Welcome everyone. It hello to everyone in the chat, to our special
one hour giving season session, Giving Tuesday demystified and I cannot believe how quickly
giving Tuesday is approaching. It's pretty wild in your end, right? We are in the thick of it and that's why we
are here with you today and for the next few weeks. So here at Donor Box, we love sharing practical
actionable learning resources to keep you on top of all that's going on in this rapidly
growing nonprofit sector. And that's some
thing that you'll take away
from each of our giving season sessions. You'll leave each session including today's
session with something that you can do right away to put towards your year end and your
giving Tuesday plan. So again, I'm Jenna, I'm the nonprofit advocate
here at donor box. And today I'm joined by Kara with our, with
the c our fundraising coach here at Donor box and Kara with a K our senior content writer
here at Donor box. Hello. Hello. Hey, it's so good to be here. Thank you, Jen
na. Hello. Yes. Thank you, Jenna. Excited for this one, two favorite people
here. I'm glad to have you with me. So again, today, it's so good to see all of
you in the chat. Thank you for showing up week after week. We're seeing a lot of familiar names in the
room today in in preparation for the busiest fundraising season of the year. But if this is your first time joining us,
you are in for a treat. We're really glad that you're here. As I mentioned, today's session is a special,
special hour lo
ng. Ask me anything session dedicated to demystifying,
giving Tuesday, which again is coming up very quickly. So when you registered many of you submitted,
you're giving Tuesday questions to us. So we've been reviewing them all week and
today we're gonna turn those questions into answers for you and then we'll open up the
floor to all of you for a live Q and A and you can ask us anything giving Tuesday and
year end fundraising related. So, are we ready to get started? Let me know in the chats. A
ll right, ready. I love, love it. All right. Naturally, we are starting with a poll question. So we want to know what your organization's
past participation in giving Tuesday has looked like, let me go ahead and launch that poll
and you should see that on the right hand side now. So, have you never participated in any way
in giving Tuesday? Maybe you've just taken the opportunity to
post once or twice on your social channels or do you take it one step further and post
a few times in the week or
two surrounding giving Tuesday to get your donors engaged? Or do you plan out a fully fledged and detailed
giving Tuesday campaign, either separately or as a part of your overarching year end
campaign that may include multiple social media posts, email outreach and even more. So let us know and if feel free to drop a
comment in the chat as well, if none of these answers really fit you or you've got something
else to say and we're seeing those responses coming in pretty quickly. Excellent. So we
have the majority having not participated
at all. So this is an exciting opportunity for us
to talk to you about doing Tuesday And possibly help you consider launching a campaign this
year. The next after that, we see people posting
once or twice on social media. Very few have a full fed campaign. Let's see. And what are people saying in the chat? Oh, Mary, I love this. Yes, Mary does emails to donors social posts
the entire month of December. And this year she sent a postcard to her generalist.
