For its March 2021 fundraiser, the Bathgate PTA took its endeavors indoors with the campus “Fun Run” reimagined as a Read A Thon. Armed with two school-wide goals—$25,000 earned and 250,000 minutes read—the students hit the ground reading. Though their goals were hefty, Bathgate families managed to exceed expectations and raise $55,000, more than double their original goal! Students had some amazing—and low cost—incentives that motivated them: virtual bingo with the principal, a tricycle race among the teachers filmed and later viewed in each classroom, and a teacher-created TikTok featuring said teachers dancing to “Chicken Wing” by Viral DJs. As an additional incentive, when the student body hit $25,000 in donations, the school mascot “Beau the Blazer” came to life and greeted students during drop-off and pickup! With PledgeStar managing the accounting end of the Read A Thon, the small but mighty group of Bathgate volunteers had time to go above and beyond expectations to create an unforgettable experience for Bathgate students during an emotionally challenging year.

When all was said and done, it was clear that PledgeStar won “best fundraising platform” for Bathgate’s students, teachers, and families. “At a school with 600 kids, tallying all of the money by hand is time consuming, and an event this size is difficult to coordinate. PledgeStar does the work for you,” said Sarah Menchaca, Bathgate PTA’s president. “You can run reports with a couple clicks, and PledgeStar lets you know how much money you’ve earned each day.” Menhaca explained that the school needed far fewer volunteers since the platform was so user-friendly and was able to take tasks off the hands of event volunteers.

With the help of PledgeStar, Menchaca explained, Bathgate was able to reach a broader audience and raise money without enforcing socioeconomic discrimination. “We are definitely using PledgeStar again,” said Menchaca, “and next time we’ll also use their translation element. We have a diverse student body, and this feature would be incredibly useful to us.”

In the fall of 2020, Manchester GATE Elementary School students had a special guest for their online “Groove-a-Thon” fundraiser. Former student Carlos Perez led the students in an exciting online dance program from the comfort of their homes in order to raise money for the school.

Manchester GATE Elementary is a second through sixth-grade magnet school in Fresno, California. It is identified as a “magnet school” because it is composed of gifted students from various districts and areas around Fresno. Students who pass the gifted and talented exam are challenged with grade level projects and courses designed for their special population. Perez was one of these students fifteen years ago and his decision to help out with the fundraiser was welcomed by the staff and families.

“One of the teachers remembered that Carlos does Dance-A-Thon fundraisers on YouTube for local non-profits. We decided to ask him because we knew we had to do something different this year,” said Principal Janet Gengozian. “He is just an energetic guy who is excited to give back to our school!”

Gengozian and school volunteers decided to call the event a “Boove and Groove” because it was held close to Halloween. Students were encouraged to wear costumes while they danced to Halloween-themed music in their living rooms. Parents sent pictures to school staff and posted them on the school Facebook page. Before the big party, students and parents used PledgeStar to collect online donations from family and friends. Students were able to raise thousands by just sending out a few requests each from their personal PledgeStar portal, all without leaving their home!

Manchester GATE is truly a unique school with a diverse student body. Because the students come from several areas in and around Fresno, they differ in socio-economic backgrounds. One thing they all do have in common, though, is that they are both talented and privileged to belong to such a unique community.

Like many schools dependent on annual fundraisers to help with curriculum and program costs, Redwood Christian Schools wasn’t sure what to expect from this year’s Jog-A-Thon fundraiser. Located in San Francisco, Redwood Christian Schools has a student population of over 700 students in grades TK-12. At the time of their annual Jog-A-Thon in January 2021, nearly 10% of their student population was not on campus due to COVID restrictions.

Mike Kady, Director of Advancement at Redwood Christian Schools, said “for this year’s Jog-A-Thon, our initial goal was $100,000. Normally we would set it a little higher, but with COVID I told the superintendent if we reached $100,000, that would be great.” In the end, despite the limitations that COVID placed on their Jog-A-Thon, Redwood Christian Schools still pulled in an impressive $145,000. “This was beyond our expectations!” Kady said.

While RCS has been using Pledgestar for the past five years with great success, something new and exciting about this year’s Jog-A-Thon fundraiser was Pledgestar’s new Multilingual feature. This new feature allows Pledgestar users to have event information and pledge requests translated into a different language via a simple drop-down menu. Currently, Pledgestar offers translations into over 50 different languages! To date, nearly 70 fundraising events, including the RCS Jog-A-Thon, have used the multilingual feature.

