Read-a-thon Fundraising Company
Our school raised over $100,000 with our Readathon.
Mansfield, Texas (PRWEB) November 20, 2013
In many parts of the country schools have large numbers of Spanish-speaking students and families. Quite often there is a communication gap that needs to be overcome when communicating with families. It is certainly true when it comes to raising money. It's extremely difficult to find a fundraiser that bridges bilingual obstacles.
Read-a-thon Fundraising Company, a small company in Mansfield Texas recognized that a large segment of schools and students were under-served in the fundraising industry. Recently they launched a completely bilingual version of their fundraising program.
"We are excited to announce that our Read-a-thon fundraising system is now bilingual and is perfect for schools wanting to reach Spanish speaking families and friends to support their fundraising effort," says Howard Gottlieb, founder of the Read-a-thon Fundraising Company.
Most school fundraisers begin with notification being sent home to let families know about the fundraising campaign that was chosen. In most cases those notifications and the fundraising brochures themselves are only printed in English. Schools with large Hispanic populations found participation levels extremely low in large part because of the lack of Spanish language communications.
"We have replicated the entire reader portion of our website so users can choose whether they would like to view pages in English or in Spanish. If you are viewing a page in English you will see a tab on the right side of the screen asking if you would like to view the page in Espanol. Similarly if you are viewing the page in Spanish you will have the option to change to English," said Gottlieb.
With Read-a-thon's system, fundraising administrators identify those students who require Spanish language information when setting up their event. Then, when take home letters are printed, each student gets information in the language best suited to their family's needs. Read-a-thon marks a database with the student's preferred language and directs readers and families to webpages in the language they will best understand.
"If you have families that speak predominantly Spanish it only makes sense that the tools we offer readers to help identify and contact potential sponsors should also be available in Spanish," Gottlieb added. "Our system knows which language you are viewing. So we provide handouts, emails and social media in the language you are using. Of course you can switch back and forth between the languages any time you want. So if you want to send most communications in English you can choose that language or you can opt for Spanish at any time."
Schools around the country are reporting record fundraising results using the Read-a-thon Fundraising Company's tools to identify and contact potential sponsors anywhere in the world. The company collects all donations on behalf of the readers so students never handle any money. There is no product to sell or deliver and the program even comes with incentives and prizes to help motivate readers to participate. Schools get real time reporting so they can manage this fundraising program better than other fundraising choice.
Friends and family members happily sponsor young readers when told about their participation in a reading-based fundraiser. The average donation made by a sponsor is slightly under $30 and one student raised more than $600 in donations alone.
Read-a-thon provides a school fundraising calculator to show you how much money your school can earn with their new bilingual school fundraiser.