That's a great way to get everybody warmed
up and ready to go. That's a campaign, you know, I love those. Oh, yeah, that is Kara's Jam. That is phenomenal. Thank you for sharing Mary and thanks everyone. For your responses. All Kara with A K. I'm gonna go ahead and pass it over to you. Fantastic. Well, I'm so excited to have you all here
today. I'm excited to introduce Giving Tuesday to
some of you who have never posted before or maybe have only posted a little bit. So we're gonna start with on
e of the most
straightforward questions you guys asked. It was what is giving Tuesday. So giving Tuesday in short is a global day
of giving and it's held on the Tuesday after us, Thanksgiving. So Thanksgiving in the United States. So it was actually started in 2012 in response
to that retail focused weekend here in the US that follows Thanksgiving. We have Black Friday Small Business Saturday,
Cyber Monday sales taking over and giving Tuesday really gives the world a chance to
refocus on what is
actually most important during the holiday season and to all of us,
right? Giving. So on giving Tuesday, millions of people all
around the world engage in changing the lives of others. So how do they do that? So yes, they do donate. They also volunteer at homeless shelters or
other organizations. They organize food drives, fill community
pantry shelves with donations of canned food, personal items, things like that. It's really just a great time for so many
generous people to discover a local f
undraiser or fundraiser in their area and give and that's
likely why you're here Right. So it's a great time to build momentum on
this conversation that already exists. But before we move on, I do want to mention
there's one common misperception. The giving Tuesday team does not organize
or distribute matching gifts. It's just all about creating that conversation
primarily in the digital space to encourage more people to give to your organization. And next, we have another quick little quiz
for
you. So what do you think? True or false? Giving? Tuesday is the time of year. Most organizations raise their largest percentage
of donations. So what do you think? True or false? Oh Look at everybody's voting. You love this. It's like a horse race. Oh my gosh, she's going. It's awesome. All right, looks like we're pretty close but
leaning more towards false and those of you who said false would be correct. So I figured you might know this one, but
I want to reinforce this. I know we've mentione
d it. I know I've mentioned it when I've been in
these coming season sessions, but many non profits really do focus most of their efforts
on giving Tuesday. And you should, I'm not saying you shouldn't. That's why we're here, but giving Tuesday
is actually not the biggest day of the year on donations. So look taking a look at our next slide. Perfect. It shows that year year end giving statistics,
tell a different story. So we're actually looking at that giving Tuesday
is not the biggest day of t
he giving day of the year. It's often the kickoff to what people consider
to be that year end giving season. So take a look at this graph. It's a snapshot of this is the donor box specific
organizations and what their year end giving looked like last year in 2021. So you can see that a lot of organizations
did raise money on giving Tuesday for sure. That's why you want to be in that conversation. But Holy moly, look at those last few days
of the year starting there on December 27th and moving th
rough. Wow, December 31st. So that means we're looking at more than one
third of all annual giving, not just giving season, all annual giving occurs the last
three months of the year and most of all of that happens in the last couple of days of
the year. So something like 10 to 11% it usually happens
in the last day of the year. So that's right. Most giving happens in the last 48 hours of
the year. So that brings us to our next question. You know, we do get this question a lot, especially
becaus
e those last few days of the year really are. Those biggest days is giving Tuesday still
relevant. And my short answer is yes. Yes, yes, yes. Although it isn't the biggest fundraising
day of the year. , all annual giving it really is important
and partici participating in giving Tuesday is still recommended for one. It's an easy way to join the conversation
again. Rest assured that hashtag giving Tuesday will
be trending on November 29th and possibly even a couple of days before and maybe even
a
fter. So make sure you're using that hashtag so
that you get in that algorithm and get involved that will help get your post scene. Because so many donors around the world know
about giving Tuesday and may feel compelled to give on this day in particular. You want to be sure you are participating. So while those donors who know you in your
mission may give to you on this day without extra prompting, those who don't know about
you definitely won't give if they don't see your message, especially i
f they're getting
that message from everybody else. We still don't suggest putting all of your
eggs in, in that giving Tuesday basket. But remember those last three days of the
year in particular are critical, but it's definitely worth your time to participate. And I absolutely love this next question. So when should we begin our giving Tuesday
communications? Well, if you haven't already started, you
can start right now today. So start by posting your impact stories so
that your followers know
about your message and your mission before the big day of giving. You can also post a few thank yous to show
your gratitude for all your supporters, do your volunteers, your donors for your organization
throughout the year, consider posting a save the date for giving Tuesday now, so that your