This year, RCS had a request to send out Pledgestar donation requests in Spanish. Thanks to the multilingual feature, RCS was able to reach a large number of their Spanish-speaking families, which undoubtedly contributed to this year’s fundraising success.

RCS has been using Pledgestar since 2016. Previously, they were exclusively using paper packets to send home with their students. When they began using Pledgestar five years ago, they didn’t immediately switch to 100% digital. Instead, they slowly worked their way to a more digital process ending last year at a roughly 50-50 split. However this year, due to COVID, it was 100% digital, 100% Pledgestar. “Per person, this was our biggest money year to date,” Kady said. On average this year, each participating student raised $222. Pre-Pledgestar, Kady noted that each participating RCS student raised $106, which shows that even during a challenging pandemic, using Pledgestar helped RCS increase their per-student average by 109%!

Another Pledgestar advantage Kady realized this year, when he faced running a fundraiser without his usual team of volunteers, was that he actually could run it himself. “Pledgestar has made fundraising much, much easier. Before COVID, I would have 5-10 volunteers working with me daily. Because of PledgeStar’s reporting tools, I was able to run it myself.”

While running a fundraiser single-handedly is not ideal, Pledgestar equips people with many features, tools, and exceptional customer service to run a successful fundraiser with fewer people, if the situation calls for it. “I have to give an A+ to Pledgestar for customer support. Either Emily or Erik would get right back to me,” Kady said.

When asked how he found Pledgestar, Kady replied that he found it online. “We were looking for a hybrid of paper/online. If we pulled in $70-75,000, it would be a good year. Other fundraising platforms were charging 10% off the top. I couldn’t bear to pay the $7,500 in fees. When I saw that Pledgestar charged $1,195 max, I wondered what happened after the $1,195. So I called Erik and asked him just that, ‘what happens after that?’ Erik said ‘the invoice stops there.’ And it did! The first year we used Pledgestar, we raised a little over $130,000!” That’s a 45% increase! “Imagine if we had to pay 10% off the top?! That’s money we could use for the students. With Pledgestar, low fees plus great customer service equals a very successful program. The kids are the beneficiaries.”

For PTO President Allison Dvorak and the other members of the South Oceanside Elementary PTO board, the decision to use PledgeStar was an easy one. They researched all their options and conducted interviews with online fundraising companies. Through their research they found some fundraising companies take 50% or more of the funds raised, which was not going to allow the fundraiser to meet their needs. Seeing PledgeStar’s incredibly low rate of 7% that caps at $1,195, they knew they found their match.

In 2018 they decided to add PledgeStar’s online fundraising system to their annual Jog-A-Thon and have since raised over $66,000 and kept over $62,000 (more than 93%) with the help of PledgeStar! Had Dvorak and the PTO board chosen another fundraising company, they might only have kept $33,000.

In 2021, after several successful years using PledgeStar for their Jog-A-Thon, the PTO Board members were eager to find new ways to add to the fundraising success. The school held annual Read A Thons for the past few years, but never thought to raise money using PledgeStar. The pandemic, with its sudden change to online schooling, pushed the need for a socially-distanced way to raise money. Fortunately, adding PledgeStar to their Read A Thon was a huge success! Earnings doubled from the year before, completely surprising the PTO members, families, and staff who weren’t sure a fundraiser would be as successful during the pandemic.

“We were able to hold a Read A Thon by using PledgeStar’s online reading logs from home,” said Dvorak. “PledgeStar made our fundraiser possible.”

To encourage participation in the event, they knew prizes were a necessity. However, they needed prizes that wouldn’t break the bank. Sticking to the reading theme, Dvorak and the PTO chose to deliver bookmarks to the students’ homes as well as gift cards for the top readers in each grade. To boost participation even further, students who entered ten or more donors were entered into a raffle.

This year’s Read A Thon earnings will continue to pay for PTO-sponsored programs, campus improvements, classroom supplies, field trips, and technological enhancements. Each student is estimated to cost the school an additional $80 per year after state funding.

“We used to spend so much time collecting donations and tracking the students’ reading. PledgeStar’s system made everything so quick and easy with their built in donation tracking and reading logs. Everyone really loved it!” Dvorak said.

