The beauty of a free website builder like Bellstrike is how easy it is to use. If you can fill out a form and upload a picture, you can build a site. Bellstrike will give you the chance to have a place to send people for donations and information about your event or cause. Here is a run-through on how- to set-up a free donation site for your non-profit fundraiser.
Starting your free fundraising site
There is a little bit of information needed to create an account. The name of your organization, an email address, etc. It is all pretty basic except for one part.
You will need to use WePay for taking donations. If you do not have an account with WePay, you can create one in advance to make the process go faster.
Once you have run through the account setup, you are ready to roll up your sleeves and get to the real work. Here is a look at what the default site looks like. There is no information here other than what was given during the account setup.
As you go through the settings, you will be able to modify most of what you see in the above picture. There are a surprising amount of options available as you will see. The first step is to tackle the look of the site. You can change the color scheme, add a logo and add a summary to your header.
Now it is time for all of the essential information. You can type up all the information about your organization. Members of your team, mission statement, add pictures of your team and so on.
In the contact tab, there is a spot to link to your main website, Facebook and Twitter accounts if you have them.
The programs can be an “In the News” section. You can add pictures, videos and other information to go into better detail about what you do. If you have multiple programs, you can add more than one of these pages.
What kind of site would it be without a blog? You can easily update everyone on how you are doing. Having a blog section is a good place to talk more about your cause. You can write little posts to keep people talking about you and sharing your site.
The most important part to a site like this is the donation page. You will have a shopping cart-like checkout page where you can add different items or “Needs” to the page. That way. someone can give you $50 intended for Office supplies versus $50 for entertaining clients. You can edit the information people will see on the when they are ready to check out.
If you have the need for it, there is an option to add additional pages to the site. You can add text, photos, videos and even upload files for people to download later.
When you are all done making your site, you can take a look at the live version by clicking on the View Website button at the top of your site editor window. Here is the mess I created while writing this article. I hope yours looks a lot nicer when there are pics, videos and real information on it.
Final thoughts
I like the ease of use and how many options there are to create a fast donation site. Many uses come to mind for anyone who needs to collect money for events like:
Charity walk-a-thons or runs Non-profit fund raisers Small tournament registrations Club information sites Disaster relief donations School club or group donation sites
What are your thoughts about free site builders like Bellstrike? Image credit: Big Stock Photo