followers know it's coming up, especially if you're doing something special that day. So for example, we've seen gifts being giving
out. So if you donate on giving Tuesday, you might
get a scarf if you dona
te in these 24 hours or if you donate, there's also matching gifts,
if you have a donor that's willing to do a matching gift for these 24 hours. even if it's only up to, you know, 5 $10,000
that's something that you can really talk about and you should promote in advance. So make sure you let them know this is happening
and the same can be said for emails again, send at least one save the day email, get
your supporters excited to participate and include any of those matching donation details,
th
ose prizes, your goals for the year, et cetera and also consider sending a general
stewardship email. So by this, just a general one to say thank
you here in the USA great day to do. That is the day right before Thanksgiving. Not a lot of work, emails are coming through. A lot of people are kind of, you know, slowing
down for those two days off. We have on a lot of people have on that Thursday
and Friday. So it's a great choice. but send one that focuses on thanking your
donors instead of making
an ask and outside of social and email. I want to encourage you to do leg work. Now, have one on one conversations with your
most loyal supporters and ask if they will engage again this year. And I don't mean just through giving, ask
them to talk to a friend about your message that they know who someone they know hasn't
donated to your organization before or even just something as simple as sharing your post
on your so on their social media page. And then also can make sure you're continuing
yo
ur outreach through giving Tuesday and beyond. So here are a couple of quick tips that might
be helpful because I know that I just laid a lot on you and this sounds like a lot of
posts to do. It's really helpful when you use templates
provided by giving Tuesday to create your social media posts. You can also download and customize the Giving
Tuesday artwork for email and social media. This is all available for free on the Giving
Tuesday website. And we're gonna share a link to our blog that
feat
ures that a little bit later. It'll be here, we promise and also make sure
you're using free or affordable tools for scheduling posts and emails that way you can
get started now on scheduling out all of your posts for giving Tuesday and beyond. and you're not scrambling the day of and to
give you a little bit of a visual on, oh Jenna on the social media post that we're talking
about. I'm gonna go over these pretty quickly. But here you see a save the date for social
media. It's with the sleeping
puppy and it says only
five more sleeps until hashtag giving Tuesday. And that's something else I really wanna mention. Make sure you're using that hashtag again. And you'll see here, we have an hashtag a
ac love because our organization's name is animal adoption center or a ac. And then we also added a fun little hashtag
puppy love to join that conversation as well. So that's something else I want to point out
and you'll see this hashtag a ac love as well as giving Tuesday on these posts. Make
sure you're coming up with a creative
campaign hashtag for giving Tuesday that you can also use throughout your whole giving
season campaign. This one doesn't have to be just giving Tuesday
because that really ties all of your posts together and again, helps you join that conversation. So for example, in the stewardship, social
media example, we have my favorite. This is my personal favorite picture we've
used. It's Rocco who is extra grateful for you and
for the support and love. You have show
n this, him and his pals at the
shelter this year, Happy Thanksgiving from all of your furry and human friends at animal
adoption center. And again, we used hashtag a ac love but also
some other trending hashtags that day, it will be Thanksgiving and Happy Thanksgiving. So that's just another example of how you
can work in some impact. And thank yous. Not everything has to be a direct ask and
here will sh is just showing a set of giving Tuesday social media examples. So what I've really seen suc
cess from in my
experience and watching other organizations as well is you really have two options. So one pick a main theme. So whether that's that a ac love standing
tall, if you're helping Children to stand up using standing wheelchairs or finding medical
care, something like that and find several stories that follow that same theme. And you can share those throughout the day
or you can do what we did here in this example and you can break a story here. It's about peanut the Labrador and to p
ost
about the day to throughout the day to keep people coming back, staying engaged. And it also kind of it tells the story of
your organization and really gives people a look into everything that you do. Just make sure that you are including those
call to actions you'll see here. There are several hashtags we always use that
giving Tuesday hashtag and that a ac love. hashtag Here and the first, the first post
talks about poor peanut first arrived at animal Adoption Center in urgent need of medi
cal
care that costs $5000. Thanks to our supporters, she quickly received
it. So will you give online at a ac.org today
giving Tuesday to help more animals like peanut, all gifts will be matched by a caring company
to reach our goal of $20,000. And so the next, that's the first post today
and then the next to go through Peanut Story. The second one is her playing with her friends,
Rory and Oreo showing an outdoor area that supporters donated. And then also the last one is actually of
peanuts. sh
