Managing Join Me

Welcome to Greater Giving Join Me, a set of online tools designed to empower peer-to-peer fundraising, building on the momentum of popular social networking applications. You can use Join Me in conjunction with events or start independent fundraising campaigns. Join Me is quick to deploy and easy for social fundraisers to use. This topic describes how to begin using these powerful viral tools.

This schematic shows how you use Join Me to solicit fundraisers who then invite their friends and family to donate and become Join Me fundraisers as well.

Organization sets up Fundraiser Signup Website-

That attracts personal fundraisers who create their Join Me pages and widgets-

That attract their friends who donate and some of them also create Join Me pages-

All of them become supporters that make your event successful!

Your organization solicits web-savvy supporters to do personal and team fundraising using email and social networking websites and tools. These fundraisers create personal fundraising pages where they tell others about why they support your cause. These personal fundraising pages contain displays that show how much they hope to raise and how far they have progressed. People viewing these websites can click to donate online using their credit or debit cards.

Join Me fundraisers attract their friends and families to these pages using powerful email tools to send to people already in their address books. Fundraisers also use their personal pages on social networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace!, Blogger, or WordPress, to place a widget that shows visitors they are supporting your nonprofit, their goal, their progress, and a link to visit the personal fundraising website. They can send their fundraising website page address using Twitter to attract followers.

When friends visit the fundraising website page and make a donation, they can leave comments that become part of the page for others to see.

The fundraiser has tools on the Join Me website that show the donations, who made them, and what comments they wrote. The fundraiser can add any offline check or cash donations he or she receives.

At the same time, the nonprofit can monitor all personal and team fundraiser activity and donations on the Project Home page. You get instant updates as the donations are made.

You can get started by watching the training video. On the Project Home page, under Help, click the Watch Join Me Training Videos link.

Create a Join Me Project or Enhance an Event with Join Me Fundraising

On your Organization Home page, you can see if the Join Me product is available to your organization.

With Join Me you can either create new projects that are just fundraising campaigns, such as walk-a-thons. You can create gala and auction events that include Join Me fundraising participants. When you click the Create New Project button, you choose the template project and it determines what features you have available. The Fundraiser Template provides you with Join Me but no auction features (like items or catalogs).

You can add Join Me to an existing event project. In the Project menu, click Settings. Click the Edit button. Select Use Join Me with this project and then clickSave. When you return to the Project Home page, you see the new Join Me options.

Next you create a Join Me project website. This website is separate from other project websites you may have created. The website contains a landing page where visitors learn about your fundraising effort. It includes a link that fundraisers click to sign up and learn how to create their Join Me web pages.

There are three steps to launch Join Me:

• Create a website to advocate your cause and attract fundraisers.
• Create a package to contain the donations you receive.
• Add a Fundraiser Signup Page to your website.

 Note: Wherever you see the green question mark button within the online application, you can click the button to learn more about that part of the program.

Create a Website

1. On the Project Home page, click Manage Project Website. Click the Create Website button.
2. When you see that your website landing page is published, scroll down and click Edit Page Settings.
3. On the Edit Landing Page, you can add Landing Page Header Text and Landing Page Body Text. You can add an image. When you are done, click theSave button.
4. You see a notice that you have successfully modified your landing page. Scroll down to click View Page on Website.

When you use Join Me, the website also includes fundraiser signup pages. The Fundraiser Signup Page on your project website provides an introduction for people interested in becoming a fundraiser. It also sets up the information and goals for the fundraiser. Finally, it defines how you record the donations coming in from the fundraiser by using a package that gets sold for each donation.

If your organization has only purchased the Join Me product, then you cannot accept event registrations that will import event registration information into your Supporter database. You can however create a Sales and Cash Donation page within your website where you can sell package sales (e.g. tickets, goods, sponsorships) and accept cash donations.

Create a Package

For your fundraising effort, you need to create a receptacle, called a package, for your donations.

1. In the View menu, click Packages.
2. Click the Add button.
3. On the Creating a Package page, the only required action is to name your package. (If you are in an Event, then you also need to select the Multiple Salecheckbox.)
4. Click the Save button.

If you do setup different Fundraising Groups or Causes, be sure to create different packages for each group or cause.

You have a website and a package to sell. Now you need to add a link so fundraisers can sign up and get started.

Add a Fundraiser Signup Page to your Website

This tells how to add a Fundraiser Signup Page to the landing page of your website. You do not even need to publish your landing page if you do not want to do so - you can unpublish it, add and publish a Fundraiser Signup Page, and then use the signup page itself as the first page your potential fundraisers reach.

If you do publish both pages, you can be more elaborate about your describing your cause on the landing page. Be aware that the Fundraising Signup Page should contain a briefer version of your cause since this description appears on all the fundraising pages created by Join Me fundraisers.

1. In the Project menu, click Manage Project Website.
2. In the Add a page drop down list, click Fundraiser Signup Page and click the Add button.
3. Follow the instructions in the wizard and the green question mark help bubbles to create the Fundraiser Signup Page and the Join Me Fundraising Pages that are created by users signing up via this Fundraiser Signup Page.
4. Fundraising Page Layout (page 2 of the wizard) allows you to set up the fundraising page with the Organization's information on top or move the fundraiser's statement and image/video to the top of the fundraising page. It also allows you to give  or restrict the fundraiser the ability to move their statement and image/video to the top of the page.
5. Setting Fundraiser Page Defaults (page 2 of the wizard) can help keep the images/videos on the various personal fundraising sites consistent. The Fundraiser Page Defaults are the settings that are put on the fundraiser page when the fundraiser first signs up and creates his/her page. This indicates what appears on the fundraiser page in the Fundraiser Image/Video panel at the beginning.  These values can be changed by the fundraiser and only applies to new pages.
6. When you are done, you can click the link at the top of the page to view your project website and see the Personal Fundraiser Signup link.

You can add an image or a video to your Fundraiser Signup page

1. In the Project menu, click Manage Project Website.
2. Scroll down to your Fundraiser Signup page and click Edit Page Settings for that page.
3. Go to the second page of the wizard by clicking Next.
4. Scroll down to the Fundraiser Page Graphics section.
   1. If you are using an IMAGE, click New Image and upload it or click Image from Image Manager and select it.
   2. If you are using a VIDEO, check Show Video in place of Fundraiser Image and enter the video's information in the Fundraising Video HTML field that appears.

Now you can invite supporters to visit your website and sign up to become personal and team fundraisers.