Are you tired of fundraisers that ask you to sell things? Regina Mayes was. Gilbert Elementary School’s PTSO co-president in Gilbert, Arizona, Mayes was looking for better options. Rather than asking families to sell things, the preschool through sixth grade school with about 600 students used PledgeStar for the second year in a row to host the school’s direct-donation drive.

“We sent the students home with a flier and package of Life Savers with a note that said, ‘You are a lifesaver for supporting our school’ and a QR code that directed them to the PledgeStar site,” says Mayes. “We also included it in our school newsletter, sent digital fliers, posted it on the school’s marquee, talked about it during morning announcements, and posted headlines like, ‘Are you tired of fundraisers that ask you to sell things?’ on the school’s social media.”

Mayes is also hypersensitive to Gilbert parents’ needs. “We are a Title 1 school,” says Mayes, “so we want the most benefit for the funds we raised and to not burden families who are already in a tight spot. We don’t want them to feel pressured to financially contribute. Before we found PledgeStar, the companies we were using kept 40% of our earnings. PledgeStar not only has a much smaller service fee, but it also lets families opt to cover credit card service fees for payments.”

Gilbert kicked off the drive with an assembly hosted by a professional emcee who got the kids excited about the fundraiser. “We gave out a participation prize just for signing up,” says Mayes. “That way, kids of families that were not financially able to contribute wouldn’t feel left out.” Using PledgeStar’s tracking system, Gilbert set schoolwide goals. “When we hit $5,000, the kids got music at lunch,” says Mayes. “When we hit $10,000, our school therapy dog participated in spirit week activities. When we hit $20,000, a barber shaved and dyed a tiger paw into the back of the principal’s hair during our Otter Pop party.”

“Our goal was $20,000, and we raised $28,000.” explains Mayes. “At the end of the drive, we had a big celebration where students received prizes.” As an added incentive to raise additional funds, faculty and staff participated in a dance-off at the celebration as a reward for the students reaching their final goal. “The kids voted them off until there was a final winner,” says Mayes. “The emcee returned to help facilitate, and a parent who is a professional photographer documented the whole event.”

Gilbert's parents loved PledgeStar last year, and they loved it even more this year. “Families could easily import their information and contacts from the year before rather than re-entering everything,” says Mayes. “Families without email contacts appreciated the text pledge requests.”

PledgeStar was very user-friendly for Gilbert parents. “Parents only have to set up one account for multiple children so that grandparents wouldn’t get duplicate emails from each student,” says Mayes. “PledgeStar only sent a few messages to families. Registration wasn’t time-intensive, and we could direct families to PledgeStar to help them set up their accounts. PledgeStar was very reachable and supportive.”

By exceeding their goal, the PTSO fully funded their budget and still had money to donate toward school improvement projects. “It took the pressure off of us as a volunteer organization,” says Mayes. “When teachers ask us to fund a special project, we are able to do so. It’s really exciting for our executive board.”

Elaine Uehlein, parent council member at Anderson School in Bozeman, Montana, discovered PledgeStar two years ago and began using it to run the school’s annual Fun Run.

From the moment the event kicked off, the parent council was thrilled with PledgeStar’s ease of use—especially since their previous fundraiser, an annual gala, was not only complicated to plan but also time-consuming to manage. “There was less handling of funds with PledgeStar,” says Ms. Uehlein. “We wanted a single platform to handle all of the financials, and that’s what we got with PledgeStar. We were even able to manually handle checks.”

Anderson School’s Fun Run also proved to be wildly more lucrative by using PledgeStar when compared to the school’s gala event. “We raised about $50,000 both years we used PledgeStar,” Ms. Uehlein explains, “while we were only raising about $30,000 with the gala—which was also a lot more work.”

Even the best event only succeeds when the community participates, and Ms. Uehlein credits PledgeStar’s communication element to the Fun Run’s success: “With the ability to text and email friends and family with PledgeStar, we felt like we were getting a much bigger reach than just sending home flyers like we did in the past,” she says. Anderson School also motivated the students to fundraise by offering amazing prizes for top earners, which remained on display at school throughout the fundraiser.

