Over $1.3 million raised over the past three years - 25 dollars at a time! Pie in the Sky is an annual fundraiser selling over 13,000 pies each year in Boston alone where the sale originated. Using effective online sales strategies and tools, volunteer pie sellers help each charitiy (Community Servings : Boston, MANNA : Philadelphia, Mama's Kitchen : San Diego) raise funds to feed the critically ill.

A key challenge in developing the Pie in the Sky web environment was creating a platform that was flexible enough to meet the different needs and processes of each charity while providing a secure, consistent and robust system capable of handling tens of thousands of transactions in a short timeframe.

Branding for the event changes year to year so the content management system required a editable template that allowed staff to change site colors, graphics, banners and fonts while not interfering with the layout that annual donors have come to expect.

Using a micro-site format, the web environment for each charity's sale is fully editable and fits seemlessly into their current websites. Because the informational needs change throughout the sale, staff members are able to turn various pages on and off as needed.

Pictured above is Community Servings' (Boston) micro-site with its 2008 branding campaign.

Media converage is a key compontent to any fundraiser. The Pie in the Sky micro-site provides staff members the ability to add news coverage of any media quickly and with ease via the content management system (CMS).

Staff members are able to update the list of restaurants who donate pies to the sale on the fly. Using a centralized database created by FarmHouse Studios, restaurants needs only be confirmed each year and not re-entered, nor is there any HTML editing.

By adding links directly to the restaurant they are able to promote their supporters.

An integrated e-commerce solution (fully developed by FarmHouse Studios) allows pie buyers to purchase pies, make a donation, select a pie seller, pick-up location and more in an easy step-wise process. Email notification of each sale is sent to they buyer and pie seller.

in an administration area of the micro-site staff members are able to run live reports as well as view live charts and dashboards to get up to the minute sales results.

Via the content management system (CMS), staff are able to edit the micro-site as needed throughout the sale as well as provide messaging before and after the fundraiser is live.