Student’s name, Teacher’s name, Grade, etc. This will allow you to run competitions, and reward winners.

Now that we know who rewards should go to, let’s get to these creative awards! We’ve compiled (and continue to compile) creative things we’ve seen student’s unlock through their donations:

School-wide rewards for reaching certain thresholds:

• Popsicle at recess for every student tied to a donation of any amount
• Crazy Hair Day
• Crazy Sock Day
• Super Hero Day

Student-level rewards for donating certain amounts:

• Lunch with the principal
• Keychains, goodies, and giveaways

Maximum Awards for reaching the ultimate goal:

• Principal kisses a pig
• Principal shaves his head
• Principal gets a cream pie to the face

Repeat

These campaigns can be duplicated and repeated each year. (Don’t forget to reach out to last year’s donors!) It’s a fun way to engage kids and build school spirit, all while contributing to a great cause.

Now that you know what to do, you can see that a partnership between Principal, PTA, and Parents makes the fun run campaign not only a huge success, but also a lot of fun to run. Good luck with your campaigns this year, and remember that the SuccessFund Team is just a chat bubble away!