ChipIn - The Easy Way to Raise Funds Online

ChipIn is a neat and free web app that allows you to raise money online easily and quickly - without a lot of complicated coding or hassles.

Signing up is easy - just start filling in the boxes, tell them what you are raising money for, how much, how soon you need it, and your PayPal email address. It is important to note that if you use PayPal, you may be subject to their fees.

The rest of the signup process is simple and fast - I had my ChipIn up and running in less than ten minutes! The widgets are created with Flash and easily customizable. It is up to you whether or not you want to set a specified fundraising amount or not, and you can choose from several colors as well as many different size widgets, so you can get the perfect size and color combination that will fit into your blog’s theme or website’s design.

As there are several different widgets to choose from, each displaying different levels of information including your fundraising goal, the amount raised to date, the end date, the number of participants and more, you can rest assured that you get enough information to those who want to donate to your cause.

After you create the widget to your specifications, select where you want to put it - whether it is on any of the social networking sites that you use like MySpace, hi5, Friendster or WordPress - and copy and paste the generated code into your website.

Another great thing about ChipIn is that you can have more than one fundraiser at at time - just hit the “create” button in the upper right-hand corner and get started creating more.

And yet another feature worth writing home about is the “create page” feature. I created a ChipIn page for my fundraiser, so I could get the maximum benefit out of it.

Not only do I now have a widget that I can put on all of my social networking pages, but I can also have a page on ChipIn that will allow people to visit, read more about my project and leave donations for me. The page is easily customizable, where you can add pictures, video, and more information about what you are raising money for.

Not only can I keep up with various fundraisers I’ve created, but I can also see who made contributions to me via the ChipIn website.

Go on over to ChipIn and create your own fundraiser today - then just sit back and watch your collections grow!

By Ellie, who is currently raising money for charity (and hoping to move from Princess to Queen) on ChipIn and writes about technology, web apps and more at ultimate geek girl!