So you’re interested in running a calendar fundraiser, but maybe you’re still weighing your options. Maybe you’ve run a pick-a-date to donate fundraiser the old-school, pen and paper way, and you’re considering taking it to the next level this year. Or, maybe you don't have any idea what a calendar fundraiser is, but you're curious about how it can help your team out to fundraiser this year.

Well, regardless of why you’re reading this, we have some great news for you – we’re going to walk through exactly how easy it is to run a completely digital calendar fundraiser with Teamfi, step by step. Oh, and the best part? It’s completely free and coaches love it. Here’s what a wrestling team in Georgia had to say about our digital calendar fundraiser software:

"Finished up a team wide calendar fundraiser through @teamfi_app! Raised over $7,000 with their online platform hassle free! Thank you to everyone who donated and supporting our #FIGHT"

‍– Sequoyah High School Wrestling (Canton, Georgia)

Here’s exactly how you can use Teamfi to run a digital calendar fundraiser to raise (and save) more money:

‍Step 1: Sign up for a Teamfi Account and log in

We’d like to think that each of these six steps are really easy, but this one might just be the easiest of them all! To get started with fundraising with Teamfi, you can book a super quick (<30 minute) demo with our founder and we’ll show you the platform and answer any questions you have. At the end of the call we’ll send you a personalized sign-up link via email.

‍Step 2: Create your calendar fundraiser

To create your calendar fundraiser so players can start signing up and adding contacts, all you have to do is hit “create fundraiser” and answer a couple quick questions. These form fields aren’t to just create more work, either; they are what makes your team’s donation pages completely customizable! Both the logo you add and the fundraiser description you add will be viewable by potential donors – helping you turn your team’s pick a date to donate calendar fundraiser pages fully custom to make your team stand out.

‍Step 3: Invite your fundraiser participants to join using Teamfi’s roster management tools

Here’s where Teamfi really starts to make your pick a date calendar fundraiser as easy as possible. With Teamfi, there's no need to hand out paper calendars to your fundraiser participants. Instead? Just copy and paste your fundraiser’s unique signup link into your team’s communication channel (could be email, team management app, or group chat) and our guided onboarding process will take care of everything from them signing up for an account, to their calendar pages being ready to collect donations. Here’s exactly what your player’s onboarding process will look like:

1. Click signup link
2. Sign up for Teamfi account
3. Adjust their display name and profile photo to customize thier pick a date calendars
4. Add contacts of friends and family for for Teamfi’s automated outreach

And that’s it!

Step 4: Monitor your participants’ onboarding and contact adding process using the coach dashboard

The only thing easier than inviting your fundraiser participants to join your team’s pick-a-date to donate calendar fundraiser? Monitoring the progress of player onboarding.

The Teamfi coach dashboard gives you complete transparency over who’s joined your fundraiser and how many contacts they’ve added. The best part? While your calendar fundraiser is in the onboarding stage (pre-launch), we’ll give you a live fundraiser projection on what we’d project you’ll raise if you hit “activate”. This way you can be as sure as possible about hitting your team’s fundraising goals.

Step 5: Activate your fundraiser and start collecting donations for each day

Once your Teamfi fundraiser projection seems right to you all you have to do is hit “activate” on your coach dashboard. Once you've activated, Teamfi’s built-in automated fundraiser donor outreach handles everything from there. We’ll reach out to all possible fundraiser supporters and collect any donations. While this is happening, you have live updates for every metric imaginable on your coach dashboard, placing you in the driver’s seat of your team’s pick-a-date to donate calendar fundraiser.

On the donation page side? Things are incredibly easy for fundraiser donors – they can see each player’s calendar, choose any open dates they wish to donate/sponsor, and pay their donation all in a couple clicks.

Step 6: Close out your fundraiser and Teamfi will mail your fundraiser proceeds as soon as possible

This is the best part! As soon as your team has reached its fundraising goal, just let us know and we’ll close out your team’s calendar fundraiser making, shutting ff any further donations.

From there, we’ll overnight a check for your team’s fundraiser amount minus payment processing. These fees charged by Stripe, are 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction, and usually work out to be about 3.4%. If you’re curious about what this could look like for your team’s fundraiser, feel free to check out our free fundraiser calculator.

There you have it, that’s all it takes to run a completely digital and 100% free calendar fundraiser with Teamfi, from start to finish. If you’re interested in getting started or just seeing what the software looks like in action (we get it, screenshots are always enough), you can book a super quick <30 minute demo directly with our founder. He’ll show you exactly how the Teamfi pick-a-date to donate calendar fundraiser can work for your team. By the end of the call, you’ll already have Step 1 on this guide taken care of.

If a demo isn’t for you, but you still have some questions about the Teamfi calendar fundraiser, you can feel free to check out the top questions we get asked about running a calendar fundraiser or shoot us an email and we’ll respond as fast as humanly possible.