How to Make Your Event Fundraising Page Awesome

A guide to creating your event page, using its features, and optimizing your page for a successful event.

This is a top-to-bottom guide to making your event page awesome. We’ll take you through the process of setting up your event, step-by-step, and throw in some tips for success and best practices along the way.

Getting Started

If you haven't already created your event, this support article will walk you through how: How do I create an event page?

Building Your Event Page

When you’re ready to start building your event page, you’ll see a lot of options. But don’t get overwhelmed! There are lots of ways you can customize and enhance your page, and we’ll go through the process step-by-step.

Elements of Your Page

Your ColoradoGives.org Manager

On the left side of your page is your manager (dashboard). You can toggle between different options and features of your page by simply clicking on the icon (and you’ll be able to see what each icon means by hovering over it with your mouse). From the top down, there is a Live Page view which will show you how your page will look to visitors, Page Editor where you can edit the design of your page, Campaigns which allows you to review the campaigns within your event, Participants which allows you to review your event members, Reports which allows you to view your Donations Report, Registration which allows you to integrate your Eventbrite registration page to ColoradoGives.org, and Settings which provides you key managing tools, the ability to customize your donor check-out, and add a Fundraiser Template.

Your navigation bar

Essentially, your Page Editor's dashboard, which can be accessed by clicking on the pencil icon.

When editing your page, you can either click on the name of the element in your Page Editor, or you can click on the pencil icon next to that item on your page. 

Page Editor

Title (Required in order to publish)

The first thing you’ll want to do is give your event an awesome title. What makes a title awesome? Well, it should be short, snappy, and explain a little bit about your event and your purpose. To help you decide, you are limited to 50 characters for your title.

Event Logo 

Your event logo displays in the top-center of the page.

You have lots of different options for uploading your logo, which are displayed on the dashboard on the left side of the upload screen.

You can upload a file directly from your computer, link to an image hosted elsewhere on the web, import one from Facebook, Google Drive, Instagram, Evernote, Dropbox, and more.

We recommend uploading a transparent logo, because it look looks best against your banner image (which we’ll discuss next). If you’re not sure how to make your logo transparent, it is most commonly done in Photoshop but you can also make your logo transparent with some free online image editors (like Canva). Your page will look best if your logo is mostly text or simple graphics.

Theme 

Background Image

This is where you can get creative and showcase your branding!

Your background image is a large image file that will display behind your logo, event title, fundraising thermometer, and above your leaderboard. Your background image will look best if it’s mostly text-free (since there will be text displaying in front of it) and a strong image that’s representative of your event. Landscape-oriented images will work best.

Click the “Edit Theme” button and then select "Background Image" to upload your background image.

You’ll have the same upload options as you did for your logo, with the addition of generic gallery images to choose from. You can pick from one of these, or upload your own by choosing one of the other options on the left sidebar.

You will need to crop your background image to fit inside the image container. When you click “Done,” your background image will be added to your event page and you can see how it looks with all of the other elements on your page.

You can add a color overlay to your background image by selecting "Filter Color" from the "Edit Theme" dropdown.

If you have a specific color you’d like to use and know the hex code, you can enter that.

Inside the box on the left, you can get more specific about the color you want — just click in the box to select the color that appeals to you the most.

Use the "Filter Strength" slider to ramp up the intensity of the overlay (move it to the right if you want more color, to the left if you want less).

Theme Color

Now, here’s where things get really cool. You can choose a color theme for your page, which will allow you to put your own personal stamp on your event page. Select "Theme Color" to add in a color. The color you choose will apply to some of the text on your event page, such as your donate button, amount raised, your sponsor and affiliates section, and your organizer info.

Categories

Here you can add categories to your event; you’ll need to choose at least one. If you’re fundraising for a single charity, we’ll include that charity’s main category from their ColoradoGives.org page for you, but you can add more.

If you’re not sure what category to choose, just choose one that is the closest match to the reason you’re starting this event.

Deadline

This is pretty straightforward: When do you want your event to end? Click “Deadline” on the page editor sidebar and select the date on the calendar.

Funding Goal (Required in order to publish)

How much do you want your event to raise?

