The Friends of Third Booster Club in Los Angeles held its second annual walk-a-thon and, with PledgeStar’s help, far exceeded its ambitious goal of $50,000 by $18,000 for a total of $68,000! They accomplished this by using creative and fun incentives for both the students and teachers.

Booster club president, Patricia Alexander, thought that such high hopes for the walk-a-thon might be overzealous, but the event’s proceeds far surpassed her expectations. Before using PledgeStar for online fundraising, the annual walk-a-thon had raised about $30,000.

“Once we went to an online system our fundraising almost doubled,” Alexander said, “It just increased so dramatically!”

To encourage students to register on PledgeStar, Alexander knew to get the teachers involved, a step often overlooked during pledge drives. In order to encourage teachers to increase classroom participation, she offered a $100 prize to each teacher achieving 100% online participation. This caused the number of online participants to multiply daily.

Alexander and her volunteers visited classrooms with prizes for participating students during their fundraising campaign. “Sometimes the students were really surprised they were getting a T-shirt or a bag that they didn’t even know they won,” she said. Seeing their peers receive prizes inspired other students to step up their game as well. As a result, Alexander estimates that over 70% of the student body registered on PledgeStar, and many of the students exceeded their individual goals by several hundred dollars.

Parent volunteers focused on making the fundraising campaign a fun experience for students. A few weeks before the walk-a-thon, volunteers organized a dance party for all students who raised over $100. The exclusive party included silly string, glow sticks, and other exciting rewards that kept energy levels high and generated a buzz for the remainder of the campaign. Their strategy proved to be brilliantly effective.

When searching for online platforms for the Booster’s fundraiser, Alexander said the choice was easy. “The value of PledgeStar was really there in all aspects,” she remarked, “We were able to capture everything we needed through PledgeStar’s reporting system, making it incredibly easy and simple for our fundraising chair.

The Friends of Third Booster Club was thrilled with the results of their annual walk-a-thon. Every year, they aim to support programs that total over $250,000, including a technology lab, music enrichment, and physical education. “Exceeding our walk-a-thon goal means were are able to increase our budget and increase the programs we can offer,” said Alexander. She is happy to report that the Booster Club will fund all of these programs and more at Third Street Elementary School this year.