How-To Guide: My Participant Center www.walkmsncc.org 1
My Participant Center Tools STEP 1: From the Walk MS Homepage click on the My Account button on the left side of the screen under Register. 2
Step 2: Enter your username and password given when registered. Click Log in. 3
STEP 4: Click on your walk site: 4
STEP 5: At your Participant Center you can: Set up your personal webpage Upload your email address book Send emails to solicit donations and to thank your donors Track emails sent and actions taken Connect your personal page to your Facebook page Track your fundraising progress Access your team information (only team captains have this icon) 5
Setting up your personal webpage STEP 1: From My Participant Center select the PERSONAL PAGE button. This will take you to a page where you can edit your personal page s content, add photos or videos, and select which tracking components you would like to include on your personal page. STEP 2: Utilize the Content page to change the text message or edit the font of your page. You can PREVIEW what your page will look like after you make changes by saving your changes and then clicking the Preview link. 6
STEP 3: Select the Photos/Video link on the right side of the page. Here you can choose to upload a photo and add a caption to your Personal Page, as well as upload a video to be included on your Personal Page STEP 5: To pick a photo from your picture library, click on the BROWSE button to begin your search. After you have selected your photo, you can choose to add a caption to be included on your personal page. Once you have your photo selected and caption written, click on the SAVE/UPLOAD button to complete the selection. 7
STEP 6: If you would like to have a link to a video included on your Personal Page, select the Video button. Once here, you can copy and paste a YouTube URL into the box given. 8
STEP 7: You can choose which components you would like to have included on your Personal Page by selecting the Components link on the right side of the page. Here you can choose what components you would like to have included on your Personal Page. The default is to have the Status Thermometer showing how you are doing towards your personal fundraising goal and a Fundraising Honor Roll displaying your top donations. You can choose to show both the donor names and amounts, or just the donor names of your top donors. You can select or deselect any of these three components, and save and preview your page to see what it will look like to visitors to help you decide which components you would like included on your page. The third component listed on this page is to enable your Personal Blog. The use of this component is discussed in the following section. 9
Blogging on your webpage Keep your personal page fresh by adding a web log (blog). Update your personal blog frequently with your training or fundraising progress or just with your daily thoughts. Encourage your friends to bookmark it and check frequently to see your latest updates. STEP 1: To see your blog, select the Your Personal Page link at the top of the page after selecting Enable Personal Blog and saving changes. This is what your personal page should look like after selecting all three components to be included. At the bottom of your personal page, you will find the area for blogging. STEP 2: To begin blogging, select the Post a New Topic link. 10
STEP 3: After choosing to POST A NEW TOPIC, a new screen will appear in the blog section at the bottom of this page. STEP 4: Once you have titled and entered your message, the screen will ask you to enter a code displayed on the screen before you can post. This is to ensure that it is in fact a human posting the message, and not a computer generating SPAM. If you have trouble reading the image shown, you can choose Change Image to see another image. You can also select the blue button to the right of the code box, and the code will be played through audio for you to type in. STEP 5: Once you have finished entering your message, and have entered the code given to you by your computer, select Post your topic to have your post displayed on your Personal Page. 11
Using E-mail to Fundraise STEP 1: When you are ready to begin sending and tracking emails to help you fundraise and thank your donors, you can select the EMAIL link at the top of the screen in your participant center. This will take you to the Compose Message section of the Email Center. You may first wish to upload contacts from your email accounts to send out emails to. Do this by selecting Contacts on the right side of your screen. 12
STEP 2: The screen will display all of your contacts. If you have not uploaded any contacts or sent any emails yet, any contacts shown will be that of individuals who have donated online to you in the past. At this screen you can search for a contact to send a message to, sort your contacts into groups, or choose to send an email out to all of your contacts at once. You can also add a contact manually, or choose to import contacts from one or more email accounts. 13
Uploading Contacts from an Address Book STEP 1: Once you have selected Import Candidates from the right, a window will pop up asking you what email source you would like to import contacts from. Once you have selected your choice of email sources, select Next. 14
You will then be prompted to provide your email account name and password. 15
A list of all of your contacts within that email account will appear in the window. At this point you can hand select which contacts you would like to import into your Participant Center, or choose to check all of them to import all of your contacts. You can also add a contact to your list by selecting Add contact. Once you have selected the contacts you wish to import, click Next. A window will then appear listing the contacts you have added to your screen. If you are satisfied with this list, select Done. You will then return to the Email Center in your Participant Center. 16
Sending emails From this section, you can send emails to potential team members to recruit, to potential donors to solicit donations, and to people who have already donated to say thank you. You can also send emails to your current teammates. You can start by either selecting contacts from your contact list and then selecting Compose Message, or by selecting Compose Message and then manually entering email addresses for the message to be sent. Once you select Compose Message, this is what your screen should look like: You can create your own message, or use one of our suggested messages, or a combination of both! When you select one of these messages, the text will be displayed in your compose message box, and below that it will show you what layout the message will be sent in. 17
Before you send your message, you can PREVIEW it to see the way the text and layout will look when opened by your recipients. 18
You can also change the layout of your message by selecting one of the layouts provided for you in the Email Center. You can then choose to send, save, or preview your message with its new format. 19
Tracking your progress STEP 1: From My Participant Center select the PROGRESS button. This section helps you keep track of all your donations and shows your progress over time. You can also: Enter a new gift. Turn on or off gift notifications. View information on individual donations. 20
Team Progress Select Team on the right hand side of your Progress Page to view your team s progress. Here you can view all team donations made, as well as a list of all member s of your team. Team Captains can change their team fundraising goal here. 21
My Team Page (only for Team Captains) STEP 1: From My Participant Center select the TEAM PAGE button. From this section of the Participant Center, you can edit the content of your Team Page in the same manner you edited your Personal Page. You can also upload a photo for your team page here.. 22