Fundraising app for Maggie's designed to boost team motivation
Howard Lake | 7 March 2012 | News
‘Software artisans’ EdgeCase have developed a web app for Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centres which is designed to tackle the problem of motivating a team of volunteer fundraisers and to boost the amount the team raises.
The Go Team Go app enables participants in Maggie’s Monster Bike and Hike 2012, the 24-hour Highland challenge, to track their progress, motivate themselves and the people sponsoring them share through social media, and to promote the charity.
Each year around 1,000 people take part to raise funds for Maggie’s Centres. Peter Aitken of EdgeCase had taken part in 2011 with a team of five friends, but noticed that “there was no easy way to track progress and successfully motivate our team. We needed a tool to aid this process and Go Team Go was the solution.”
EdgeCase, which specialises in rapid sustainable development of mobile and web applications, sets a certain amount of time aside for developers to pursue their own projects. Aitken decided to create an app to boost the impact of Maggie’s Centres’ fundraising events.
Users of the app sign up to Go Team Go, enter their team names and link up to their JustGiving page. The dashboard details each individual’s training schedule for the week. Email alerts remind each team member of their training targets and remind an individual if they haven’t logged their details for that week. These features should help the individual and the team to achieve their goals and raise more money for the charity.
The app also has the option to share each teammate’s progress on social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, which helps to raise awareness of the cause. This function could prove useful for participants who are uncomfortable with asking friends and family directly for sponsorship money.
Aitken added: “No one likes asking people for sponsorship money but by sharing progress and involving those who are not actually taking part, you build support for your challenge and make sponsors feel part of the team. This makes it easier to collect the funds. I’m sure Bike and Hike participants will love it and use it to raise even more money for Maggie’s.”
George Bushell, Events Manager at Maggie’s, welcomed the app, saying:”“We are really excited about the new app and we think it’s a really positive tool to aid our work. We believe it will really support our Monster fundraisers and we look forward to hearing the feedback from its users.”
http://goteamgo.org
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About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.