Cents in Action: Real Talk
Cents in Action: Guest blog post by Rachel Henderson (The Soulsville Charter School - Memphis, TN)
Raised $2,485 for her students.
I am a college counselor at an inner-city charter school in Memphis. The vast majority of my students live in poverty, and will be first generation college students. Like most schools, we are on a tight budget, and are constantly struggling to acquire enough technology for our classrooms. I had 13 old desktop computers that were constantly breaking down to split between my 80 Seniors. Given that computer access is vital for every part of the college process, I was at my wit’s end. I saw a random post from a teacher friend of mine from the crowdfunding site, GoFundMe, and was intrigued. I decided to give it a try.
I wanted to give every one of my Seniors the opportunity to get a personal chromebook they could take with them to college, with the added bonus of solving my big technology problem. I also knew that the computers would be taken better care of if my students and their families had made a personal investment in them, so I decided to do a match. I found highly-rated, $200 chromebooks on Amazon, and created a cause on GoFundMe asking donors to do a match: $100 from a donor, $100 from the student. If I wanted to do a match for every Senior, I’d need $8,000. My campaign was up for a month or so, and I didn’t have much success. I raised enough for about 15 matches. I decided the whole crowdfunding thing wasn’t for me.
A few weeks later, a coworker told me about PledgeCents. I wasn’t interested initially because I was so discouraged by my attempt with GoFundMe. He raved about the personalized service he’d received, and the suggestions he’d gotten from management on how to make his campaigns more effective. PledgeCents was offering a dollar-for-dollar match for new campaigns at the time, so I figured I had nothing to lose.
I couldn’t believe how much easier it was to run a campaign with PledgeCents than it had been with GoFundMe. The website was user friendly, and it took very little time to create my cause. I got smarter about my fundraising goals, breaking the amount up into smaller, more manageable chunks so that donors wouldn’t be overwhelmed by the amount I was asking for. I exceeded the goal of my first cause in just a couple of weeks! I wanted to close the campaign early so that I could start a new one, and I emailed customer service asking if it was possible to do so. Almost immediately, I received a personalized response from a PledgeCents representative congratulating me on the success of my campaign, and letting me know that they would close it that evening. I received another email letting me know that my check was in the mail, and our director of finance had the check within days.
I highly recommend PledgeCents for educators, because the personalized customer service is unmatched. I have communicated with several members of their team, and their responsiveness and professionalism is truly impressive. They understand that schools are unique places with unique needs, and exist to make life easier for teachers. PledgeCents sends checks directly to the schools with administrator approval, while many other crowdfunding sites send them directly to the individual. I’ll be honest: I was wary of this at first. I didn’t like my perceived loss of control, and was worried that this step would create frustrating red tape. I found, however, that this unique approach made my causes more successful because they were more credible in the eyes of donors. My administrators were very supportive of my efforts through PledgeCents, and made it easy to receive reimbursement when the checks from PledgeCents came in. In schools where administrators are less accessible, I’ve heard of PledgeCents representatives bending over backwards to help remove additional barriers.
The best word I can think of to describe my experience with PledgeCents is “empowering.” They gave me an amazing opportunity to solve problems in my classroom directly and quickly, and that has made my life so much easier. My Seniors have access to life-giving technology that they wouldn’t have had before, and my family and friends got a chance to participate in the important work that I do. PledgeCents made all of that possible for me, and they can do the same for you!
*Rachel was not compensated for this post.