“We worked really hard to find prizes that appealed to all ages,” says Ms. Uehlein, who also explains that some of the most sought-after prizes didn’t cost the parent council a dime. “Community members donated gift cards, and experiences such as ‘principal for the day’ was a huge draw,” she adds.

One prize got the kids more excited than any of the others. “The class that earned the most money got to pie our principal,” says Ms. Uehlein.

Anderson School is not only thrilled with the success of the Fun Run but also what the funds will provide to the small, 200-student school. “We have a lot of needs,” explains Ms. Uehlein. “Now, with these funds raised through PledgeStar, we are able to really help with purchasing curriculum, the music program, teacher classroom stipends, teacher holiday gifts, and guest speakers. We will also be able to maintain a healthy base for our budget in the coming years.”

Gilchrist Elementary, a Tallahassee, Florida, school with almost 1,000 students, switched to PledgeStar this year to manage their Great Grizzly Run. “Boosterthon kept almost 50%, so we wanted to try and do it ourselves so we could keep more of what we raised,” says Belinda Wise, Gilchrist PTO event chair. “Another school in our district, DeSoto Trail Elementary, recommended PledgeStar and even helped us with the event. Our goal was to raise $85,000, and we ended up with about $95,000.”

In addition to its minimal learning curve, Ms. Wise says she appreciated the straightforward nature of PledgeStar’s website. “We really liked that staff and parents could see the leaderboard, how much we were raising and keeping, why we were fundraising, and what prizes the kids could win,” she says. “It was easy for our school’s families to set up their own accounts, and we loved having everyone on the same page.”

Making changes can be challenging, but any concerns from Gilchrist administration about switching platforms were alleviated once the PTO thoroughly explained the benefits of partnering with PledgeStar. “After our initial presentation, the PTO and teachers were on board with switching to PledgeStar, but the principal was worried because this is our biggest fundraiser of the year and we really count on the money raised,” Ms. Wise shares. “Once we concluded the fundraiser with 20 percent more than we’d raised in previous years, those fears were cast aside and the board voted unanimously to continue using PledgeStar next year.”

In addition to its financial windfall, the Great Grizzly Run was an emotional success for Gilchrist students. After two weeks of fundraising via emails and texts sent through the PledgeStar website, the school concluded the program with the run itself–along with some very special guests. “Florida State University cheerleaders and softball players came to cheer on the kids while they ran, which they loved,” says Ms. Wise.

Students are typically motivated by rewards, but Gilchrist decided to prioritize putting money back into the school over purchasing expensive prizes. “The kids got to wear Crocs and socks to school when they hit a certain goal, and a PE coach shaved a paw print into his hair when they reached another,” says Ms. Wise. “But by far the highlight for the students was when our principal got slimed at the end of the fundraiser.”

The additional money raised by partnering with PledgeStar allowed Gilchrist Elementary to fund the majority of the school’s needs, rather than having to pick and choose. “We took 20 percent of what we raised and gave every teacher money for their classrooms,” says Ms. Wise. “We also used some of it for campus improvements on outdoor spaces that the staff requested such as fans for the carpool pickup area and picnic tables and benches throughout campus.”

In addition to the financial rewards of the partnership, what really set PledgeStar apart from other platforms for Gilchrist was the customer service. “Several times, my questions were answered immediately,” says Ms. Wise. “PledgeStar even reached out to one of our teachers directly to answer a question that I couldn’t.”

Gilchrist Elementary School is already sharing its positive experience with PledgeStar throughout the community. “We’ve recommended PledgeStar to another school in the area that was seeking a new fundraising platform,” Ms. Wise says. “It truly met all of our needs.”

