Which Online Fundraising Platform is Right for Your School?
An online donation platform can help your PTO raise more money for your school and makes requesting and tracking donations easy. We take a look at popular providers—99Pledges, Raise Craze: Fundraising Through Kindness, and School-A-Thon/Color-A-Thon.
What Is an -Athon Fundraiser?
Fun runs, jogathons, and other “-athon” events have long been popular fundraisers for PTOs and PTAs. They create a lot of excitement and spirit at school and, in the right circumstances, they can raise thousands of dollars. They’re also super for building community spirit and creating experiences that students will remember for years afterward.
How Does an -Athon Fundraiser Work?
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These events follow a simple structure: Depending on the platform, students are either encouraged to collect donations as a lump sum or collect pledges as a specific amount for each lap or unit that’s completed.
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They can be enhanced with themes (color run, mud run, glow-in-the-dark danceathon, kindness, etc.)—basically, you can turn your -athon event into anything you want!
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There are usually fun prizes for individual students, classes, grades, or even the whole school when fundraising or participation milestones are reached. Incentives and prizes are a super effective way to keep energy levels high and motivate student participation to the max.
Benefits of Working With an -Athon Company
These kinds of events can take a tremendous amount of organization and volunteer power to pull off. That’s where companies that will organize your -athon fundraiser for you come in, making it more accessible for smaller groups and easier for groups of any size! Depending on what level of support your group needs, you can choose a full-service solution to help plan and run your event or simply take advantage of online donation or pledge pages and other fundraising tools.
Below are a few of the most popular companies who provide these services to parent groups. Check them out to find one that's right for your group!
Raise Craze: Fundraising Through Kindness
99Pledges
Overview
99Pledges is the leading online fundraising platform for schools, enabling thousands to raise more funds than ever before. It’s great for events such as fun runs, read-a-thons, spell-a-thons, pledge drives, and more! Now with $0 startup and 0% platform fees, even more money goes to the kids!
We’ll set your students up with online donation pages and manage your entire event online, making it simple for volunteers, parents, and donors. We can have you live tomorrow and be with you every step of the way through the end of the easiest and most profitable fundraiser you’ve ever done!
Features and Benefits
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99Pledges is the only platform that allows for ZERO parent setup. Best participation ever!
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99Pledges is the only fundraising service designed for schools with NO platform fees!
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99Pledges helps thousands of schools have their most successful fundraisers each year!
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Nearly 100% of 99Pledges customers use our services year after year.
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Most of 99Pledges customers come from referrals from existing customers.
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99Pledges solves the headache of fundraising through innovative technology!
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99Pledges loves our customers and would love to help you! Give us a shout!
Pricing and Profits
99Pledges is the most profitable fundraising solution of its kind. It’s simple.
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Cash/check donations: You keep 100%. 99Pledges will track and email receipts to donors.
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Online donations: 99Pledges has NO platform fee. We do collect 3.49% + $0.49 per transaction on your behalf for Visa/MC/Amex/PayPal.
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That’s it! No other fees whatsoever. No startup fees. No minimums. No contracts. No brainer!
More details here: http://99pledges.com/pricing
What Parent Groups Are Saying About 99Pledges
“We loved it! It was so easy and we love your platform and low cost! We loved our experience! Thank you so much!”
—Sunrise School
Raise Craze: Fundraising Through Kindness
Overview
Raise Craze is the original Fundraising Through Kindness platform and the non-athon athon. Our online platform enables families to set up secure, custom websites where they request donations via email, text, or social media.
Students select 3-5 Acts of Kindness to complete for others during the fundraiser. Easy ideas for home, school, and the community are provided!
Donors love seeing how students will be showing kindness to others and knowing that the school is guaranteed to keep 90%+!
Our program was created to be...KIND to You. KIND to Students. KIND to Teachers. KIND to the Community.
Features and Benefits
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The Kindness Experts Kindness is all we do! Thousands have achieved record success with our guidance!
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No Starting From Scratch Interactive planning suite and our expert staff will guide you step by step.
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Kick Off Like A Pro Professional assembly, themed incentive program, scripts, and videos included.
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Stay Visible All Campaign Handouts, scripts, emails, and social content ready to use.
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Expand Your Reach Fast Business sponsor letter, corporate match prompts, and press kit included.
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Track Everything Easily Real time dashboard and easy reporting, with everything tracked online.
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Built for Every Student Every child can participate and be recognized, regardless of dollars raised.
Pricing and Profits
More than just a software platform, our robust, integrated KINDNESS PROGRAM will transform your school & community!
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$1 for donations under $25, $5 on all other donations + standard credit card fees
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No fees on cash/check
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No upfront fees, minimums, contracts, or cancellation fees
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Average keep is 92-93%
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❤️If total net fees exceed 10%, we refund the difference with our 90%+ Guarantee!
What You Get: A fundraiser you can be proud of! No selling. No laps. Just KINDNESS.
What Parent Groups Are Saying About Raise Craze: Fundraising Through Kindness
“As a school, we love the keep rate - the past 2 years we've kept 95-96% of what we raised versus the 60% we used to keep from our prior fun run fundraisers! Our parent community loves Raise Craze because it's so easy and fosters such a good message to our students. Our teachers love it because very little is required from them. I can't recommend Raise Craze enough! We'll be back next year for our third year!”
—Linwood Howe Elementary (raised $117,200 and kept $111,500)
School-A-Thon/Color-A-Thon
Overview
We Wrote the Book on Color Run Fundraisers! Throw out your boring school fundraising ideas and replace them with a colorfully good time from School-A-Thon! We offer an easy fundraising platform to help schools and communities reach their goals in a vivid and super interactive way—Color-A-Thon color runs. Schools and organizations can earn up to a 70% profit. We Make it Easy! No Upfront Fees Free Shipping No Hidden Fees!
Features and Benefits
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Bulk color dust. The more money you raise, the more color dust we send.
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Individual color packs. Participants earn color dust packs for their donations.
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Parent letter. Pre-printed Parent letters and Money Collection Envelopes are provided.
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Custom pledge site. Each participant gets their own pledge site to help raise money.
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Credit card processing. We make it easy to accept your Color-A-Thon donations online.
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Money management software. Our easy-to-use tool helps you keep track of your donations.
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Student awards program. Great incentives to motivate your students.
Pricing and Profits
NO UPFRONT COST FOR YOUR ORGANIZATION! Your group will earn 70% of the donations received if you collect $12,500 or more, 60% profit for events that collect $7500 to $12499, and 50% profit for events that collect less than $7500. Groups pay $5.00 for all T-shirts awarded/ordered during the sale.
YOU CAN MAKE MORE! Schoolathon provides an area on your group’s website where you can insert online “Banner Ads”. You can sell ad space on the website and keep 100% of the proceeds.
What Parent Groups Are Saying About School-A-Thon/Color-A-Thon
“Schoolathon and their color run was the absolute best fundraiser for our elementary school. Students were excited about the individual prizes, the color run and getting color-blasted at the end was the icing on the cake! We are doing another Schoolathon fundraiser this year, and everyone is even more excited for this one! It’s a fun way to raise a money for our school!”
—Kati S., Fiddlers Canyon School PTO