Rancho Cañada Elementary School in Southern California has a long standing tradition of holding a super fun, super successful annual jog-a-thon. When COVID-19 hit in 2020, though, the school's PTA members knew that they needed to make some drastic changes in order to boost student morale and bring in much-needed funding for the next year. In 2020, Rancho Cañada's jog-a-thon focused on putting the "fun" in "fundraising" and unifying community members with school spirit and an exciting month-long event.

"Normally we'd have the kids run around the track at school and have a giant balloon arch with misters and fans," said parent volunteer Thorey Bauer. "This year we weren't on campus, but we wanted to incentivize kids to get outside for the entire month of October."

Rancho Cañada has used PledgeStar for its jog-a-thon for over three years after moving from a paper-based fundraising system. When the entire event needed social-distancing modifications, Bauer and other parent volunteers worked together to create Rancho Cañada's first ever "move-a-thon" in the fall of 2020. Students were encouraged to run, jump, bike, skip, or just play for as many days as possible during the month-long time period the event was held. They logged their hours on PledgeStar using the honor system and competed with each other to move as many days as possible.

"When we realized that we weren't going to have the big jog-a-thon like we had for twenty years," said Bauer. "We took a step back and asked ourselves ‘what's the goal?' We felt that the tradition upheld a sense of unity and we wanted everyone to feel a part of it."

Every student was given a move-a-thon T-shirt to wear at least once during their "moving days." The students also competed for prizes such as earbuds, online family nights, whiteboards for homeschool activities, and markers.

Over 400 students participated in the event, and Bauer remarked that setting it up with PledgeStar was easier than she expected: "It was pretty simple," she said. "We made a few adjustments to the verbiage on the website, but that was very fast. The fundraising aspect was hardly different at all and we just sent a few emails to remind everyone to sign on."

Historically, Rancho Cañada's annual jog-a-thon paid for high cost items and programs, such as a free end-of-the-year school carnival and a high-tech STEAM lab on campus. This year, though, these programs were put on hold, so the funds raised by the move-a-thon covered the necessities for schooling during a pandemic: online family nights, masks for students, and T-shirts.

"We really wanted the kids to get away from screens every day and have fun being a part of something," said Bauer. "I think we definitely accomplished that goal."

In the fall of 2020, St. Veronica Catholic School volunteers weren't sure whether their COVID-modified jog-a-thon would be successful, given the changes they had to make to the event and the difficult circumstances many of their families were experiencing. Little did they know their annual fundraiser would be their most successful in its twelve year history, and the prizes offered to the students would be the most unforgettable.

"We were set to hold the jog-a-thon last spring, but then COVID happened," said parent volunteer Vincene Caruso, "we had to completely change the logistics to keep the kids in their small groups and socially distance the activities."

Caruso and other parent volunteers admit they were a little nervous to modify their school's biggest fundraiser of the year, but they knew something had to happen to raise money for their school and promote much-needed unity when some families were clearly struggling. They decided to spread their event out over four days, renaming it a "Race for Education," assign morning and afternoon sessions to the classes, and set up activity stations for the small groups. The kids had a blast using hula hoops, playing soccer golf, and dancing to the limbo game. A DJ emceed the week's activities and school staff kept the stations organized.

The most exciting part of The Race, though, were the prizes that the students were competing to receive. Among the most popular was the initial offer for St. Veronica's principal to compete in a sumo wrestling match with another staff member on campus. When the students had reached their $50,000 goal, he would wear a sumo costume and challenge any faculty member willing to meet him in a duel.

"It was ridiculous, but so funny," recalled Caruso. "The kids thought it was amazing. We know that this is how we're going to have to do the event now. No one is going to want to run around the parking lot next year."

"We were amazingly successful," said Caruso. "Our goal was $50,000 this year, but in the end we raised over $102,000. Originally, we weren't sure if people would embrace the online system because of the technical differences from a paper-based fundraiser. It was such an easy process, though. It has been amazing."

The fun didn't end there, though. When one St. Vincent parish priest saw how successful the fundraiser was going, he wanted to keep up the momentum. He offered to sleep on the school roof if students reached a goal of $60,000 raised. When they did, he live-streamed a bedtime story from the campus rooftop, had all-night check-ins online, and waved to families from the roof as they arrived at school in the morning. The kids were beyond excited.

