Using MyDonate For Your BJJ Charity Event

If possible, I generally use JustGiving for GrappleThons. However, sometimes the charity I want to support is smaller, so goes for a free fundraising platform instead. From my experience, MyDonate is the best of the free platforms. That's run by the large UK company, BT. It has a few advantages over JustGiving, the main one being that they don't charge charities a fee to use their service (unlike JustGiving, which charges £15 per month). The downside is that MyDonate's interface is a bit more clunky and setting up a page is rather more fiddly too. However, the advantage of not costing the charity anything is considerable, so that's worth some hassle. :)

Here are the steps to set up your fundraising page on MyDonate, using the 2017 Artemis BJJ GrappleThon for SARSAS as an example (click on the pictures for a larger image):

1. Sign up to MyDonate

2. Click on 'Start Fundraising' at the top. Alternatively go to 'my account', then click on 'Create fundraising page' in the left hand menu.

3. Select 'Create my challenge'

4. Type 'SARSAS' in the 'search for a charity' box

5. Select 'SARSAS' from the list that pops up, then click through.

6. Select 'Other' from the list of fundraising challenges, then put in something like 'grappling' or 'GrappleThon'


7. If you want to add the address, select 'Yes' on whether or not the challenge is taking place at a specific location (handily, this creates a map on your fundraising page), then enter:

MYGYM
Unit 4B, Dean Street
Bristol
United Kingdom
BS2 8SF

8. The next part is important, as this determines how long your page stays open. Put in the date as starting 15-04-2017 from 14:00 through to 16-04-2017 at 14:00.

9. You can pick however long you want for keeping the page running after the event finishes, ranging from 3 months to 12 months.

10. Pick whatever url you want for the fundraising page (note it has to be all lower case), then be sure to link your page to the Artemis BJJ GrappleThon 2017 team: the reference number is 532098561. When you click 'Validate', the name of the team and owner will appear in green.

11. Select 'No' for the two tick boxes under Gift Aid.

12. In the fundraising story, you can write whatever you think will best inspire people to donate to your page. If you're looking for an example, this is what I put. Note that the 'page title' has to be less than 50 characters.

13. Next, pick an image if you like (there's also the option to link to your Flickr and/or a YouTube video).

14. After that, you can set a target if you want, then you're ready to (finally!) move on to the next page and finish. :)