Student Videos Capture the Heart of School Fundraising

Innovative schools in Silicon Valley pushed the limits of school fundraising with Fundly this Spring. Equipped with Fundly’s social fundraising platform and professionally developed collateral, they brought school fundraising into the 21^st century.



Parents were able to create a personal fundraising page for their student, personalizing with photos, video, and a message to supporters. With this tool, they could reach family and friends around the globe to support the arts, technology, and teacher development with a simple online donation.

School fundraising is not new, but with budget cuts, larger class sizes, and a variety of student needs that need to be met, it has become an important part of ensuring success with both academic curriculum and extracurricular activities. While many teachers are overwhelmed with the daily duties of running a classroom full of kids and parents are filling in the gaps with volunteer hours, they don’t have the time or energy to dedicate to complicated fundraisers. Online fundraising has proven that schools can find greater success using the internet without investing more resources.

Fundly recently held the 12 Schools in 12 Weeks Online Fundraising Challenge to prove that schools could raise more money using social media than with traditional methods alone. Guadalupe Home and School Club, the parent-teacher organization supporting Guadalupe Elementary School, was one of the participating schools.  While they had successfully held their walkathon fundraiser online in the past, Fundly was appealing because it came with communication tools to motivate families to sign up and  built-in social media to make it simple to “share” the chance to support the school.  The Home & School Club was given a Fundraiser’s Toolkit including a vinyl banner, fliers, posters, give-away items, and exclusive online features to promote their annual walkathon.



Going online can be a great way for parents to reach more people, but keeping the students engaged in the process is a must.  That’s where student videos come in to play.

To emphasize this point, Fundly held a “Best Video” contest, in which its employees voted for their favorite student-created video. The staff was surprisingly passionate about their favorites and after much discussion and analysis, Fundly’s VP of Marketing, Tom Kramer, visited Guadalupe School to present “Best Video” winner, Alex, with an iPod Touch in front of all his classmates.  Now Alex can practice his video-taking and -making skills all Summer to get ready for the next walkathon!

See Alex’s video for yourself (don’t worry, his mom approves):


With Fundly’s personal fundraising pages, being a part of your school fundraiser is as easy as typing a personal message and uploading pictures.  Adding a video for maximum impact, and bringing the message of support  back to the students makes all the difference.  With links to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, the ability to use credit cards to donate, and access day or night, it’s no wonder that schools are finding greater results when annual fundraising events are combined with the benefits of technology.