Mission Viejo Christian Church only had 2% of the necessary funds to put on their annual summer camp for foster kids and considered canceling the event. Fortunately, they found PledgeStar in the nick of time.

“Most of these kids have never been to a camp and come from less fortunate situations,” says Dave Rohleder, administrative manager for the church’s partnership with For the Children/Royal Family KIDS Camp. “We teach them trust and change their life trajectory.” Thankfully, MVCC’s partnership with PledgeStar helped them reach their fundraising goal and made camp a reality for 40 kids in need.

“We ask everyone involved–about 38 volunteers–to raise $1,000 each,” says Mr. Rohleder. “By using PledgeStar, we reached our goal of $60,000 easily and even have $16,000 in reserves for next year!”

Mr. Rohleder predicts that numerous other camps that partner with For the Children will sign up with PledgeStar after learning how user-friendly and low-cost it is. “We noticed that people will donate after a couple reminders. And because those emails are coming from PledgeStar, they don’t feel pestered,” he says. “I’ve explained to our volunteers that we wouldn’t contact someone who’s uninterested in what you’re doing, so you know they’re going to want to donate. It’s just a matter of getting them to respond to the email and PledgeStar takes that responsibility off you. The way PledgeStar resends emails at perfect intervals works–it’s a no-brainer. Out of 20 people contacted, you know that 15 will respond. You can’t get any better than those statistics.”

Mr. Rohleder also attributes MVCC’s success to the personalized email content. “One of our participants sent 11 emails and raised $1,400 immediately,” he says. “With the ability to personalize the emails depending on whom you’re sending them to and explain what we were doing with the money and why the camp is so important, people were much more likely to donate.” MVCC’s team of volunteers shared their progress with the PledgeStar fundraiser at their monthly meetings and Mr. Rohleder encouraged everyone to seek out company matching, which proved very successful and motivating. “One of our volunteers even knew a Google executive who wanted to donate 10 times our original goal, and we were able to easily change the goal in the emails to reflect that.”

Since achieving their financial goal was a vital and immediate need for the camp, Mr. Rohleder’s favorite element of the PledgeStar platform was the reporting feature. “As an accountant, I really appreciated the administrative dashboard, which showed exactly what was going on with each person who was fundraising,” he says. “Additionally, some of our older church members who want to help aren’t comfortable donating online, so we appreciated the option to write a check.”

Considering the fact that Mr. Rohleder and his team began their fundraising journey with the fear that camp might not happen that year, they were thrilled when they surpassed their financial goal by partnering with PledgeStar. “They were with us every step of the way,” he explains. “Since we aren’t a school, we needed to make a few changes to the platform, and every time we made a request, PledgeStar told us that it was no problem.”

MVCC plans to use PledgeStar for years to come and is confident other For the Children camps throughout the country will also partner with the platform after hearing about MVCC’s success. “Every chance I get to recommend PledgeStar, I do,” says Mr. Rohleder. “They saved our camp!”