Offering your donors the option to give monthly recurring gifts is a great way to boost your fundraising. Donors choose to give a certain amount, enter their credit card information once, and then their card is automatically charged every month. We’ve now created the ability for any donor to give a monthly recurring gift on your nonprofit’s Bellstrike website. And the best part is that you don’t need to do anything to make it happen. 

Any donor that visits your Donate page will be able to enter their gift amount or select a gift catalog item as in the past. 

However, now when they arrive at the checkout page, they’ll be able to check the box that says “Make this recurring (monthly)”. 

Once they select the monthly option and complete the checkout process, their credit card will be charged every month. They can manage their credit card information at any time by clicking on a link that will appear in the email receipt that they’ll receive from WePay, the company that we use to handle credit card transactions. 

We hope that you’ll be able to put this new feature to good use and encourage your donors to start setting up monthly recurring donations. Let us know if you have any questions. 

Have you ever wanted your supporters to raise money on your behalf? You’ve now got an easy way to make that happen. We call it myCause, and it’s a feature that’s built-in to your nonprofit’s website - no work required by you!

Why would someone use myCause?

Let’s say you have a supporter that wants to run a marathon to raise money for your organization. They can direct everyone to their myCause fundraiser page. You get the donations and they get to track their progress.

Or, maybe one of your supporters wants to give up her birthday and have everyone donate to your nonprofit instead of giving her gifts. She can create a myCause fundraising page and direct everyone there.

There are a ton of other ways that your supporters can use the myCause section - and they’re really only limited by their imagination!

So, how does myCause work?

Any of your supporters can click on the myCause tab on your website. 

They’ll be able to easily create their own profile page on your site and tell everyone why they support your organization.

On their profile page, they’ll be able to see and show any donations that they’ve made. They’ll also be able to easily create a fundraising page.

On their fundraising pages they’ll be able to name the page, tell everyone what their fundraiser is all about, set goals and set an end date. They can share this fundraising page through a unique link, Facebook, and Twitter. Anyone can donate on this page. The donations go straight to your nonprofit and the creator of the fundraising page (and everyone else) can track the progress of the fundraiser and see communications and gifts from donors.

Of course if you need to moderate any of the activity on the myCause section of your site, you can do so through our easy management area in your dashboard. You can even turn the myCause section off entirely if you don’t want to use it. Learn more in our Help section.

All in all, we think the myCause social fundraising tool is a great way to empower your donors to make a difference in your nonprofit’s cause.  

We’re happy to announce that the Leo Israel Memorial Fund is the winner of the $5,000 Bellstrike Grant Contest!

Three months ago we announced the launch of the grant contest, which ran from January 1 to March 31. We placed a Facebook and Twitter sharing widget on the Thank You page that every donor arrives at after they’ve completed a donation. Every “share” that a nonprofit received put the nonprofit’s name in the pot to receive the grant. The more shares that a nonprofit received, the better its chances of winning.

The Leo Israel Memorial Fund is a New York based nonprofit that we’ve actually written about previously on our blog. Here’s what Caitlin Israel, who started the organization with her husband, had to say about winning the grant contest, “As if we didn’t already have enough reasons to love Bellstrike! This grant is so unexpected and so welcome. And it actually comes at the perfect time. We really have not fundraised at all, we’ve relied on the caring and generosity of our friends and community to help spread the word, and Bellstrike has provided a solid platform to help us share our thoughts and progress. We’ve raised enough money to build a fantastic playground. But we keep reminding ourselves just who this playground is in memory of and we want to make it every bit as special as our son Leo was. With this extra push from Bellstrike we will be able to do just that, it will really allow us to add some extra personalization and make it a true memorial.”

You can check them out at http://leoisraelmemorialfund.bellstrike.com 

In case you’re wondering, even though the contest has ended, we’ve still kept the Facebook and Twitter social sharing widget on the Thank You page as a way for your donors to spread the word about your organizations.

Congratulations again to the Leo Israel Memorial Fund!

We’ve had a good many nonprofits asking for the ability to add their own custom colors to their Bellstrike website. We’re happy to announce that we’ve just made that possible. In the dashboard area of your website, you’ll find a section under “Appearance” where you can edit your site’s colors. In this section, you can easily choose any color you’d like for the different areas of your site. You can choose from a color picker or enter the Hex or RGB values of any color. 

You’ll always be able to reset back to default colors just in case. You can find a full tutorial in our Help section. As always, let us know if you have any questions. Enjoy!

In the early days of the internet, nonprofits had high hopes for websites and on-line donation technologies. Unfortunately, high-tech tools do not in and of themselves bring in money. Many early online donation technologies wound up costing nonprofits more money than they raised. Recently, new resources like Bellstrike’s low cost website creation tool offered a quick, cost-effective and attractive way for nonprofits to develop a web presence and to accept contributions on-line.

Fund-raising is still 90% human contact, however. People give to people, not organizations and certainly not to websites alone. Something has to make them want to give. Online tools give donors a means to give, but don’t necessarily give them the motivation. Motivation comes through compelling online content and relationships.

Fund-raisers know that many significant donations happen over a cup of coffee or a handshake. Fund-raisers, live auctions, charity galas, concerts and other live events raise millions of dollars in on-the-spot contributions. Where credit cards are accepted at such events, contributions rise dramatically.

Until recently, accepting credit cards at live events has been problematic for live charity fund-raisers, particularly small ones. Setting up land lines, leasing credit card machines and setting up special merchant accounts at the bank could cost more in cash and staff time than it was worth. But technology and ingenuity have created some amazing new cost-effective tools to help you snag those impulse donations and on-the-spot charitable gifts.

Square, created by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, allows anyone, small nonprofits included, to take credit card payments on the spot. 

Square (http://squareup.com) is a great compliment to Bellstrike to allow your nonprofit to take donations in-person. For a modest 2.7% per transaction fee, fund-raisers can clip a small square magnetic-strip reader to the headphone jack of a smartphone or i-Pad, swipe credit cards and record donations wherever they can receive a cell phone signal. There are no merchant accounts to set up, no monthly fees or set-up charges. Download the free i-Pad app and register. Square will send you the strip reader device for free. The donations you swipe are transferred directly to your organization’s bank account the next day. If the donor wants a receipt, enter his e-mail address and a receipt will be e-mailed. If the card won’t swipe, you can manually enter it for a 3.5% + 15¢ per transaction fee.

Square even offers a product that turns your i-Pad into a virtual cash register. Simply attach the card reader to your i-Pad, start the software and voila! You have an easy-to-use cash register for your registration table. Link to a wireless printer and the virtual register produces hardcopy receipts. The Square system also works on i-phones, the i-Pod Touch as well as Android smartphones.