Caruso said that she knows other Catholic schools in her area are converting to PledgeStar for fundraising and plans to use the platform for her kids' football events in the near future. "It was really just the best decision for us," she continued. "It was just the best day."

PledgeStar's online fundraising system helped students at Saint Joseph's School in Los Angeles, California, hold a wildly successful at-home jog-a-thon in the midst of a global pandemic as well as a distance learning mandate across the county. The number of students who raised more than $200 doubled from previous years and three times as many students raised over $100. This was a complete shock to Principal Kevin Donohue, who knew that over 70% of the student population qualified for free or reduced-cost lunch and were also faced with the challenges of learning at home.

Last year, Donohue thought about doing something different for the school's annual jog-a-thon. He knew he wanted to expand the event to include more community members, so he invited them to come to campus to participate in a PE day at school. But COVID-19 quickly changed his plans.

"We started looking at, ‘well what can we do instead?'" he recalled. "We knew we were moving donations online anyhow, so doing the entire jog-a-thon online was worth a try. But to be honest, our hopes weren't that high."

Donohue was nervous for several reasons. First, COVID-19 had shut down many local businesses, and several parents and caregivers in his community were out of work. He wasn't sure many people would be able to help with donations. A majority of the students at the school came from families that struggled financially, so he knew that most people weren't in the position to donate even before COVID-19's impact on local businesses. What's more, Saint Joseph's school had never used an online platform before so he feared many of the families wouldn't participate.

"When I came to Saint Joseph, we weren't very modern," Donohue said. "We had a paper newsletter, the jog-a-thon was take home packet based with pledges written down on paper. It was really limiting our reach, especially in a digital world. I did some research on partnering with an online management system. It's confusing because there are a lot of options out there." Donohue eventually reached out to the Archdiocese of LA, where two of his colleagues recommended PledgeStar. "I was nervous because going online was a big transition for us, but Emily at PledgeStar was awesome," he said. "And in a big transition like that, customer service is the most important thing to me."

In the end, Donohue encouraged his students on social media platforms with videos of his early morning runs, challenging them to keep up with him. He ran over 57 miles in the two week time period allotted for the fundraiser, and students responded by biking, skating, jumping, and running to match his mileage. They sent in videos of their fun activities for school staff to repost on Facebook and Instagram, renewing the sense of community they had before their school closed.

"In the end, it was worth it," said Donohue. He is happy to report that the school offered more financial aid this year than ever before, and PledgeStar played a big part.

Nampa Christian School volunteer Sandra Skoksberg has served as her school's fundraising director for fifteen years, but she had never seen the annual jog-a-thon bring in as much money as it did this year with PledgeStar.

In 2018, Skoksberg estimated that the fundraiser brought in about $20,000 for the school. Last year, she decided to give PledgeStar a try. Needless to say, she was very happy with the outcome. Their money doubled in 2019 and tripled to almost $60,000 in 2020. Not only was Skoksberg blown away by the huge uptick in funds, but she was amazed at how simple everything was on her end as the fundraising director.

"We used to have to have flyers and paper packets that went home, but we don't even have to do that anymore. PledgeStar keeps track of money that's coming in and money that's due. It's so simple," said Skoksberg.

Skoksberg offered a few incentives for the students to participate in the online fundraiser, but she found that a little went a long way. Every student who brought in $100 or more was awarded a T-shirt and the elementary school classroom with the most money was rewarded with a pajama movie party. Even without expensive or elaborate prizes, students and families were ready and excited to donate.

"I think the families really wanted to give to the school," Skoksberg said. With the closure of movie theaters, gyms, and sports activities across the country due to COVID-19, Skoksberg believes that the Nampa community was excited to do something special for the children. "It was a huge success because of PledgeStar and, of course, the people supporting the school," she added.

Nampa Christian School is located in western Idaho and offers private education to children ages preschool through high school. With only about 765 students in its population, a $60,000 total was a huge success for the small community.

"Just having the kids run outside...it was awesome," recalled Skoksberg. She said that because it is a private school, Nampa will use the funds to help keep tuition low, pay for supplies, and fund enrichment programs for the students.

