North Platte Public Schools Foundation

The Nonprofit Organization

Since 1994, the North Platte Public Schools Foundation (NPPSF) has been focused on enhancing educational opportunities for the North Platte Public School District in Nebraska. Serving a school district with 4,000 students, the foundation supports the community by providing enhanced educational opportunities for all students to enrich public education curriculum.

The NPPSF's primary endeavor is to grant funds that reach beyond the regular school budget, allowing educators to provide extraordinary learning opportunities for NPPSF students in kindergarten through the 12th grade.

"We created the teams, through ExceedFurther, and it was really easy to get it done – both setup and along the way making edits."

Terri Burchell, Executive Director at North Platte Public Schools Foundation

At the beginning of 2021, the foundation sought to restart and reimagine their annual fundraising campaign to reignite participation, extend reach, engage alumni, and elevate results, which is why they switched from a desktop donor relationship management solution and switched to ExceedFurther, Arreva’s all-in-one cloud-based digital fundraising, donor relationship management, and auction software solution.

The Challenge

In August 2021, NPPSF decided to bring back “Change Wars” as part of their Back 2 School Bash Week. This is a week of fundraising held at the beginning of the school year to raise money in support of North Platte Public Schools. To kick start their highly anticipated week of fundraising, NPPSF reintroduced Change Wars to their elementary schools. Elementary classrooms from each grade across the school district competed with other elementary schools in the district to see who could bring in the most change for their classroom jars.

With only a few weeks to prepare, NPPSF needed a system that would meet their team fundraising needs. They also wanted to elevate their fundraising efforts by including technology and they also wanted to extend their reach towards other donors such as family, friends, and alumni.

The Solution

Due to their success using ExceedFurther, NPPSF decided to connect with their dedicated client success team at Arreva to discuss their team fundraising needs. Arreva had just announced the launch of their Team Fundraising Application, which seemed to align exactly with what NPPSF was hoping to achieve. After seeing how the module worked, they decided to use ExceedFurther’s Team Fundraising and event registration and management module to leverage their fundraising efforts and lead them towards success.

By using Team Fundraising, they were able to set up school teams and further encourage a friendly competitive spirit through the implementation of teams, team captains, and leaderboards. These leaderboards showcased every team competing, highlighting who placed first, second, third, and so on.

NPPSF had eight elementary schools participating this year, with a total of 84 teams - classrooms, led by each homeroom teacher. “We created the teams, through ExceedFurther, and it was really easy to get it done – both setup and along the way making edits. Going into the system and adding the change as it was being donated. I was really surprised with how easy it was, and that was my main concern, making it simple for everyone involved. I didn’t want to add anything more to the teachers’ plates, by any means,” said Terri Burchell, Executive Director of North Platte Public Schools Foundation. Terri made sure to thoroughly communicate with all participants of Change Wars throughout this process and worked closely with the principals of every elementary school to make sure each team was receiving information on how to access their team fundraising webpage.

Using ExceedFurther, Arreva’s all-in-one cloud-based digital fundraising, donor relationship management, and auction software solution, NPPSF was able to leverage the Team Fundraising and event registration and management application for the eighty-four classrooms participating in Change Wars.

Each team displayed their school’s name, mascot, and homeroom teacher name on their webpage. Teachers and students were able to share the webpage link with friends, family, and alumni who wanted to show support for their child’s classroom. Having an online platform to raise money helped NPPSF extend their reach to donors outside of the classroom.

Another amazing feature of Team Fundraising was having the ability to view a live dashboard to see how much money was raised at the end of each day. Having this feature encouraged competitiveness among the students since they were able to see where they each stood in the competition on a daily basis. Parents and other supporters were also able to view the live dashboard and see where teams stood, which motivated outside supporters to help their child’s classroom as well.

The Outcome

After one year of using ExceedFurther, NPPSF increased their gifts by 118%. And. after only one week using Arreva’s ExceedFurther’s Team Fundraising and event registration and management application. NPPSF was able to exceed their fundraising goal by 21%.

There was vast improvement in their fundraising experience for teachers and donors through easy-to-use technology and streamlined, all-in-one fundraising, donor relationship management, and a live auction. They also received terrific feedback and enthusiasm around Change Wars as well as insights and learnings for even better results next year!

“The teachers were very skeptical at first about adding the team fundraising online component, but they found really quickly that it did work. It was very shareable on social media; we were able to link the fundraiser directly to our website. The branding was great, it looked and felt just like our website, with our logo and our design and colors. So, everything was a smooth transition and an effective way to boost results for our fundraising efforts,” comments Burchell.