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At the Rural Center
by Dinah Monahan
 Technology. Most of us have a love-hate relationship with it. In our rural center, anything more complicated than an electric pencil sharpener is a mystery to us! Web sites, on-line credit card capabilities, and auto-charge and auto-check donations were things I thought were only for large centers.
All that has changed. I am now editing my own web site and putting my creative juices to work with on-line fundraising! A small pro-life company called Donation Results has made maintaining a web site simple and affordable. When I say simple, I mean really simple. You choose a template site, and they customize the menu bar for your center.
When you go to the edit page, you can put up photos, write text, feature up-coming events, and update fundraisers. We have a page about our Baby Bottle Fundraiser on which we regularly update the churches and results. We are adding on to our maternity home, and the progress is being chronicled in photos. The sites even have an on-line volunteer application and a credit card and check donation feature.
For our ministry, having a functioning, informative, interactive web site opens up exciting opportunities. Our maternity home residents make gift baskets. We sell and receive payment for the baskets through our site. We are auctioning off donated items that we can't use on eBay, and we have linked the method of payment to our web site. We have plans to do an on-line raffle of a restored '46 Chevy truck. We will sell tickets on-line to our next large event. On the web site we offer our donors auto-charge and auto-check arrangements for their monthly donations. Many of our donors prefer electronic funds transfer methods because they are hassle-free. As a bonus, we know we can count on their support.
Every person who comes to our site for any of these reasons will get to read all about us! Visit our site at www.womenscpc.org. Explore the possibilities for your center at www.donationresults.com.
| Dinah Monahan is the Heartbeat International Consultant for Rural and Small Centers and the founder and Executive Director of Women's Choice Pregnancy Clinic and Hope House Maternity Home. |
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