Donation & Fundraising V3.0

We have implemented a new user interface and flow for donations and fundraising based on feedback from the many races. The central concept is to match our new focus on speeding and simplifying Runner Registration and Donations. Donating and becoming a fundraiser all happen on the same page now with plenty of Javascript magic and much improved flow for donors and fundraisers.

Simple Donations
Let’s start by taking a look at simple Donations to a race. This allows runners to donate during registration or to have a dedicated page for Donations. It looks like this:

This view is the same if donations go directly to the race, or if there is only a single Charity (the benefit of having a separate Charity is that the donations can be paid to a separate account). All existing donation pages will automatically be reformatted to this view – but races should take the time to make sure they have a good looking page with logo, scrolling list of donors, goal wheel, etc. The more professional your donation page, the more money you will raise.

Multiple Charities
When a race is supporting multiple charities, each charity is represented by a “Card” on the main donation page and during the registration process. The donor selects the charity and then fills in how much they want to give and also have the chance to leave a message for the charity.

Donors can learn more about a charity by clicking on the logo area. A pop-up will appear with that charities information:

With the new user interface, we have tried to simplify things and make it quicker and simpler. After clicking on a charity, enter the amount of the donation and select the “On Behalf of” and “Message to Charity/FundRaiser”. Also note that each charity can set their own pre-defined levels.

You can now select only one charity at a time to make a donation to. We had had added the capability a while back to split a donation between multiple charities. The feature was very rarely used (less than 1% of donations were split), and with a lot of charities on some races, it became a cause of complaints if a donor accidentally clicked on more than one charity. This opens up the ability to have a message to that charity be more meaningful as well. If a donor wants to make multiple donations, it is now very quick to make another donation from the main donation page.

FundRaisers
We offer a number of options for supporting Fundraisers. You can select from simply allowing anyone to become a fundraiser, to only opening it to runners, to forcing runners to become fundraisers to setting minimum thresholds for fundraisers, as well as enabling Fundraising Teams. The setup looks like this:

The new User Interface shows donors an easy way to pick between Fundraisers and Charities:

Each Fundraiser can have their own Fundraising Page with an image, their own custom text, their own goal, and their own page. They can also claim a custom URL of RunSignUp.com/MyFundraising page as the example below shows:

Becoming a Fundraiser
We have improved the simplicity of becoming a fundraiser. We have taken a step out of the registration process where everyone used to have to choose whether to become a fundraiser, and a vast majority of people do not want to be one. You can now become a Fundraiser as part of the registration path with the blue “Become Fundraiser” shown above on the Fundraisers page, or directly from your Race website as shown below:

Creating or Joining a Fundraiser Team
We have made the new Creation/Joining process stand out as shown above. Also, Teams get their own Fundraising web pages as well:

The “Manage Fundraiser” section allows the team owner to make changes, invite others, create their own widget for their own website, and view Donations made to them.

Donors have the ability to see who is on the team and donate directly to that person (which will count toward the team goal). They can also specify who their donation is on behalf of and leave a personal message to the fundraising team.

Display Options
We have also added a number of display options in the SetUp page, with some examples shown below:

You can set the following items:

• The Donation Page Text is what appears at the top of the donation page – by default it is your race name.
• Upload an image to display on the main Donate section
• Change the word “Donate” to anything you want – like “Give Today”
• Change “On Behalf of” to anything you want.
• Select where (or if) these pages appear on your Race Website
  • “Become a Fundraiser”
  • “Top Fundraisers”
  • “Top Charities”
• Show Top Fundraisers as “cards” (which is the default), or if you have a lot of fundraisers, it might be better to shown them as a scrolling list.
• If you only have one charity, it can become the Donation page. This gives your charity more control of the page.

Summary
All races using donations or fundraisers were automatically updated with this new user interface. You may want to refine the setup with some of the new options available to race directors and charities.