After seven years using the same fundraising platform, the San Mateo-Foster City School District Education Foundation made the switch to PledgeStar. "We needed a platform with more reporting features for our annual Read-a-Thon,” says Elizabeth Colglazier, one of the foundation’s directors. “With other fundraisers it was difficult to report each school site’s progress. We wanted to be able to view each school’s reading minutes and money raised during and after the event, and that’s exactly what we got with PledgeStar."

Ms. Colglazier discovered PledgeStar by researching what other education foundations in the Bay Area were using for their read-a-thons and asking for feedback from various directors. One of those groups shared their success with PledgeStar and switching platforms made sense. “It was a great experience using PledgeStar for our annual fundraiser,” she says. “Our matching donations went up dramatically from previous years because PledgeStar makes it so easy, and we even had more people opting to cover the credit card fees than when we used a competing fundraising company.”

The San Mateo-Foster City School District serves 10,000 students–three middle schools and 18 elementary schools—so organized reporting is vital to a successful event. “The reports available on PledgeStar were very user-friendly and very easy to organize by classroom, teacher, and school site,” Ms. Colglazier says. “We didn’t have that capability on the platform we’d used in the past. PledgeStar made it much easier for us to expand our rewards system so that we could reward the top classroom at each school site and top schools, which we’d never been able to do before. This capability helped make it a friendly competition between the schools.”

Each year, local libraries host kickoff events to get SMFC students excited about the Read-a-Thon and promote the event. “Students spend the next two weeks sending out donor requests and tracking reading minutes,” Ms. Colglazier explains. “Each school site’s principal and parent representative advertise the event as well. We discovered that schools that do more promotion are generally more successful with the fundraiser, which included the reminder emails from PledgeStar.”

For the duration of the Read-a-Thon, Ms. Colglazier sent out daily reports of the top three classrooms at each school, as well as the school site with the highest average reading minutes and percent participation. “The ability to easily run and provide reports to each of our school sites was vital to keeping the momentum of the fundraiser,” Ms. Colglazier says. “There is not a fee with 99Pledges, but we had to create these reports by hand in years past, which could take 30-40 hours per week. This feature is exactly why we switched to PledgeStar.”

The school with the highest average reading minutes had an assembly with a local author who read to the younger students and discussed the publishing process with the older students. After all was said and done, the students read for a collective 1.9 million minutes over the course of the fundraiser.

Ms. Colglazier says she would recommend PledgeStar to any school putting on any type of “thon” event. “It was really easy for students and families to send out donor requests through email, text, and social media,” she says. “Some even opted to print fliers, which was a great option for those who were not comfortable with using electronic communication.”

In addition to the vital reporting features, PledgeStar’s customer service team was a huge asset to Ms. Colglazier. “They were great to work with,” she says. “They were really responsive and even made some changes to the platform to accommodate our large district, which I really appreciated.”

Once the foundation receives all of its matching dollars, they’ll have raised nearly $120,000. “We were pleased with that number, as many of our families have been hit with job layoffs in the tech industry,” says Ms. Colglazier, whose foundation is based in the San Francisco Bay Area. “The funds we raised will go to important programs like music and STEAM education, as well as staff and student support. We couldn’t have done it without the support of our amazing community and the help of PledgeStar.”

Walk-a-Thon Chair Adrienne Virgilio knew that St. Francis de Sales School in Lake Zurick, Illinois, was in desperate need of an outstanding fundraiser. She never imagined that partnering with PledgeStar would see a profit of more than 10 times her original goal.

“One of our board members lived in Oregon for many years and had used PledgeStar for her children’s swim team,” says Ms. Virgilio, fundraising chair for the pre-K-8th-grade school her grandchildren attend. “I didn’t want to waste time researching other online fundraising companies, so I went with PledgeStar and didn’t regret it. The reporting package and website graphics are phenomenal.”

Once St. Francis committed to using PledgeStar, Ms. Virgilio chose a modest $5,000 goal for the Walk-a-Thon. Knowing how successful the school could be, PledgeStar staff gently nudged her to raise that figure to $30,000. “At the time, I thought that was crazy!” says Ms. Virgilio. “I was worried about fundraising fatigue during our event’s 3-week window, but I’m glad I listened because we ended up raising $51,000.”