e's at home with her family. So showing the positive end to what supporters
can do. So again, breaking that story up throughout
the day in addition to posts like these use Twitter and then also Instagram and Facebook
stories to share updates. So if you have a goal, let people know, hey,
we've, we've raised 5000 of our $20,000 goal. Can you help us get further things like that? And sure, thank yous to major donors and things
like that throughout the day. And then I'm not gonna read through these
word for word cause that'll take a long time. But here we have hopefully whenever you get,
so I recommend whenever you get the recording, you can pause it and read through them because
these are examples of some emails that you can send. So we have our stewardship or gratitude email. Again. This one could go out the day before Thanksgiving
here in the US or if you're in another country just just a general. Thank you. A thank you for the before the holidays, things
like that here. Pumpkin, the ki
tten is joining our executive
director to say just a happy Thanksgiving. These can be fairly short, they don't need
to be long and they're one of the few that don't need a call to action and then the save
the date email example here similar to our stories. So you'll see and I want to point out here,
Peanut is here again. And if you've been on a one of these calls
with me before you've seen syndicating your content is best use peanuts image, use other
images, use that story, break it up, change i
t up for your audiences. Pull those golden nuggets that golden thread
message and make sure that your audience is seeing it in more ways than one. So here you'll see that we are introducing
the, we're teasing the match. We're encouraging people to save the date
for giving Tuesday. But the PS actually says, don't want to wait
until giving Tuesday, you can give here at any time so that if someone does want to give
right away, they don't have to wait until giving Tuesday. They can give that day. An
d finally our last example is this one is
one that can be sent from giving on giving Tuesday itself. So the subject line and that's something else
you should really be focusing on your emails. It says today, only your gift will go twice
as far. So use something that's gonna capture attention. I actually have seen that putting giving Tuesday
in the subject line on giving Tuesday doesn't always help because everyone's doing that. So maybe try to come up with something else
like this today. Only yo
ur gift will be matched, things like
that. Something with urgency that's gonna get them
to open that email. And again, you'll see that we're still using
Peanut Story here. We're wrapping it up showing that great image
with those cute little sunglasses because Peanut is so happy to be with her family. And again, reiterating how you can give to
have your gift matched, but also adding in a second call to action here to ask people
to share their story with a link over to those social media, to socia
l media so they can
share those posts that you work so hard on. So that way if people want to give, they can
give and share or maybe if they can't give right now, they might give back on giving
Tuesday by sharing your posts. I love these examples. How do I raise money? We are so excited that here at Dinner Box,
A lot of nonprofit start ups are using our tools and our technology to be begin their
fundraising journey. So naturally, we see this question pretty
often so we could get into so much det
ail here. And we could really have webinar after webinar
after webinar just dedic dedicated to this one question. But we tried our best to break it down into
three top tips geared towards the giving season and giving Tuesday, especially if you are
a nonprofit start up. So my number one tip for you is of course,
if you are just starting out, you've never fund raised before, the best place to start
is with a donor box hosted fundraising page. So I always suggest this because our donor
box hosted f
undraising pages are especially great. If you don't have a website yet, maybe you
don't plan on having one or you're working on one right now. Because you can get these up and running in
15 minutes or less. So it's a really simple template with a background
image in your logo that you can customize with your storytelling as you can see here,
you can add in images and videos and have that donation form embedded right there on
your fundraising page. So this makes for a really compelling giving
exp
erience. And in order to fundraise, you have to have
a place for someone to go to donate their money. So that is my number one tip if you're a nonprofit
start up. And then once you have your fundraising page,
that means that you need to promote it. So folks know that you're fundraising, right? And we say here work from the inside out. So what that means is, start with your friends
and family. They're the ones who give you all their time. You know, more freely, which means they may
also be willin
g to give you some of their money as well. But they are your most valuable supporters. So ask them to donate or share your fundraising
page with others to help spread the word. And that is a really great place to start. Maybe you don't have your board put together
yet, maybe you don't have those volunteers, but everybody has at least a little bit of
a smaller community. You can start with those folks and ask them
to spread the word and that's a really good place to start. And then Kara I'll pass
this one over to you. Tip number three. Yeah. Tip number three. And I love this. How do I raise many questions? It another one, another great one on giving
Tuesday is a matching challenge and the image you see on the screen is a donor box organization. This is their matching challenge on giving
