We’re working on setting up a relationship with a European payment processor right now. If you contacting us from outside the US, just let us know.

Anyone can donate and vote as often as they wish. The functionalities are separate. Once someone makes a donation, then the votes they have “purchased” sit in a pool. They can go back at any time before the contest is closed and apply those votes however they wish.

The “donate to vote” is a key component to this standard system. It legitimizes the contest aspect of it, and it also vastly increases the revenue potential. If you wanted to have a “donate to submit” (entry fee) AND a “donate to vote”, this system allows for that. However, if you wanted to remove the “donate to vote” aspect, that would be a customization. It's possible, but it’s not part of our standard package.

1) Public Service Announcements:

a) Radio stations

b) Public access or local TV stations

c) Local service organizations that might support your work (Chamber of Commerce, etc)

2) Posting to social networking sites

3) Your regular contact with your friends and supporters

Absolutely not! While many of our clients are involved with animals in one way or another, it is by no means exclusive to this arena. We are working with park foundations, social-issue non-profits, blindness-prevention groups, arboretums and other groups. If you can take a picture of it, shoot a video of it, record its sound, or write about it; our system, either as a standard package or a customization, can help you reach your fundraising goals.

Once we have your contest set up, we will send you a unique URL. All you have to do is set up a link on your website to that URL. Then people can go directly from your site to the contest.

1) Banking information for your Element Express account setup. We will put you in touch with them once the contract is submitted

2) Your logo

3) Your contest rules

4) The start date and end date of your contest

5) Contact info for the person on your end who will be managing the contest, and who will have administrator rights to your contest (if different than the person submitting the contract)

All results are in real time. As soon as the contest is over, you will have the results immediately. It's up to you if you would like them displayed within the contest, or if you would like to have the results disabled to be announced at a later date (perhaps on your own website, or in a radio ad).

These are annual fees that we need in order to cover our expenses.

All organizations have access to an administrative back-end that allows you to approve/deny entries. This back-end also includes options to view participant information and transactions. This information can be easily exported to Excel from within our system.

We also allow all contest entrants the option to either opt in or out of receiving further information from your organization. The 360 Photo Contest is an easy way to expand your current mailing list!

We can work with just about any size or type of graphic file you would have.

This is what Allison Sanders, Director of Development at the Western PA Humane Society said recently about how this process can work. Her answers are in green. They are gearing up for their 2^nd contest this year. Their 1^st, which was last year, raised over $25,000 for them.

 

1) Did you use:

a) Eblasts?

b) Newspaper ads (purchased or donated)?

c) Radio spots (purchased or donated)?

d) Internal communications, such as an internal newsletter to friends/donors?

e) Posters/flyers?

f) Other?

We sent out email blasts, put an ad in our newsletter and handed out information in our adoption rooms and at our clinic. We didn’t purchase any newspaper or radio advertising, although we are on a radio station each week with a pet and I believe the person who talks about our pet of the week mentioned the contest on-air. We also printed information 8-up on a page of 8.5 x 11 paper and sent it out with all acknowledgment letters. After our contest, however, we conducted a survey through Survey Monkey and found that most people heard about the contest from our website. Second highest “How did you hear about the contest” response was from our email blast.

2) How much do you think each of these PR efforts led to the success of your campaign?

Again, I think the PR efforts that helped us the most were our website and email blasts. I don’t know that purchasing a newspaper ad would pay off, so to speak, but I’m thinking about the possibility of getting some on-line ads…we also got postcards made last year (designed for free so we only had to pay for printing) and put them in the goodie bags of everyone who attended our big event last August (over 600 attendees).

 

3) What advice would you give an organization when using this type of fundraiser?

I would tell people to keep reminding their constituents about the contest and to tell them to tell their friends! We had a lot of people enter our contest who were not past donors/members or adopters. I think it also helped to send out emails with a sense of urgency (Only 3 days left to vote for your favorite critters!).