Ms. Virgilio says that the support and availability of PledgeStar staff made the process seamless and stress-free and was key to her event’s overall success. “PledgeStar gave me the confidence that this was really going to work,” she explains. “They didn’t turn down a single one of our requests. When you’re worried about using a new company and someone returns your call in 5 minutes, that tells you the quality you’re dealing with–even with us being in another time zone!”

Another concern at St. Francis prior to partnering with PledgeStar was the school’s socioeconomic diversity and how raising a significant amount of money would be challenging. “We have a huge range of economic means at our school, but our average donation was $92,” Ms. Virgilio says, emphasizing it wasn’t just a few families donating large sums. “PledgeStar made our Walk-a-Thon accessible to every St. Francis family. When everyone does a little, no one has to do a lot,” she adds. “We didn’t get to $51,000 because a couple families made large donations. We got there from many small-dollar donations.”

In addition to promoting the ability to have donors cover credit card fees as well as the corporate matching option, the team at St. Francis strategically chose prizes of little to no cost in order to send as much money as possible back to the school. “Our most popular prizes were the ones that didn’t cost anything, like principal for the day, movies at school, out of uniform passes, and pie-ing the principal,” says Ms. Virgilio.

The overwhelming success of using PledgeStar for the school’s fundraiser made it possible for St. Francis to fulfill every request on their teachers’ classroom wish lists. “Since we surpassed our goal considerably, we had money leftover for budget items whose financing was in doubt,” says Ms. Virgilio. “The parents will also be thrilled to learn that some of the funds are going toward improved—and vital—campus security.”

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!”

After years of selling catalog products with minimal profit, St. Michael Parish School in Wheaton, Illinois, was looking to make a change. That’s when Vicki Parrilli, the school’s Lancer Dash Chairperson, discovered PledgeStar. The school is now in its third year using the platform.

“We did a wrapping paper fundraiser for several years and it was pretty limited,” Ms. Parrilli explains. “People can only buy so much of that stuff. That’s why we started a fun run, and we’ve been using PledgeStar every year.”

With nearly every family at the 600-student school participating, the Lancer Dash committee started off with a $45,000 goal and high hopes. “The year before, we raised about $77,000, which was more than twice what we made selling wrapping paper,” Ms. Parrilli says. “This year we raised nearly $120,000.”

Ms. Parrilli believes the success of their fundraiser was due to the communication dispersed via the PledgeStar platform. “Not only did we start talking about the event on the first day of school, but we also shared pictures of the prizes to get the kids excited,” she says. “We even shared a video of our principal showing how much we really needed new science tables.” She adds that the ability to easily run frequent reports through the school’s unique PledgeStar website made accountability a breeze. “Once we knew we were getting close to our goal,” Ms. Parrilli says, “we encouraged additional donations.” The fundraising team also frequently rewarded students throughout the duration of the fundraiser with candy once they raised $25 and a T-shirt once they raised $50. “Since the kids really want that shirt, almost every one reached that goal,” she adds.

She goes on to share how the technology made life easy for the committee managing the event. “The bonus with PledgeStar compared to our previous fundraisers was that everything was electronic,” Ms. Parrilli explains. “We didn’t have to fill out any papers or collect checks. Electronic donations were instantaneous so people could immediately see how much money we were raising on a daily basis. It was a really helpful tool and was instant gratification for those of us running the fundraiser.”

Once St. Michael Parish School kicked off the Lancer Dash, they spent about three weeks fundraising prior to the day the entire school ran multiple laps around the parking lot while staff and parents cheered. In addition to simple prizes for smaller donation goals, the committee got creative when encouraging students to aim even higher. “Once we reached our school-wide goal,” Ms. Parrilli explains, “our top 30 students got to pie the principal in the face. He’s a great sport and has been slimed, dunked, duct taped to the wall, and even kissed a pig during previous years. The kids get such a kick out of it.”

