DIY Memorial Page

Brian Mucha:

SheryAnne Wui:

Hello,


We're a local hospice thinking of memorial DIY peer to peer project using LO TeamRaiser. We currently, also use Raisers Edge, events and tribute module. Has anyone worked on or thought of a DIY peer to peer, memorial page using LO TeamRaiser? If so, any thoughts, website pages to view and or share...


Thank you,

SheryAnne

Here's ours: http://foundation.luriechildrens.org/site/TR?fr_id=1520&pg=entry


Ours mostly suffers from the lack of a dedicated event coordinator. We're planning on merging it with our generic DIY 'Circle of Friends' later this year for that reason.


No thoughts on memorial/tribute specifically, but have you done a DIY TeamRaiser before? Some things to consider:

Users wanting multiple concurrent pages

Teamraiser makes it hard for a single user to participate more than once at the same time. Not allowing duplicate emails, etc. It's a bit clunky to tell them to register with a separate/different email address. And even so, there is still the threat of accidental duplicate merges with those cons records.

Migrating to the next version

At some point you will want to design a new version. This is easy with normal annual events, but with DIY there is no single event that ends the life of the Teamraiser so that you can open a new version. Each pariticpant just sort of peters out at different times. With a DIY event you might choose to keep both open for a time, with registration turned off on the old one. Still a bit clunky to do this. Where does the URL point? How do donors know which to search for the fundraiser they want to support?

Participant 'Events' and FMV

Fair market value is set on a TR wide basis. But you'll always have someone soliciting a donation in exchange for a ticket to a dinner party or something. That should have a FMV to account for the cost of the dinner, so you have to be careful to monitor and not allow this. 

Participants and Designated Giving

Different participants will want their dollars to go to different funds, which also can only be set up across the board for each teamraiser. This had meant a lot of manual work for our RE people. (I found a solution to this, working off of an idea from one of the support techs. When I finish building it, I'll be sure to post with the code.)



That's all I can think of now!


-BPM

 

Brian Mucha:
Users wanting multiple concurrent pages

How did you work around these types of overlapping participants/users?
We pretty much just put a 'contact us if you want to do this' line, so we could explain the process. Use a different email (and name if you can.) Log on to the appropriate participant account when fundraising, etc. Clunky, but not super frequent.

Migration of the next version

When you mentioned new version, does that mean a new page wrapper, or updating content, donation page? Yeah, that would seem tricky in updating an ongoing DIY campaign.
I mean a new version of the actual TR. Our DIY lived unchanged since 2013, but our basic design evolved and new features were introduced and so on. Doing a complete revamp is tough to do live. (I suppose you could manage it and avoid this whole thing if you were really organized and a little daring.)

When a page becomes 'inactive', at what point to mark the page 'inactive', or do you just let it remain static?
A little of let it remain, and a little of mark it inactive when you know the event's date, I think. We're considering adding a reg question for 'end date if known'.


Also, when searching, do you allow the search for tribute and /or the person who generated the page aka 'team captain'?
Both I believe.

Participants 'Events' and FMV

interesting... never thought of this
Easy to do. Most miss FMV issues. Your participants get a running shirt or other perks for registering? That probably has FMV implications too. (I'm starting to wonder about upselling extra shirts and sales tax.)

Participants and Designated Giving

Can you incorporate designated funds or restricted giving within the online donation page? Which can also be tricky because funds are dynamic on a fiscal year basis, and DIY is an ongoing event. 
Yes, you can use designated giving in TR donation forms, which actually never occured to me. (Wait, that works?!) But the problem is that it leaves the choice to the donor, rather than the fundraiser. The solution I hinted at uses designations though. (Add designated giving fields to donation form, and make them hidden with CSS. Ask Participants what fund they support with a registration question. Add a script on the form that retrieves that selection with an s-tag and sets the designation fields appropriately, without the donor even seeing it. Neat!)


Almost seems that a DIY project needs to be treated like an annual event, with your suggestion of having both events open. And, again... how do you carry over a participant?
You probably won't need to completely revamp the TR every year, minor updates happen all the time. This year we used reports to ID the bigger active accounts and moved them manually (if they agreed after contacting them.) Their existing gifts were added to the new TR as offline donations, so the thermometers were unaffected by the move.