Brian made it a priority to get as many walk participants fundraising online as possible.

"I knew that encouraging our participants to set up Firstgiving pages would help us net more dollars overall," Brian said, "I put information about Firstgiving in our save the date card and other walk materials. I met with the walk committee, a group of 12 participants who were responsible for recruiting other walkers, and demonstrated by LCD projector how to set up their own page."

As a result of Brian's efforts, the entire walk committee and dozens more created their own fundraising pages. Brian commented that a number of the walk participants have virtually no experience using the Internet, and that they found setting up their pages easy to set up, and the Firstgiving site easy to navigate.

In the end, out of 950 total walkers, 44 fundraised through their own Firstgiving pages. Brian recalled, "Our online fundraisers raised approximately $24,000, or around one-quarter of the total funds raised for the event. In short, around 5% of the event participants were responsible for 24% of the total funds raised."

One of the walk's online fundraising superstars was Bonnie Davidson, who raised over $8,000. While she had been a big fundraiser in the past, by having a Firstgiving page, she raised 60% more than she had the previous year. Another successful Firstgiving page was created by the family of Angie Dorton, a women who lost her life to scleroderma. Brian recalled that this page not only generated over $5,000 in donations, but it drew attention and touching comments. "Besides raising funds for the event, the pages create awareness of our cause," Brian said, "Through touching pages like that of Angie Dorton's family, thousands of people were made aware of the work we do. These represent thousands of donors we can reach out to for future fundraising activities."

Bonnie's online fundraising page

For Brian, being able to have his event participants fundraise online was just part of the benefit of Firstgiving; online registration was another benefit.

"Being able to pay registration fees online was a huge asset," Brian said, "This made it easier for participants to sign up, and easier for our staff to process and track registrations."

348 walkers -- or 37% of total participants -- registered online for the event. Typically, processing a paper registration and pledges takes a staff member around 30 minutes. For 348 walkers registering online, this represents an administrative time savings of 174 staff hours. By drastically reducing the amount of time spent processing registrations and pledges, staff could focus on other mission-critical tasks.

Automated donation acknowledgement thank-you notes were another administrative time saver.

"Using Firstgiving, our staff is more efficient and our fundraising events are more effective," Brian predicted, "Firstgiving helps us better support our event participants. Next year, I think we'll see even more of our walkers creating Firstgiving pages."

To learn how Firstgiving can help your organization raise more funds with greater ease, contact us at 617-591-2121 or inquiries@firstgiving.com.  

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