Quicken Loans Charity Challenge 2017
CrowdRise Challenges What are they? Friendly fundraising competitions Designed to rally your supporters to donate and fundraise in a big way Large grand prizes and weekly cash prizes to motivate your community Allows everyone involved to gain awareness, recognition and resources Keep what you raise, even if you don t win a grand prize Real time campaigns that help you learn how to master crowdfunding and peer-to-peer giving
The Challenge The Quicken Loans Charity Challenge is a friendly fundraising competition, sponsored by Quicken Loans where local charities compete to raise the most money with the top teams winning grand prize donations. Everything launches on November 27th at 12pm ET and runs through January 2nd at 1:59:59pm ET.
Organization and individual Each organization in the Challenge will receive a mobile-friendly fundraiser page to customize and share your message and mission. Individuals are encouraged to join the organizations as fundraisers to help spread the word and reach out to their networks about the Challenge and the organization they re so passionate about.
Grand prizes The top 5 organizations will win a grand prize, and there will also be Bonus Challenges each week where charities can win extra cash for their cause. And, the best part of the Challenge is that even if you don't win any of the grand prize money, you get to keep the money you raise during the campaign. So, so great. $15,000 1st place $10,000 2nd place $5,000 3rd place $2,500 4th place $1,000 5th place
Next steps and best practices
Next steps Your page, your story Your online fundraiser is the page your supporters will use to donate to your cause. You want to make sure that it s super compelling and reflective of your organization s mission. Personalize your page by adding pics, a video and text to the story section letting everyone know what it would mean to win a grand prize. Grow your network Recruiting fundraisers (as opposed to just donors) turns a person who would ve been a one-time donor into someone who is reaching out to their own personal network on your behalf, extending your reach far beyond your own email list. In their most recent campaign, Cure JM Foundation recruited fundraisers and leveraged their community to raise almost $300,000 for their cause. They recruited 181 individuals to fundraise for them and share their campaign with their personal networks. Messaging and social media Once the Challenge starts, message about your campaign and ask everyone to donate. Leverage social media to spread the word and send lots of emails to help drive donations. And we ll help ya out with a bunch of email drafts along the way. Also, be so good at thanking your donors that they ll tell 10 friends and 1 enemy about your campaign. You can thank them through your fundraiser on CrowdRise, send them a personalized email or letter, or pick up the phone and call.
Leverage the Challenge Bonus Challenges Updates Challenge Toolkit Fundraisers Take advantage of the weekly Bonus Challenges that run throughout the Challenge. They re such a great way to rally your supporters from week to week, and they re really fun. Post campaign updates and sync with Twitter so all of your supporters can track your progress throughout the Challenge. Won a Bonus Challenge? Be sure to share it with everyone and celebrate. We want to make planning your Challenge campaign really easy, so we ve created a whole mess of info and a sample communication calendar to use. This is basically a reference guide to help you have a super successful Challenge campaign. Get your staff, board members and supporters involved as fundraisers. Remember, a $25 donor is great, but a $500 fundraiser is a game changer.
Funds, pricing and restrictions
How will we receive funds? You can choose which payment processor best suits your financial practices. Prefered Method Default Payment Processor Your charity also has the option to use WePay as your payment processor. With WePay, you can link your donations to your own charity bank account and request the funds daily, weekly or monthly. Donations are sent to your charity via check on the 15th of every month for donations made in the prior month. Or, you can sign up for an EFT.
Challenge pricing For the duration of the Quicken Loans Charity Challenge, there will be reduced fees on all donations made to your organization. Here s how it works: Quicken Loans is generously covering transaction fees for the duration of the Quicken Loans Charity Challenge. Your organization will see just the credit card payment processing fee of 2.9% of the donation + $0.30 per transaction. Donors will have the option to cover the payment processing fees, and if they choose to do so, 100% of their initial donation will go straight to your charity. What s amazing is that the majority of donors on CrowdRise choose to cover all fees for organizations like yours. If you re interested in being able to take advantage of even more tools on CrowdRise outside of the Challenge, click here.
Restrictions Offline donations won't count and are not reflected on leaderboard. A charity can't donate to itself (so you can't use your charity's own credit card, and this includes receiving cash donations and having an employee be a proxy for them). Gotta have 25 donations from unique donors to be eligible to win. A unique donor is defined as any donor that has billing information (first name, last name, and address) distinct from any other donor. Minimum donation amount is $10. No single donation can exceed $10k (but donors can make multiple $10k donations). No donor can account for more than 75% of the total raised (or every donation made by that donor will not count toward the contest/grand prizes).
Takeaways Be passionate and have fun Get the Word Out Use Challenge Tools Rally Email Works Best, Don t Be Shy Social Media Should be Secondary Support Leverage Partnerships and Relationships Use Every Challenge Possible to Spread the Word Weekly Bonus Challenges to Spur Activity Challenge Toolkit Campaign Updates and Widget Embrace Individual Fundraising Thank Your Donors Get a Couple Big Donations Early Involve Charity Staff, Volunteers and Board Members Use Timing to Your Advantage Leverage a Physical Event to Raise More in the Challenge
QuickenLoans@crowdrise.com