How to create a reading fundraiser

Launching a reading fundraiser is a great way to grow a culture of reading at your school or library, get community involvement through reading, and raise funds for important community projects. And setup is a snap!

Note: Only library administrator and media specialist plus roles can create and edit reading fundraisers. Contact your site or district administrator if you need a different access level or a new Beanstack account to help set up your reading fundraiser!

Follow the steps below to activate and edit a reading fundraiser on your Beanstack site:

Selecting Your Template

1. Log in to the admin view of your site. 
2. Navigate to Challenges > Fundraisers. Here you will see all your draft, published, and ended fundraisers.
3. Click “Create a Fundraiser” to start a new one.
4. The next screen will display your reading fundraiser template options. Once you decide which template you’d like to customize, click “Use This Template.”

Filling in Your Fundraiser Details

Once you’ve selected your template, you will be ushered into the fundraiser setup’s “Fundraiser Details” page. In the Details section, you can edit the fundraiser title, description, and start and end dates.

Note: Fundraisers cannot last for more than 31 days or less than 2 days, and cannot overlap with another published reading fundraiser.

1. In the “Goal” section, edit your overall fundraising goal. Need some help picking the right target? You can read our guide here. 
2. Under “Landing Page,” you can edit the full description on your fundraiser’s landing page, change the promotional header image, and display latest donations, latest books read, and/or total minutes read.
   • You can enable or disable the “Search by Reader Name” setting to allow visitors to search for participating readers on the fundraiser’s community landing page and donate to their individual pages.
   • You can also enable or disable the “Custom Opt Out Option for Donors” to add a custom statement at the bottom of your donation form to ask donors for permission for things like sharing their information with a sponsor or adding them to your newsletter. They check or uncheck the box before submitting their donation.
3. The “Payout” section is for internal use only, and determines to whom we make out your final check and where we send it at the end of your reading fundraiser. Fill in all the contact fields here, include an optional memo, and toggle on or off the tax exempt setting. 
4. Add the contact details for your main fundraiser administrator in the final “Contact” section. This information is also for internal use, and is used to confirm your payment settings and to discuss physical promotional material ordering.
5. When finished, click “Next.”

Adding and Editing Badges

The “Badges” page lists all the badges in your fundraiser challenge by badge type. Keep in mind that each fundraiser can include a maximum of 50 badges.

1. To create a new badge, click “Create A Badge” next to the badge type header. To edit an existing badge, click “Edit” to the right of the desired badge. And click “Remove” to delete that badge from your challenge.
2. When creating or editing a donation badge, first select your badge image and then set the donation goal. The goal is the number of individual donations a reader must receive in order to earn the badge. Click “Save” when done.
3. When creating or editing a logging badge, first select your badge image and then set the logging goal. Logging badges in a reading fundraiser must track minutes, and no other log type, so this goal is the number of minutes a reader must log to earn the badge. Click “Save” when finished.
4. When creating an activity badge, you’ll start with the badge’s basic information and fill out the the badge title, enter an optional description, select the badge image, and specify the number of activities that must be completed to earn the badge. Then, click “Save.”
5. On the next page, click “Add an Activity” to enter the description of what the reader must do, as well as optionally enter a link title and URL. Click “Add” when done and repeat for as many activities as desired.
6. Clicking and dragging the list icon on the left of each activity allows you to change the order of activities in your activity badge. Clicking the pencil icon allows you to edit an activity. And clicking the trash icon deletes the activity.
7. Click “Done” when finished to save and add the activity badge.

Adding and Editing Prizes

The final page of your fundraiser setup is Prizes. Here, you can create, edit, and remove prizes the same way you create, edit, and remove badges.

1. When creating a prize, you will want to give your prize a unique, easily recognizable name, fill out the instructions section with details about how to redeem the prize, and select the badge(s) that will earn the reader the prize. Then click “Save.”
2. When you’re finished with all three pages of your fundraiser challenge setup, click “Save & Exit” to save your draft and view your fundraiser dashboard.

Editing, Previewing, and Publishing Your Fundraiser

1. When viewing your fundraiser dashboard, you can edit the draft fundraiser by clicking the “Edit” button in the upper righthand corner of the page. This will take you back into your fundraiser setup.
2. To preview your fundraiser’s community page, click “Community Page.” To get a glimpse of what an individual reader’s donation page and challenge page will look like, navigate back to the fundraisers dashboard and click the eye icon to the right of the draft fundraiser to preview it and toggle between the fundraiser landing page, individual readers’ donation pages, and the challenge page.
3. To publish an upcoming fundraiser, click “Publish Fundraiser.” Keep in mind that you can only publish your fundraiser challenge if the dates are upcoming or current and if there are no other active fundraiser challenges running on your site. Also remember that publishing a fundraiser is permanent; fundraisers cannot be un-published! But you can continue editing all aspects of your reading fundraiser until its start date. When a fundraiser is published, all readers on a library site are able to preview and join it, while school readers will be automatically enrolled once the fundraiser is live.
4. Once your fundraiser’s start date arrives, certain components of your fundraiser challenge will be locked, like badges, to avoid interfering with the readathon experience. Once live, the reading fundraiser landing page is available at your Beanstack URL + /fundraiser (for example, yourschool.beanstack.org/fundraiser). Be sure everything is finalized before your start date!