Note that this is the funding goal for the whole event. So think about how many teams or people you anticipate joining your event and how much you expect they will be able to raise. Then do some quick math to determine an appropriate funding goal for your event. (You’ll be able to set your event member’s goals for them when you create your fundraiser template.)

Leaderboard

Your leaderboard is a key part of your event page — it’s where your teams and event members compete for the top spot! You, as the Event Organizer, can control how your leaderboard ranks event members. By default, your leaderboard will rank your event members by dollars raised.

You can change your leaderboard settings so that event members are ranked alphabetically, by number of donors, or by number of donations.

Story (Required in order to publish)

Under your leaderboard (on the Page Editor navigation bar), you have a vertical menu you can use to toggle between your story, updates, and custom tabs.

Your Story

Your story is your chance to explain what your event is all about, both to event members and to donors. This is pretty straightforward — just click into your story and start writing! You can also add media to your story to jazz things up. You can add links, upload images, link to videos on YouTube and Vimeo, and add bulleted or numbered lists.

Updates

You won’t need to do anything with this section to publish, but it’s important to know where this is on your toolbar, since Updates help you keep your supporters engaged. 

Custom Tabs

Do you have extra information you want to share with people about your event that won’t fit in your story, or just doesn’t make sense as an update? You can create a custom tab to add that information to your event page, while keeping everything organized and easy to find. You can add anything you’d like to your custom tabs, really: Information about your sponsors, frequently asked questions, information about your live event, acknowledgements, resources and links to more information. The list goes on! You can create up to 3 custom tabs that you can label however you’d like and fill with whatever content makes your event fundraiser more awesome!

Sponsors and Affiliates

You can thank your sponsors right on your event page! This section is very customizable and presents lots of different ways to acknowledge your sponsors and partners. You can add custom sections and subsections to ensure that all of your corporate partners, donor groups, and more receive the recognition they are due on your event page. Here’s a quick overview of how this section works and how it will look on your page:

To add a section, just click “Add a New Section”.

You’ll be taken to a new page, where you can either choose from a section name we’ve preloaded for you, or write a custom name for your section.

Once you’ve chosen the name of your section, then you’ll be able to customize how you would like the section to display.

You can label your sponsor section and create subsections, such as “Sponsors” with a subsection for “Gold Sponsors” or “Presenting Sponsors,” and choose whether you’d like to display logos (which is great for corporate sponsors) or lists (which works best if you have a lot of names to list, or for lower-tier partners). You can also choose how prominently you want the logos to display. Once you’ve customized a subsection, clicking “Add Subsection” will allow you to add additional subsections to the section.

Then you can add an affiliation, meaning a partner or sponsor you would like to list in that section, or even get creative about how you use this section if you don’t have sponsors to recognize.

You can add your sponsor’s logo/photo, name, and link to their website.

To keep adding sponsors and fill out that section, click “Add Another Image” or “Add Another Entry” and provide a logo if desired, a label and a link for each additional sponsor. Once you’ve added all of your sponsors to that section, click “Save” on the right side of the bottom bar.

Then, you’ll see your sponsor(s) added to your event page, under your story.

Their photo with their name (called a “tile”) is a clickable link to their website.

Event & Organizer Info

This is where you can add information about yourself and your event. If you’ve already filled out your user account profile, we’ll just import that information, but if you’re a first-time user, you can complete your profile here to make sure the Event & Organizer Info is accurate.

What you enter here displays at the bottom of your page under “Event & Organizer Info.”

Fundraiser Template

This is not required before you can publish your page, but you may wish to create a fundraiser template before you publish. You, as the Event Organizer, can create a default title, goal, image/video, short story, and story for each event member’s page. Having a strong template available allows your event members to get their pages up and running quickly. You can find your template underneath the "Settings" section on your event dashboard.

Read more about creating your fundraiser template!

Publishing Your Page

Now, your event page is complete! You’re ready to publish your page. You’ll be prompted to publish your page when everything that’s required is completed, but you can also click the “Publish” button on the bottom of your sidebar to make your page go live.

If you have any required items to complete before publishing, you’ll see them here.

Once you have completed all required items, you can publish your event.

Once you click “Publish,” your page is live! And it’s time to start inviting people to join your event and start fundraising for awesome causes.

If you have any questions about the features on your page or would like help making it as amazing at it can possibly be, contact us here.