Client Profile:
The Heart and Stroke Foundation is the single largest source of funds for cardiovascular and cerebrovascular research in Canada. Its goal is to improve the health of Canadians through research, health promotion and advocacy. HSF is a federation of 10 independent provincial foundations and one national foundation, the Heart & Stroke Foundation of Canada.

HSF makes significant use of the Internet for both fundraising and health promotion activities. Since September 2001, it has used NMA's CMS to support a wide variety of activities.

Each year HSF's provincial foundations run several events that promote health and fitness for individual Canadians while raising money for research.

NMA's Solution:
NMA introduced a customized event manager into HSF's consumer website CMS for online management of events held by various provinces across Canada throughout the year. Some of these features include instant credit card processing of online registrations by participants and pledges from donors.

Additionally, registrants can send a pledge request email to a list of friends and relatives, who can instantly link back to the HSF website and make a pledge by credit card online. The inbound pledges are also credited to the registrants "reward tally" which qualifies them for incentive gifts.

Initial Result: Almost 30% of participants, over 3700, registered online using the HSF online event manager for the Becel Ride for Heart in Toronto on June 3, 2002.

Client Comments:
"We were expecting to see an increase in online registrations, but this was way beyond our estimates."
Kyla Carleton, Website Specialist, HSFO.

"Instead of having to call 25 people, this was so much easier. If it weren't for this function, I probably wouldn't have been so aggressive in my fundraising."
Teresa Pavlin, Becel Ride for Heart participant (as reported in the Toronto Star).

"I sort of shy away from collecting donations face-to-face, because it puts people in an awkward position. But for this I didn't have to do any door-to-door stuff."
Rob Barios, Becel Ride for Heart participant who raised $195 using the Event Manager (as reported in the Toronto Star).