Getting your school set up

Welcome. Here's how to get your school onto PagePledge for the first time. Most of the time spent is just waiting for our reply — once you're in, the dashboard walks you through the rest.

1. Sign your school up

Fill in the application — your school's name, your city, and the email of whoever will be the main person on PagePledge (usually you).

2. We'll review and approve

We read every application by hand — keeps things friendly and keeps the wrong people out. Most schools are approved within a business day. If we need to ask anything, we'll email you from hello@pagepledge.com.

3. Click the link in your approval email

Once you're approved, we'll email you a sign-in link. Click it within 15 minutes and you're in — there's no password to make.

4. Create your first campaign

After signing in, your dashboard will be empty with one big invitation: Create your first campaign. Click it. Pick your dates, optionally a fundraising goal, and give it a friendly name. That's it — about 30 seconds.

See Creating your first campaign for what each field does.

5. Work through the setup checklist

Once your campaign exists, your dashboard turns into a checklist of what's left. Tick everything off and you're ready for launch day. The dashboard suggests a sensible order — work top to bottom and you won't get stuck.

Here's what each step is, with a link to the article that walks through it:

• Connect Square so donations have somewhere to land. This one depends on your finance person, so it's worth kicking off first.
• Import your classrooms and students. Upload a spreadsheet — we'll create the classrooms and students and make activation codes for everyone.
• Invite your teachers and add them to their classrooms.
• Print take-home sheets so each student can bring one home for their family.
• Set up rewards — pizza party at $1,000, that kind of thing. Optional, but they make the read-a-thon a lot more exciting.
• Launch. The campaign launches automatically on your start date — but if you're set up early and ready to go, you can launch right from the checklist.