Tuesday and I just thought they highlighted it so incredibly well. If you have current donors see if one will
step up with a matching challenge for the day, maybe one of your major donors and that
is the
ir year end contribution or if you have a group that would want to pool their contributions
to issue a matching challenge. I saw Kayla over here in the comments. Thank you, Kayla consider asking your board
to match up to a certain amount. And that very, that works very, very well. There's an organization, a local organization,
their board collectively, combined $100,000 and there's $100,000 match. So,, as, as the rest of that money gets raised,
they'll, they'll, they'll pay in their increment in
increments,, towards that overall $200,000
year end fundraising goal. And then there was another question up here. ,,, I can't find it now. Is it too late to try to gain a partnership
where a business will match gifts? , it most likely, I don't know. You'll never know until you ask. , but I do encourage you to find local,, businesses
that have values that align with your organization. , those are gonna be your best fit and also
have,, an introductory conversation. So cold calls,, can work somet
imes but sometimes
if you, if you ha already have an existing relationship or an introduction,, somebody,
you know, one of your supporters can make the introduction for you. It'll go a little better. , but absolutely not, you'll never know unless
you ask and you might want to just start asking. Now, you might find someone who's extra generous,
especially this time of year. So I encourage you if you you know, if you
want to learn more and you really truly are new to fundraising. We got that quest
ion a lot. So I think many of you might be we want to
support you and I encourage you to email us at academy at donor box.org. It goes directly to us and let us know what
you might need support and learning or, or wanting to know about fundraising because
as we are creating courses and content, we want to be able to speak into what it is that
you want to know. But we also may have some great blog posts
or, or videos or webinars that can point you in the right direction. So we'll be happy to cura
te that content for
you. So just reach out to us on email. Absolutely. Thanks for that, Kara. All right. This may have been my favorite question and
all the questions we got, I get so pumped up about getting your board involved. So this question came from Jocelyn from Herbalist
without Borders. So this is a really great question because
your board should be involved in all. I repeat all of your big fundraising campaigns
and that includes giving Tuesday. So where do you start? Well, first you nee
d to make sure that they
know about giving Tuesday, right. We learn even from our poll that not many
folks have been involved with it before. So make sure that you're sending out a quick
email, letting them know what giving Tuesday is, why it's important to your organization
and what your Giving Tuesday campaign will entail what your plans are or bring it up
during your next board meeting if you're having one soon,, you don't want to wait on educating
your board on this, especially because it's
coming up in just a couple of weeks. And then next, you want to make sure they
understand what kind of fundraising efforts would be the most helpful for your organization. So again, be sure to do this as soon as you
can so that they have time to ask questions about your initiatives, prepare and provide
their own ideas to help you out with that. So some good initiatives to consider asking
your board to get involved in. And there are a lot, actually, there's so
many things that your board can do a
nd should do. My number one suggestion and I saw this in
the chat too. So this is awesome is launch a peer to peer
fundraiser. So if you are a donor box user or even if
you're using another platform, you can create a peer to peer campaign and invite your board
members to create their own fundraising page to share with their personal network. So it's really easy with Donor box to create
that peer to peer campaign just as easily as it is to create a crowd funding page or
a general donor box hosted
fundraising page and you can invite your board, you can also
invite your you know, most active supporters. So your volunteers, your awesome donors to
fundraise on behalf of your organization and they share that link with their friends and
family. So they or fundraising for you. Not only does this help with your capacity
as a team at your end when you're probably all so busy to begin with. But this really helps get the word out and
it keeps them involved, which just adds to that loyalty that the
y have to your organization. So my number one suggestion is peer to peer. Next, if you don't have the capacity to launch
a Peer to Peer campaign, because it does take a little bit of laid work ahead of time, launch
a crowd funding page. This is another great way to spread the word
and your board can easily share that page through their social media and encourage others
to donate or subscribe to your crowdfunding as well. So that's something pretty simple. And I think many of you are using crowdf
unding
for giving Tuesday, we saw a lot of crowdfunding pages for giving Tuesday last year. So that is a great way. If someone asks, how can I help share this
page, subscribe. But with this, you should also ask your board
to each commit to making their year end gift during your giving Tuesday campaign and display
it with a comment on your donor wall. So again, every fundraising page with donor
box, you can enable that donor wall. So you can see comments from your donors how
much they've donated.