Every year, volunteer parents at St. Rose of Lima Academy (SRLA) have a fundraising goal to help keep tuition costs down. This year due to the COVID-19 required social distancing measures in place, they grew nervous when they had to cancel their silent auction and Walk-A-Thon events. They knew raising money was still necessary for next year, so they set out to do the best they could with the difficult circumstances presented and converted their fundraisers into an online Move-A-Thon with lowered expectations. Much to their surprise and thanks to the help of PledgeStar’s online fundraising system, SRLA doubled the amount of money they raised last year with their online Move-A-Thon, bringing in over $20,000 with a small student population of only 200!

Volunteer Catherine Peironi didn’t think that moving their fundraiser to an online-only event would be very successful and said, “We were really stressed out and nervous about asking for money.” Much to the volunteers’ surprise, it turned out that everyone was excited to have a little school and community spirit in the difficult times. To get families and students excited about the event, she and other parent volunteers drove from house to house drop off spiritwear T-shirts to every student. “It was a huge response,” said Peironi, “It was amazing.

Parents, children, and teachers were all thrilled that an event that didn’t require any in person fundraising made so much money for the school. Perioni also commented that, as fundraising chair, she wasn’t required to go to the school to drop off or pick up checks, reducing a huge amount of overhead for the event administrators. The school didn’t even need to spend money on any incentives for the students to donate.

To make the event extra special, the SRLA track coach filmed a warm-up video for everyone to watch on the morning of the Move-A-Thon. Students stretched and warmed up along to the video and then uploaded photos to the school Facebook group of themselves playing basketball, walking, and rollerblading. “It felt really good to see the kids. It was so cute looking at all their pictures,” said Peironi.

The kids and parents also enjoyed a fun competition between classes to see who could raise the most money. Peironi recalled that some parents donated to outpace others. In the end, the class that pulled ahead in first place was the smallest in size and head count - kindergarten! With only twelve students, the kindergarteners managed to bring in more than any other grade!

"We were so glad we did an online fundraiser with PledgeStar! It was a surprising and absolute success!"

For years, students at Los Feliz Charter School have been asking their gym teacher, Mr. Wegner, to participate in their annual jog-a-thon, but he always declines. It’s for the kids, he tells them, and encourages them to run as many laps as they can to raise money for the school. This year, though, when schools across the nation shut down due to COVID-19, Mr. Wegner knew he had to do something different to help out. So, equipped with a rowboat, a motorcycle, a bike, and other fun props to entertain the masses, Mr. Wegner set out to run in his own jog-a-thon alone on the school field while students watched online and participated at home in their own creative ways. His enthusiasm paid off. Los Feliz raised over $55,000, meeting their annual goal and exceeding PTA expectations.

“A small crew went to the school with masks to set up and film Mr. Wegner at the field,” said PTA volunteer Anita Sheridan. “The kids are always bugging him to do the jog-a-thon, so he did it on the empty track. He rode around on a bike, pretended to row in a boat, and had a motorcycle. The kids thought it was hilarious. Everyone needed a little cheering up and it really raised community spirit.”

2020 was not only the first year Los Feliz Elementary School hosted a virtual jog-a-thon, but it was also its first year using PledgeStar. Los Feliz PTA had used an expensive third party platform for its online fundraising in the past. Sheridan noticed that it was extremely complicated and expensive, so she wanted to look for a more user friendly and cost effective way to collect money.

“We raised almost the same amount of money we thought we would raise if we had the jog-a-thon at school,” Sheridan said. “It was a shockingly good amount for not even having an event at school. Thanks to PledgeStar, we saved money AND headaches.”

Sheridan knew that asking family and friends for money during an unprecedented quarantine might be both uncomfortable and unsuccessful. She was also worried that the school closure would make students less likely to participate in the fundraising. But, she said, PledgeStar’s automatically generated emails eliminated awkward phone calls asking for money, as well as any reminder emails for students to do so.

PTA volunteers and school staff didn’t stop at the funny gym teacher video when it came to lifting student spirit. An office administrator volunteered to host a live stream from the school on the day of the event while another parent manned the sound board and directed the filming for families to watch at home. The PTA president served as emcee, narrating the event on the school’s social media page and website.

“The virtual jog-a-thon turned out better than we thought,” said Sheridan. “The school was doing Zoom classrooms already, so we had the systems set up and everything was in place with PledgeStar.”