Case Study: Pan-Mass Challenge boosts online fundraising and secures site performance with Acquia

Pan-Mass Challenge Chooses Acquia and Drupal to Keep Brand Fresh, Empower Fundraising

Pan-Mass Challenge (PMC) is a lean nonprofit bike-a-thon that raises millions for cancer research; in 2014 it presented $41 million to Dana-Farber. With only seven full-time staff, PMC relied on its website for more than half of its donations but struggled with slow, IT-dependent content updates and the need to handle massive traffic spikes in the weeks before the event.

PMC rebuilt its site on Drupal, integrating it with legacy .NET fundraising tools and later migrated to Acquia Cloud for reliable uptime and 24/7 support. The new platform let staff quickly publish content, manage brand assets, and experiment with changes; as a result PMC collected over $26 million online in 2014, reduced update turnaround from days or weeks to near-instant, and gained confidence in site performance during peak periods.

Pan-Mass Challenge

David Hellman

Senior Vice President