Boost Your Dance Marathon Fundraising: Use Milestones and Incentives!
Want to raise 8 times more funds for your local children’s hospital? Milestones & Incentive features on DonorDrive can help!
Setting small goals on the way to accomplish larger objectives helps in many areas of life. It turns out that this also applies to Dance Marathon fundraising! That’s why we brought new milestones and incentives features to DonorDrive, the Dance Marathon fundraising platform, last year. Each person who registers for Dance Marathon can set up incentives for individuals who donate certain amounts to their page as well as overarching milestones that trigger fun, attention-grabbing events. Not only do these two features overwhelmingly help people raise more money for the kids, milestones and incentives also provide a more meaningful and personal connection to the people who want to help you toward your fundraising goal.
We took a look at the data from 2019 and 2020 and noticed many participants leveled up their fundraising by enabling incentives and getting the word out. On average, they raised 3x-5x more for their hospitals than participants who didn’t use this feature.
We see a similar increase for participants who used milestones. With an average boost to fundraising by 2x-3x relative to participants who didn’t use this feature.
There are all kinds of ways to implement your own unique sets of milestones and incentives. We’re often blown away by how creative and incredible our community can be. If you are stuck on what sort of milestones and incentives you should make for your own fundraiser, here are some of our favorites from across the community.
Taylor, from Stetson University
Taylor added a bunch of creative milestones and incentives to her fundraising page. You can see below that her next milestone is $5,000, when she will dye her hair!
For her incentives, Taylor adapted to the current times, offering to hand paint face masks for any donor who contributes $20 to her fundraising page. 
Alli, Ball State University
Alli did a great job of tying her milestones and incentives back to her local hospital and to the cause of children’s. As you can see below, many of her milestones are structured around significant numbers at Riley Hospital for Children or in regards to Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals.
This cause connection was true of her incentives too! 
You can use as many or as few milestones and incentives as you would like. Alli and Taylor both did an awesome job including lots of milestones leading up to their main goal, but we see others who just have a few significant milestones:
How you design your fundraising journey is up to you, but we know one thing to be true: milestones and incentives will definitely help you reach your goal and make the biggest impact possible on the kids and families at your local CMN Hospital. Activate them today!
Miracle Network Dance Marathon is an international movement, involving over 400 colleges, universities and K-12 schools across North America that fundraise for their local Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals. Since its inception in 1991, Miracle Network Dance Marathon has raised more than $300 million–ensuring that no child or family fights pediatric illness or injury alone.
Learn more about Miracle Network Dance Marathon: