Check out our Forum for ideas on how you can use Firstgiving.

More technical help here.

Firstgiving is an online system that allows you to do fundraising for your favorite non-profit organizations. Help us raise money for the Epilepsy Therapy Project to continue sponsoring epilepsy.com and the grants that we give to support new therapies to help anyone with epilepsy.

With Firstgiving you can create fundraising events for

• sporting events,
• in memory of someone,
• for a personal occasion, or
• get creative and come up with something new.

Just go to www.firstgiving.com/epilepsy and click on the

in the middle of the page and follow the instructions. The instructions are simple for you to setup your fundraising page and your account.

Once you have an account and a page setup, there are tools on Firstgiving that help you to collect donations. One of those tools is called a widget. The widget shows how your fundraising project is doing. If you have a Story, Blog, Group, or Forum in our community you can display your Firstgiving Widget on your page to share with other community members. Create a competition! See how much you can raise to help our cause.

Other tools that are available include

• getting fundraising badges to post anywhere you post HTML;
• emailing capabilities so that you can
  • invite people to donate,
  • send anyone who's donated a special Thank You, or
  • just update them on the progress of your fundraising;
• adding your event/campaign to your Facebook page,
• adding features to your Firstgiving page like YouTube videos and
• Flickr photos from your account.

How to add your Firstgiving Widget to your epilepsy.com pages.

Note: This will only work if you have followed the process above at Firstgiving and have setup a page and an account.

1. Go to www.firstgiving.com and click on My Account.
2. Click on the Your Fundraising Pages tab

3. Click on Get a Widget

4. Copy the code in the text box.
   • Highlight it with your cursor
   • Right click on the highlighted text (Mac users Control + Click)
   • select Copy

5. Now come back to epilepsy.com and log into your account. (Don't have an account? Register now, it's easy!)
6. Look at the top of this page where you see the my.epilepsy.com logo. Below it you will see Hi (Your) Username. Next to that you should see a link that says Manage My Account. Click on it.
7. A box will open and you will see an orange button that says Edit Account Info. Click on it.
8. The Edit tab will be highlighted. Below it you will need to click on Account Preferences.

9. On this page you will see a heading that says Fundraising with Firstgiving. Below it will be a text box. You will paste your Firstgiving Widget code there.

• Place your cursor in the textbox.
• Right click on your mouse. (Mac users Control + click)
• Select Paste

10. If you want your widget to automatically appear on your personal Blog page and your Story page, select the checkbox below the textbox where you just pasted your code.
    
11. Now scroll to the bottom of the page and look for the orange button that says Submit and Login. Click on it.

If you navigate to your personal Blog or My Story page, you will now see your Firstgiving Widget appear on the page.

If you have started a Group or Forum that you would like to post your widget to, you will need to go to those pages and edit them and select the checkbox that will now appear there that says Show my Firstgiving Widget on this page.

How to add a badge to your my.epilepsy.com pages

Note: This will only work if you have followed the process above at Firstgiving and have setup a page and an account AND if you have an account on epilepsy.com. (Don't have an account on epilepsy.com? Register now. It's easy!)

1. Go to www.firstgiving.com and click on My Account.
2. Click on the Your Fundraising Pages tab

3. Click on Get a Widget

4. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and select the badge you would like to post.

5. Copy the code in the text box below the badge you want to use.
   • - Highlight it with your cursor
   • - Right click on the highlighted text (Mac users Control + Click)
   • - select Copy
6. Log into your account on epilepsy.com. (Don't have an account on epilepsy.com? Register now. It's easy!)
7. Create your blog or group post on epilepsy.com where you want to place your badge
8. Look for the box where you enter the text of your post and find the link directly below it that says "disable rich-text" and click on it.

9. Place your cursor in the textbox for the Body:. Right-click. (Mack users Control + Click) Select Paste.

10. You can now click the "enable rich-text" link and easily add text to your post.
11. Click the Submit button.

Your Firstgiving badge along with a link to your donation page will now appear with your post.