St. Michael Parish School is already planning to use PledgeStar for next year’s Lancer Dash. “It is so easy to use,” says Ms. Parrilli. “I feel extremely comfortable knowing that when I eventually pass along my duty of running it that the next person will easily be able to understand how PledgeStar works. We love the partnership and our principal was blown away by the generosity of our families. We wouldn't be able to raise all the funds we did without PledgeStar.”

Like so many schools, Dakota Valley Elementary lacks the funds to employ every teacher's assistant necessary. This is where the PledgeStar fundraising method comes in and why the Aurora, Colorado, school has been consistently using the platform for the past six years.

Caitlin Cousatte, Dakota Valley's PTCO fundraising chair, explains why PledgeStar has been an integral part of the preschool-grade 5 campus' fundraising success. "We love that everything for our event is handled through PledgeStar," says Ms. Cousatte, who shares that prior to using the platform, the school needed multiple vendors involved in their events. The convenience of PledgeStar also extends to the school's families. "Supporters can just make a pledge and be done with it. Our volunteers have a lot less work to do now," she adds.

While the switch from a more expensive fundraising organization to PledgeStar brought changes, it gave Dakota Valley the flexibility to let parents and families stick with some of the previous methods, helping families feel comfortable when donating. "We fundraise online for a week," Ms. Cousatte says, "but still accept cash and checks for several weeks after that. It's great that we can do both with PledgeStar."

Dakota Valley's decision to partner with PledgeStar is reflected in the event's bottom line: through cash, checks, and online donations, the school's earnings have increased annually. "This year, our goal was $32,000," says Ms. Cousatte, "and we ended up raising almost $39,000."

Communication is just one more reason that Dakota Valley keeps coming back to PledgeStar. "Any time I have a question, my email is returned quickly," Ms. Cousatte says. Dakota Valley spread that necessary communication on campus by keeping the kids motivated throughout the weeks-long event. "We had a pep rally kick-off," says Ms. Cousatte, "where we sent home our pledge kit attached to a lanyard so the kids wouldn't lose it. We also had different classroom competitions each day, such as who had the most people register overnight and who raised the most money over the weekend."

When the day of the Fun Run finally arrived, even parents got involved. "We told parents they were welcome to participate," says Ms. Cousatte, "so at the end of their child's time slot, they could get out on the track and run with the kids."

Ms. Cousatte shares that in addition to a great fundraising platform, Dakota Valley learned that students and staff are inspired by PTCO encouragement and creativity leading up to the event. "We supply each teacher with a 2-foot by 3-foot flag and they come up with a class name and decorate their flag," she says. "As each class comes out to the Fun Run, we announce them by their class name. This year, we had fun names like the Ice Spice Monkeys, the Marvelous Moose Thunder, the Golden Coyotes—and a lot of other coyote-type names since our mascot is the coyote."

Since the Dakota Valley PTCO prioritizes funding classroom supplies, field trips, and large tech items, the school is always looking to increase their fundraising goal. Next year Dakota Valley plans to use the PledgeStar QR code to further increase donations. "A lot of families find this registration method easier to use," Ms. Cousatte says. "Some people do better scanning a QR code rather than clicking a link."

Bennington, Nebraska's Pine Creek Elementary PTO started the 2023 school year with one goal in mind. "We wanted to raise $45,000 for the annual budget," says Kelly Van Haitsma, PTO Vice President. "In addition to our regular expenses, we usually buy something like playground equipment or new school furniture, so a big fundraiser is essential."

This was Pine Creek's first time using PledgeStar. "I told one of my friends at work that we were shopping around for a new fundraising company," says Ms. Van Haitsma, "and she told me that her school uses PledgeStar; that's how we ended up using the platform."

