DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF AN ONLINE CAMPUS FUNDRAISER SYSTEM
ABSTRACT
Over the years students use manual ways to raise funds to support their election ambitions, help pay less privileged students school dues, sick friends and many other challenges which they face in the school. To overcome the problems of manual fund raising, the researcher has developed “an Online Campus Fund Raiser System”. The system which will be implemented on the internet and can be accessed on any operating device, either desktop or mobile devices connected to the internet. The system communicates with the database residing on a remote server. This system has been built with HTML, CSS and PHP.
CHAPTER ONE
1.1 INTRODUCTION
The Internet has opened up a whole new world that poor students large and small are using to expand their universe of influence and support. The Internet lets even small or local organizations in every work of life reach out to potential supporters around the world and around the clock. Fundraisers are especially excited about online opportunities for locating new donors and for adding a new communication channel for cultivating existing donors.
Successful online fundraising programs generally have two major components. The foundation is an informative, interactive web site communications program which, together, help build relationships with your website visitors and the people you get to sign up for your email newsletter or online advocacy program. The second component, often overlooked, is a strategy for attracting new people – especially potential donors – to your site, so you can begin the relationship-building process. Online fundraising can’t exist in a vacuum. The success of your online fundraising program will be largely dependent on your organization’s overall Internet presence as well as your traditional offline activities.
How can campuses effectively integrate the Internet into its strategy for fulfilling its mission? With the Internet’s growing importance, influence, and widespread use, poor students have new opportunities for communicating with their constituents, getting their work done, and garnering support. The Internet isn’t replacing other media, but it is taking its place alongside them. Most notable is the role that an online donor system is playing in the operational capacity of nonprofit organizations. This system has created a sea change as a tool for communicating with donors and colleagues, alerting activists, and disseminating information. Initially, the Web created a revolution in “brochure-ware,” allowing poor students to reach many new supporters and media with simple sites. New services enable even poor students with the smallest budgets to sign up members, take credit card donations, sponsor online discussions, offer surveys, put up searchable databases, and much more. As a complement to existing methods, the Internet is a medium that has finally come of age for a nonprofit sector that is hungry for modern and effective campaign tools and techniques.
1.2 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
The purpose of this research is to develop an online campus fund raising system, for students’ to easily raise funds/ donations towards a particular project and challenges faced in the school campus. The funds collected from students are taken automatically by a payment gateways which will be integrated on the system, each student details and records will be easily recorded automatically without time consuming, which is reliable and without any error.
1.3 OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
⦁ Eliminate duplicate data entry and errors in time and entries.
⦁ Eliminate paperwork and save time.
⦁ Reduce money laundering among students officials.
⦁ To increase the charity/ giving among students.
1.4 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
In most educational institutions fund raising is done manually. It is not only time consuming, but it is also unsecure and unreliable and it can be lead to money laundering among corrupt student officials. Some institutions use manual paper fund raising sheets for funds collection while this will be difficult for record keeping and also to keep track of the large number of students donating towards a particular project, so it is not reliable.
1.5 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The scope of the project is limited to several processes: handling of student fund raising on campus, managing records of successful donations, and record every transaction for easy assessments. It will generate the reports such as funds raised during a particular campaign. The online campus fund raiser system is designed in such a way that makes it possible to access through any device connect to the internet.
1.6 DEFINITION OF TERMS
Internet- a global computer network providing a variety of information and communication facilities, consisting of interconnected networks using standardized communication protocols.
Transaction- an exchange or transfer of goods, services, or funds
Campus - A campus is traditionally the land on which a college or university and related institutional buildings are situated
Online – Computer or device connected to a network (such as Internet) and ready to use (or be used by) other computers or devices.
Donations- A donation is a gift for charity, humanitarian aid, or to benefit a cause. A donation may take various forms, including money, alms, services, or goods such as clothing, toys, food, or vehicles.
Organizations- an organized group of people with a particular purpose, such as a business or government department.
Fundraisers- Fundraising or fund raising (also known as "development") is the process of gathering voluntary contributions of money or other resources, by requesting donations from individuals, businesses, charitable foundations
Poor students- not established for the purpose of making a profit; not entered into for money.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
2.0 Introduction
The Needy/Poor Students have bills to pay and other pressing issues to solve on campus. In order for them to fulfill their mission they are dependent on donations from the general student body (Guy and Patton 1989). Over the past decade, the Internet has become an indispensable communication channel, supporting the poor and neddy students in two ways.
First, it helps them to disseminate information and communicate with audiences more rapidly and, second, it functions as a fundraising channel (Hooper and Stobart 2003).
Offering information, interaction and fundraising capabilities to poor students, the Internet has opened up unparallel opportunities for poor students to further their causes and enter into relationships with current, lapsed and potential donors.
However, poor students typically have limited skills, time and budget available to develop and maintain sophisticated Web sites (Hooper and Stobart 2003). In addition, they often face the problem that the expenses associated with building and maintaining a website are perceived as a waste of their money (Wenham, Stephens and Hardy 2003). An additional challenge in online fundraising is the Web's nature as a pull medium, which entails that site traffic is a determinant of the volume of donations collected online. Even regular donors of a particular nonprofit organization may never visit its website, unless if offers vital information, e.g. in the area of health (Sargeant 2001). Despite these challenges, more and more poor students compete for donations online.
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