In September, a group of board members from Chicago Children’s Charities raised money for their organization using GiveForward’s new Group Pages.

Like a lot of small non-profits, Chicago Children’s Charities had relied primarily on gala and bar event fundraisers, as well as on corporate gifts.  With the tightening economy, many of their board members were having difficulty acquiring the funds they were used to receiving.  So, they decided to put together a team of charity runners to supplement their fundraising efforts.

In just a few weeks, and with very little organized effort, they were able to raise $13,000.

Here is what Ashley Dent, the leader of the charity running team, had to say about Chicago Children’s Charities’ experience on GiveForward.org:

I’m on a board that fundraises for a few children’s charities. In the past, we’ve raised most of our funds through corporations, but we needed some new ways to fundraise this year. I discovered GiveForward, and realized that the site could be a powerful fundraising tool for our board members.

As a board, we participated in GiveForward’s 5k Run for a Reason. Not only did we have a fun running for a great cause (our own!), but we raised over $13,000 on the site in just a few weeks! Each board member took just a few minutes to set up their own personalized fundraising page, asked friends and family for support, and our fundraising quickly took off.

This is one of the few times in life when minimal effort translates into a great reward. Collectively, hundreds of people donated to our charity, but this would not have been possible without the online webpages we created. We will definitely fundraise through GiveForward in the future – it was simple, effective, and enabled us to make a difference in the lives of Chicago’s children.

If you would like to learn more about creating a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign, Kurt Kittner, El Da’Sheon Nix of Cabrini Connections and the founders of GiveForward will be presenting workshops at the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference Nov 19-20.