Getting ready to host an A-thon? Follow this step by step guide!
Start by logging in:
- Click MemberHub Fundraisers from your Store Admin > click start fundraising.
- Select Create a campaign to start a new campaign or click on My campaign to edit an existing campaign.
The Basics of your A-Thon.
- Select A-Thon
- Scroll Down and enter your A-Thon's Title
- Choose the wording your supporters will see on your campaign. Choosing this wording will prefill any standard text on the A-Thons page with the words you choose.
- Choose how to refer to your campaign
- Choose how to refer to your supporters
- Choose how to refer to funds received
4. Choose your campaign Currency (Note: This will probably stay as USD).
5. Add a fundraising goal for your campaign or choose this campaign does not have a goal.
6. Choose whether you wish to Live stream your event. Check the box if you do. You can find step by step instructions on setting up your live stream here.
7. Decide how you want to pay for the campaign cost:
- Free Pricing: This means that your contributors will be given an option to leave a tip. Optional tips from supporters at checkout allow us to offer the platform free of charge and lets you keep nearly 100% of the funds you raise.
- Percent Pricing: This means that we deduct 7.5% from the funds you raise to cover the costs and you can choose whether the donor pays this or it comes out of what you receive.
- * Please note: There is still a 2.2% +.30 cents per transaction for credit card processing. This credit card processing fee is increasing as of July 1, 2023 to 2.9% +30 cents per transaction.
8. Choose the next button on the bottom of the page to continue your A-thon setup.
Build the specifics related to your A-thon
- Decide whether your A-thon will have multiple participating and logging their activity or just one person logging their activity as a participant.
- Add each activity this person(s) can log by clicking create an activity and fill in the box:
- Add another activity if there is more than one activity a participant can acknowledge they have completed or skip to number 4.
- Choose your timezone for your campaign
- Choose the dates your campaign will stop taking donations/pledges.
- Fill this in if you want to have an event date and time as well as location on your Athon or leave this blank if you do not.
- Would you like to collect a mail address or phone number from your donors? Check the box is the next section.
- Decide if you want to offer text to give with your campaign. More details here.
- Click Next.
Moving on to the Page Design Section: This is where you will customize how your A-thon appears to your funders on the live website.
- Choose whether you want a basic or advanced setup. This relates to the position of the top photo headline and buttons.
- The basic is your photo on the left with the buttons and words to the right. It's simple and should not require any graphic design work.
- The Advanced option means that your headline will go over the image and you can choose the location of the buttons. This means that you may need to design the image to accommodate the text and keep everything visible.
- Next is the option to upload the photo or video to the campaign page, this will appear at the top of the screen in which-ever layout option you chose in step 1.
- The next section allows you to choose what will be displayed. Options include Amount raised, count down timer, donations received and displaying a logo. Check the box beside the options you would like to include on your A-thon.
- You will also see an option to choose the wording on your button that allows donors to give. You can fill in the blank with the term you want to use on this button such as "contribute now".
- The next section let's your enter your headline for your description and your description.
- Tip: Enter a catchy headline to get your reader's attention.
- Personalize your campaign page link. This makes it much easier to share your campaign with potential donors. Enter the words you would like to include in your link such as "spring read a-thon" in the blank. You can also purchase your own domain to use instead. More details here.
- Customize your thank you note that donors will receive after they make a donation. You can enter a custom subject line, and adjust the body of the message in this section.
- Woohoo - You finished Page Design. Click next to move on to the next page.
Review - You are almost done!
On this page, you can choose to review, preview or publish your campaign.
- Review - Allows you to go back to any previously completed page to make changes. You can click the checkmarks under any page to go back to that section.
- Preview - Allows you to view your campaign as it will look live, prior to it being available for other people to see. Click the Preview button on the bottom of the review page.
- Publish - This means your campaign is complete and ready to accept donations. Click the publish button to make your campaign live.
After you have reviewed, previewed or publish you can also choose Next to go to the Advanced Setup Options.
Optional Advanced Setup
Campaign Options:
- You can choose to include an FAQ on your campaign for your participants and donors. Clicking Create an FAQ allows you to enter Questions and Answers.
- Next, you can add a sponsor. This is fabulous if you have a business sponsor or an individual that has agreed to cover part or some of the costs of hosting the a-thon or has agreed to donate goods such as food, t-shirts, etc. This is a special section to give them a shout out. You can even include this as a perk of your sponsorship package. Create a sponsor drops down a customizable field for you to enter some details about the sponsor. You can add a photo and change the term of what they are referred to as throughout the campaign.
- You can repeat step #2 for each additional sponsor you have by choosing the Add a sponsor section.
- If you would like donors to be able to choose what their donations go to, you can add funds in this section by clicking add a fund. You can then choose your fund title and add a description that will appear on your campaign.
- Have a Facebook or a website you want to link to your campaign? In the next section, click create a link then enter the URL and the label. The label is whatever words you would like the donors/participants to click on to be taken to your link.
- If you have any legal terms of use for your campaign or a notice about the a-thon, you can enter this in this section, and it will appear at the bottom of your campaign.
Checkout Options:
- The first section allows you to adjust the name of which your campaign will appear on the billing statements of your donors. This is important if you have a lot of people who come back and say they don't recognize the charge or dispute it. It is maybe good to include something specific to your organization name as well as your campaign. Something like "Spring A-thon ABC school" would be a great descriptor.
- Customize the checkout campaign. In this section you have 2 options to choose from:
- You can choose to allow your donors to make an extra donation on top of the per-unit pledge as part of the A-thon
- Allow your donors to make their contribution anonymously
- Add people who you want to be notified when a donation is made. In this section, you can enter email addresses of other organizers or admins that you wish to be notified when donations are made.
- Custom Fields. You can choose to create custom fields on your checkout page if there is special information you need to collect from your donors. Just click create a custom field and enter your question and choose whether you want this question to be mandatory or not.
- Repeat step 6 for each additional field you wish to collect.
- If you would like to display a notice to your donors before they checkout, you can enter this notice in this section. You can also choose to require your donors to acknowledge the notice by clicking the checkbox under this field.
Other Options:
- Treasurers: Under other options is the option to add a fund code to any donations received. You can elect to turn this on and assign your specific fund code in this section. This can be a help to "tag" the transactions from this campaign, so you know exactly what these funds were from. When you export the donation data, it will include this fund code.
Be sure to click publish if you have not done so already. Your a-thon is now live!