A colleague of mine in St Louis purchased a "do it yourself" website for his walkathon a few years ago.
He figured that the walkathon needed to accept donations in the online channel as well as by mail and phone. That's sound reasoning.
He also assumed that the walkathon software would greatly reduce the time and cost of administering the event. A drop in mail-in registrations, data entry, and mailing costs would drastically and positively effect the cost of the event for the organization.
He purchased a low budget "do it yourself" walkathon website to keep his costs down.
Great plan, right?
He was disappointed to find that the org was in fact spending more time designing their website than they had been spending on manual registrations.
The costs were actually greater for their organization. And the result was a "lame website" (his words) that made their organization look bad.
The fact is, orgs that take on technical projects when acquiring software from low budget or open source providers are simply replacing their old manual labor costs with new ones.
Instead of working on mailings and data entry, they are trying to figure out how to make text bold, or how to right justify an image and put a border on it.
What's the point?
If you're going to invest in a website for your walkathon, bike ride, or other pledge event invest in a product and service where the work is done for you. This way, you can spend the time on marketing, communication, and revenue generation. The point of the event is to raise money. All your activities should be tailored to meet that objective.
keep coming
good work
Posted by: social bookmarking | January 26, 2010 at 12:33 AM