How It Works
Personalization + Automation + Participation = SUCCESS
In our experience, SUCCESS in sports/school crowdfunding boils down to three essential components: Personalization, Automation, and Participation. A lacking in any of these elements can lead to a difficult campaign. But when they work together great things happen.
FanAngel's mission is to provide teams, schools, booster clubs, and athletes both a platform and assistance they need to deliver the highest probability of fundraising success with the least amount of effort and a guaranteed low price.
To deliver on that mission, we offer:
Low fees -- ~90% of every donation goes to the beneficiary. FanAngel keeps 7% and the credit card fees are 2.8% for non-profits or 2.9% + $0.30/transaction for for-profits. Your program gets the rest, guaranteed. Compare that to other crowdfunding sites that keep between 20-30%!!!
Personalization -- FanAngel supports several personalization features, including our most popular Team model which gives each player on a team a unique URL which displays that player's name, profile photos and fundraising goals. This form of personalization has been shown to nearly double donation rates and values.
Fast Funds by Check or Direct to Your Bank -- Most schools require a paper check. No problem. We send funds the Monday after your fundraiser ends (for programs closing Wednesday or before). For booster clubs and club sports, it only takes a few minutes to set up an account with our credit card processor, Stripe, where funds are deposited weekly (can be changed to daily, monthly or custom).
IRS Compliance - FanAngel strictly follows IRS Compliance Laws to make sure donations remain tax deductible (when legally appropriate: rewards, auctions, and non-qualifying beneficiaries all affect deductibility).
Here to Help - A FanAngel campaign coach will help you every step of the way. Working remotely, we help with script templates, email/flyer templates, launch outlines. Your success is job #1.
Game Plan
While there may not be a One Size Fits All group fundraising strategy, there is a One Size Fits MOST and that's the ASK Campaign.
Ask Campaigns are traditional letter writing campaign with a twist: they are hosted on the internet, use personalized donation pages, leverage automated reminders and a slew of other digital strategies that in concert work to help teams, schools, and boosters raise an amazing number of donations in a simple, repeatable, and successful fashion that works year in and year out.
Below are the standard steps to execute an Ask Campaign. However, FanAngel supports several other campaigns strategies, including Online Auctions, Pledge for Performance (jog-a-thon, lift-a-thon, etc.), Donation Perks, and many more. See details on our LEARN PAGE.
Personalization + Automation + Participation = SUCCESS
YOUR FANANGEL CAMPAIGN COACH WILL HELP YOU EVERY STEP OF THE WAY.
Questionnaire
A booster parent or coach will answer a short set of questions, such as funds needed, use of funds, number of athletes, etc. (takes about 10 minutes).
Draft Campaign
With questionnaire answers in hand, FanAngel will create a draft page with draft content.
Bank Info
(Optional) For direct banking, a booster treasurer or school representative will need to setup an account with our credit card processor (takes about 10 minutes). Funds can then be transferred to your bank daily, weekly, monthly or on-demand.
parent email/meeting
FanAngel will script and send you email templates, video templates, and various documents to help communicate with families and film a campaign video.
Shoot Video
Before or after a designated practice, gather the team together to shoot a short campaign video. A quick 30-second phone video does as well as more edited versions. Don't get hung up on video quality.
ENTER EMAIL
Have participants bring their smartphones to group meeting on the video day. Each participant will then create an account, take a profile photo, and enter the required number of emails for potential supporters from around the country. Alternatively, this can be done from home as homework.
It's super simple. Check out this tutorial video to see how easy it is to join: Join a Fundraiser Tutorial
Now you are ready to
Launch the Campaign
Monitor Progress: The campaign doesn't end at launch. The more participation that occurs pre-launch, the less there is to monitor. But this isn't always the case. Moreover, perhaps you want to incentives the kids for participation. That's where our Campaign Admin comes into play. Check out this tutorial to see how you can track the progress of each individual participant: Admin Tutorial.
Why it Works
That's the HOW it works, but the WHY is where the magic really happens. As mentioned above, the why comes down to this simple formula: Personalization + Automation + Participation = SUCCESS.
Personalization
Personalizing the campaign with the students'/athletes' name, photo and personal goal has several powerful effects. First, most donations are in honor of a specific student. Thus, that student's name and photo are key triggers in connecting the donor with the fundraising need.
Second, the student's personal fundraising goal will be extremely reasonable...a few hundred dollars usually. When a donor visits the site and is capable of donating $25, $50, or $100, they immediately know that their donation has a substantial effect on the student's personal goal. For example, a $50 donation is 25% of a student's $200 goal, making is extremely meaningful. That same donation seems insubstantial on the team's $7000 goal. This slight change in context has a huge difference on donation rates.
Automation
FanAngel was developed with teams and schools in mind. Thus our automations are specific to helping groups increase productivity and reduce stress on coaches, teachers and boosters. Here is a short list of some key features:
Reminders to Athletes/Students to complete their participation requirements.
Reminders to supporters for donations
Send, open, click, and donation tracking for coaches to review team progress
Bounce and bad email tracking
Participation
In many ways, participation is the most important factor of success. Without participation, no amount of personalization or automation will make a difference.
Thus FanAngel works closely with coaches and boosters to help get the most out of their organizations. Writing emails and scripts, editing video, planning releases are just a few things we provide. Moreover, our website is designed to be extremely simple for students and families, making the process as seamless as possible. Just see how easy it is for team to share the campaign.
What are you waiting for?
Contact us and a FanAngel campaign coach will get back to you shortly. Drop us a line at help@fanangel.com.