One of PledgeStar's selling points for Pine Creek was that the school would keep most of the money earned. "We had to pay the previous company about $20,000 to run our fundraiser," says Ms. Van Haitmsa, "we knew that our families would be upset if they knew how high the fees were. We were so happy to find PledgeStar and know that fees are capped."

PledgeStar was definitely the right move for Pine Creek, as they raised $55,000 this year—exceeding their goal by $10,000. Ms. Van Haitsma notes that PledgeStar's communication options led to the PTO's success. "We love that you can send pledge requests via text," she says. "The other company we were using was email based, and texting works so much better. People are more apt to click on the link and donate when they get it in a text."

Additionally, PledgeStar's customization options worked well for Pine Creek. "We really liked that we could customize the reports the way we wanted to view them," says Ms. Van Haitsma. "With the previous company, reports were very limited. This year, we incorporated raffle tickets, and PledgeStar was able to easily add that to our site so that we could generate a raffle ticket report."

As a way of changing things up this year, Pine Creek decided to replace their usual Fun Run with a new event called "Day of Fun" and added some fun new incentives to get the students hyped about raising money for their school. "We did a pep rally kickoff two weeks before the event and told the kids that if they reached the goal, they would have a school-wide pizza party with bounce houses and a DJ," says Ms. Van Haitsma, "and that the principals would wrestle in Sumo suits."

If they didn't already love PledgeStar's fundraising power, the company's customer service really solidified Pine Creek's decision to use the platform."We would get a response to questions within hours," says Ms. Van Haitsma. "We were really appreciative of that support and it really made our event so much less stressful."

If there's one thing kids love, it's making adults look silly. The dunk tank at the Livermore Bulls Football League's Jamboree Kickoff in Livermore, California, accomplished just that. "It was the icing on the cake," says Ms. Ebony Bains, fundraising coordinator and board member for the Livermore Bulls. "The kids got really excited and huddled around the dunk tank, trying to get a turn."

Ms. Bains first heard about PledgeStar through a fellow Bulls board member who works for the school district. "Before, all we did was T-shirt sales and swag, and we raised about $9,000," she says when speaking of the Bulls' previous season's fundraising efforts. "So, this year, we wanted to branch out and try to raise money in a different way."

As it turned out, this was the right call. This season, with the help of PledgeStar, the Bulls raised about $19,000—and additional donations are still rolling in. It goes without saying that Ms. Bains plans on using the PledgeStar platform again next year.

Prior to PledgeStar, the Bulls had just used word of mouth and social media to generate hype for their annual fundraisers. But PledgeStar's platform presented them with more effective and less labor-intensive methods to spread the word. "The platform's just so easy to use," says Ms. Bains. "Being able to input emails instead of reminding people ourselves was really great. PledgeStar's templates wrote the emails for us, which was much easier. Plus, parents could share the link through work, Facebook, and company matching."

As the administrator of the Bulls' website, Ms. Bains knew she could count on PledgeStar to track which players raised how much money, which saved a lot of time for the Bulls' board. "When we were passing out prizes, we just did a quick download of the reports, filtered it, and it was good to go," says Ms. Bains. "It's really straightforward–kinda hard to mess up!"

The sponsor page that PledgeStar helped the Bulls create was another standout feature of the platform for Ms. Bains. "We built it into our website," she explains. "It made it easy for people like the food truck companies or community members who are not affiliated with the teams to donate."

The Jamboree itself was a big success. "We had it right before the start of the season," says Ms. Bains. "At the end of the kickoff, we had a bunch of food trucks and made it a family day."

If there's anything kids love more than making adults look silly, it's prizes. "Anyone who participated in any way with the PledgeStar program—even if it was just a dollar or two—got a branded water bottle, a bracelet and a rally towel," says Ms. Bains. "For each division's top earners, we gave them a gift card."

The $19,000 the Bulls raised this season will be going to good use. "We used it to buy more things for the team and the end of the year party," says Ms. Bains. "For instance, we were able to get new helmets and certifications for next year. Overall, the fundraiser was a great experience and we were really happy with PledgeStar."