Mum24kids, which company did you use for your reading fundraiser? I am looking into read-a-thon for our spring fundraiser but I am concerned that all donations must be done online. We too have a portion of our school that would be more likely to donate via checks due to lack of home Internet access.
I've heard of that company, but used a different one for our read-a-thon. It was successful, but a fair amount more work that I had expected. One thing that I really liked about ours was that kids got prizes regardless of how much money was collected on their behalf--everyone got a prize as long as they turned in the names/addresses of 5 different potential sponsors (who could not live at the same address). (Letters were sent for sponsorships via USPS, and people could mail in a check or pay online. Our school is Title I, and a fair number of the parents aren't big internet/email users, so this worked well for us.) Some people ended up being really surprised that they had people donate on their behalf--they only asked so their kid would get the prize, but didn't really expect them to end up donating. So I think the participation rate was higher than what it would have been if we only gave prizes based on donations collected. We also worked with the teachers to encourage them to get the kids to record their classroom reading time. Ours ran for about two weeks--I wouldn't run one for any longer than that.
We are considering using www read-a-thon com for our fall fundraiser. Their program seems perfect for us but I thought I'd see if anyone had experience with them and was willing to give some counsel.
