Mark your calendars for this year’s Bethany Jog-a-Thon on October 6!
Join us in reaching our 2023 fundraising goal of $40,000!
This fall, we're excited for our beloved annual tradition, the Bethany Jog-a-Thon! In addition to being our biggest fundraiser of the year, this is a fun-filled and exciting day for our students and their families.
The Jog-a-Thon is a school day event, where students will walk, jog, or run laps around the school track with their classmates for 20 minutes. Students will gather flat or per-lap pledges. When students, classes, and the school as a whole hit fundraising goals, they earn prizes and rewards!
The donations raised at this event provide 80% of the Bethany School PTO annual budget, which funds teacher supply budgets, educational enrichment activities, and special school events, among many other things.
Fundraising
This year, we’re fundraising online using a service called Pledgestar. The online platform makes it easy for your student to fundraise with family and friends near and far, and for them to track their progress towards the amazing prizes!
Setting up your student’s page is quick and easy. You can find a video overview of these instructions here.
Click the blue button, “Not Registered For This Year’s Event”
Enter your name and email address, then click “Submit”
Follow the instructions on-screen to register your student(s) and add family and friends.
From there, it’s easy to use Pledgestar to send emails or post to social media to ask your family and friends for pledges. They can choose to make pledges using a credit card or by check, flat or per-lap.
Pledgestar’s system does all of the follow up after the event, so you don’t have to! All you need to do is ask for the support of your family and friends.
Those who opt to donate by check will need to mail it to the school, or you may bring it to the front office. Please go through the Pledgestar system so these donations will be tracked appropriately! Detailed instructions will appear for anyone who selects the “pay by check” option when making a pledge.
Need some help or want some extra insight?
Jog-a-Thon Information handout
Corporate Match
Does your company offer corporate matching for nonprofit donations? Many local companies, including Nike and Intel, will match your donation for free. Those matches will count towards your students’ prizes - and, more importantly, allow you to double your impact in contributing to the PTO’s programs supporting our school.
To ensure that your donation and match count towards your student’s total, please be sure to follow these instructions:
Make a donation on Pledgestar via credit card or check. Before you complete your donation, select “Corporate Match” and enter the name of your company. See below for an example:
You’ll get an email receipt from Pledgestar and a reminder of your corporate match pledge, along with a unique ID for your employer to include on the check. Submit this information to your company (or to Benevity for Intel or Nike) for matching.
Boomers Boost
We are so excited to announce and introduce the Boomer Boost this year! Boomer asked to have his own account so he can randomly go around boosting kids' fundraising by adding funds from his Pledgestar account to theirs. If you would like to contribute to Boomer’s account you can donate here: BOOMER BOOST PLEDGESTAR
Prizes and Rewards
It wouldn’t be the Jog-a-Thon without some fun prizes and incentives for the kids! Our students have many opportunities to win fun prizes and experiences. Individual students will earn cumulative prizes as they reach fundraising levels.
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED!
Join us on the day of the Jog-A-Thon to volunteer and cheer on our students! You can choose to volunteer for one or more class periods during the day, or to help set up or clean up.
You must pass a background check and provide vaccination information to volunteer. If you’re interested in volunteering, please sign up today in Better Impact to get the ball rolling!
Have questions? Email our team lead at jog.a.thon-lead@bspto.org.