Setting up a Tap Cancer Out fundraising page

For 2018, the Artemis BJJ GrappleThon will be in support of Tap Cancer Out. It begins at 14:00 on World Cancer Day, Saturday 3rd February 2018, running through to 14:00 on the Sunday. The process of setting up a fundraising page on the Tap Cancer Out platform (powered by classy.org) is simple:

1. Select 'Become a Fundraiser'

2. Set your target (it defaults to dollars, so you change to GBP for £s if you like)

3. Log in with either Facebook or set up an account (you'll need an email address, then create a password)


4. Choose your profile pic








And that's it! You can further customise your page after that, which I'd recommend, but your page is ready to go after just four steps. The main thing I'd suggest modifying if the story, providing more details about the event. If you'd like an example, this is what I wrote on my page:

On World Cancer Day 2018 (4th February 2018), Artemis BJJ will be hosting another 24hr GrappleThon at MYGYM Bristol. We'll be rolling continuously from 14:00 on Saturday 3rd February through to 14:00 on the Sunday, raising funds for the good people at Tap Cancer Out. All the info you need is on our website:

http://www.ArtemisBJJ.com/GrappleThon2018/

Come and join us! Everybody is welcome, from complete beginners to seasoned veterans. :)

Using MyDonate For Your BJJ Charity Event

If possible, I generally use JustGiving for GrappleThons. However, sometimes the charity I want to support is smaller, so goes for a free fundraising platform instead. From my experience, MyDonate is the best of the free platforms. That's run by the large UK company, BT. It has a few advantages over JustGiving, the main one being that they don't charge charities a fee to use their service (unlike JustGiving, which charges £15 per month). The downside is that MyDonate's interface is a bit more clunky and setting up a page is rather more fiddly too. However, the advantage of not costing the charity anything is considerable, so that's worth some hassle. :)

Here are the steps to set up your fundraising page on MyDonate, using the 2017 Artemis BJJ GrappleThon for SARSAS as an example (click on the pictures for a larger image):

1. Sign up to MyDonate

2. Click on 'Start Fundraising' at the top. Alternatively go to 'my account', then click on 'Create fundraising page' in the left hand menu.

3. Select 'Create my challenge'

4. Type 'SARSAS' in the 'search for a charity' box

5. Select 'SARSAS' from the list that pops up, then click through.

6. Select 'Other' from the list of fundraising challenges, then put in something like 'grappling' or 'GrappleThon'


7. If you want to add the address, select 'Yes' on whether or not the challenge is taking place at a specific location (handily, this creates a map on your fundraising page), then enter:

MYGYM
Unit 4B, Dean Street
Bristol
United Kingdom
BS2 8SF

8. The next part is important, as this determines how long your page stays open. Put in the date as starting 15-04-2017 from 14:00 through to 16-04-2017 at 14:00.

9. You can pick however long you want for keeping the page running after the event finishes, ranging from 3 months to 12 months.

10. Pick whatever url you want for the fundraising page (note it has to be all lower case), then be sure to link your page to the Artemis BJJ GrappleThon 2017 team: the reference number is 532098561. When you click 'Validate', the name of the team and owner will appear in green.

11. Select 'No' for the two tick boxes under Gift Aid.

12. In the fundraising story, you can write whatever you think will best inspire people to donate to your page. If you're looking for an example, this is what I put. Note that the 'page title' has to be less than 50 characters.

13. Next, pick an image if you like (there's also the option to link to your Flickr and/or a YouTube video).

14. After that, you can set a target if you want, then you're ready to (finally!) move on to the next page and finish. :)

Using JustGiving For Your BJJ Charity Event

There are quite a few online fundraising platforms available now, but the most reliable is probably JustGiving (the US equivalent is FirstGiving, but you can donate to JustGiving from the US and indeed anywhere else in the world that has an internet connection). This is the site that colleagues at the charity where I work recommended to me: it isn't buggy, it is unlikely to break in the middle of donating and it is easy to use.

I take advantage of the 'team' feature on JustGiving, which enables me to combine everybody's individual totals into a single page. It is simple to set up a team page, which I'll cover in a future post. For now, I wanted to share the steps I send to people when they ask me how to set up a page to join a GrappleThon (although now I can just link to this post: hooray! ;D). Setting up a team isn't entirely dissimilar.

Setting Up A JustGiving Page For A GrappleThon Team

1. Go to http://www.justgiving.com

2. Enter an email address to sign up, or go via Facebook, then fill in your details.

3. After you create an account, click on ‘Create a page’ under the ‘For fundraisers’ bit at the bottom of the screen.

4. That will open a new window, with a box saying ‘Search for the cause you want to support’. Search for the charity you want to support and select it. However, be careful: there may be several other similarly named but completely separate charities.

5. Another window will open. Click on ‘Personal challenge’ under ‘Doing your own thing’.

6. Yet another window. In the first bit, click the arrow by ‘Please select an activity’ and select ‘an appeal for a charity’. In the box under that, I’d suggest writing ‘grappling’, ‘sparring’ or something like that.

7. Click ‘No’ in the next section, then fill in your desired url in the ‘Choose your JustGiving web address’ part.

8. Finish by clicking ‘Create your page’. You should now be able to fill in your new page. You can fill it in however you want, but if you’d like some ideas, this is what I wrote in 2013: http://www.justgiving.com/grapplethon2013

9. It may be worth extending the deadline, to make sure your page doesn't expire before the event. When you edit your page, there is an option on the right hand side under ‘Page settings’ that says ‘Extend your page’. Click on that, then change the deadline to as far in the future as you'd like (the cut-off is several years).

10. You may also want to change your theme, depending on what the default theme for the charity you've chosen looks like. From the same screen that has 'extend your page', click on 'Change your theme' (this will be above the box that says 'Create a video update'). You want to make sure your page is easy to read.

11. Go to the GrappleThon team page and select 'Join the team' to add your page: for the 2016 event in support of One25, that is here.

12. Raise lots of money by promoting your fundraising page among friends and family (so, Facebook, Twitter, email, etc)! :D

Other Platforms

The negative side is that JustGiving does charge charities to use it (around £15 a month) and they also take a percentage from Gift Aid (that's an additional 25% a charity can claim back from tax, as long as the person donating is a UK tax payer and isn't getting anything in return. Or at least that's the basic description: there are some grey areas). JustGiving has a description of how their fees work here, which is fairly clear.

If you want to avoid any fees for the charity, you have some other options. For example, one of the charities I regularly support, Equality Now, is on MyDonate, run by the large UK company, BT. I used that platform for the 2015 International Women's Day GrappleThon: here's a guide if you want to use MyDonate for your event. Another big UK company, Virgin, also has a charity site, Virgin Money Giving. Neither of them charge charities any ongoing fees (though Virgin Money Giving do charge charities a one-off sign-up fee), which sounds good, although they are not as reliable and robust as JustGiving.