The Internet is becoming an essential communications tool for many of us, both in our professional and personal lives. Every year, more and more Challenge Walk participants are using email and the web to recruit team members and solicit contributions from friends, family and co-workers. The reason is simple: by using the Internet, you can reach a greater number of people, more efficiently and with greater impact than you can by using the phone or mail alone.

The National MS Society provides every participant with free access to robust and easy-to-use email and web marketing tools to recruit, organize, and manage their fundraising and teams while helping them to solicit and keep track of their own contributors. Through your online Participant Center you can:

• Set up a fundraising account and check your progress online
• Create and build a personalized Web page to support your fundraising effort
• Send emails with links directly to your personal Web page to ask for donations
• Use email to invite and motivate team members (team captains only!)
• Build a database of team members and contributors to facilitate future communications (you can easily enter the email addresses or upload contacts from other address book applications, such as Google Mail, Yahoo Mail, Microsoft Hotmail, Outlook, or Outlook Express)
• Be reminded to send donation reminders and thank yous to donors

Need one-on-one training? Contact me, Kara Kelley, from the MS Challenge Walk Team, and we can work together to increase your knowledge of these tools. By using these tools, you can make 2009 your biggest fund raising year ever and bring us all one step closer to finding a cure for MS.

Kara is the former Development Coordinator for the Greater New England Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.