And that's a really great way to show potential
donors who are looking at your fundraising page that you are a trusted organization and
people are enthusiastically giving to your cause, but they're also gonna see that goal
meter grow and create that kind of sense of excitement and encouragement. So ask your board to make their gifts now. But alternatively, and we've seen a few comments
in the chat and Kara mentioned this as well. You could ask your board to pull their donations
to create a matc
hing gift incentive for your potential donors. So, whatever that is, your board will match
up to 20,000, 50,000, whatever it is that's pulled together. That is another way to go about it as well. And this creates kind of some excitement for
your potential donors, right? I know I get really excited when I see matching
gift campaigns. So that's something that you can do pretty
easily if they're going to donate their dollars anyways. But at the very least if this sounds like
a lot of work, that's O
K. At the very least you should ask your board
to engage on social media by leaving comments on all the posts that you're making, liking
everything that you are posting and resharing everything that your organization is posting. So again, this really helps with that reach. You're gonna see that given Tuesday, hashtag
the algorithm is gonna like you. But you're also gonna see that unique hashtag
that you've come up with for your organization. And this really just expands where your posts
are goin
g. And then also ask if they'll include your
fundraising page link or QR code for your giving Tuesday campaign or your text to give
number for your giving Tuesday campaign in their email signature, their personal one
and their one at work. If they can get away with it for the duration
of your campaign, again, they should be fundraising for you even if it's a passive fundraising,
that's fine. But the there are a lot of options here. And you need to ask him to do it. Absolutely and give them break
down the instructions
very clearly to say, you know, I just lay out all the expectations of when you're planning
to communicate so that they can know when to expect that and can engage. Absolutely always err on the side of more
communication, more communication, Kara with A K is like, yes, more communication I love
it all of the communication all the time. I say, speaking of communication, I love the
communication and the chat we have everyone's kind of answering each other's questions,
which t
his is an amazing community. So this is brilliant and keep those questions
coming. We will spend quite a bit of time here answering
some questions shortly. This is a question we receive. And I've heard for years, there is a lot of
noise on giving Tuesday. How can our small nonprofit stand out? And last year I was a little heartbroken on
giving Tuesday when I saw one of my very favorite organizations start out the day, very strong. They posted all day long and they started
out really peppy on Giv
ing Tuesday. But as the day progressed, their fundraising
results just weren't tracking very long. And by the end of the day, they weren't where
they hoped that they would be. And there was this little post that was like,
I know there are a lot of really great organizations out there, but if you could just spare a little
and support us, it broke my heart and I hated seeing that and what could have been different
for them nonprofits always should be looking to share what makes them great, what ma
kes
them unique and build that awareness. especially those who struggle with being heard. A lot of times the advice for the day is for
the nonprofit to stand out from the crowd and just amplify, amplify the voice more and
more and more. And I'll use the school lunchroom as an example
here and that I don't recommend standing up and amplifying your voice and just this metaphor
here. The so the lunch room, I would go sit with
my kids in the elementary lunch room sometimes and try imagine two people
having a conversation
and another conversation takes place over that one. And so the first one speaks louder to be heard
and so on and it magnifies, right? If you've been in a school lunch room as an
adult, it can just wreck your eardrums. And I kind of imagine nonprofits shouting
over each other on, especially on giving Tuesday. per it's not audibly as loud, but it's almost
like they have megaphones and it can really have that same effect. So how would I recommend alleviating this? Well, much
like I'd like to pull someone aside,
and have that conversation in the hallway outside of the lunch room if I'm with and
with them in person, I want to make my conversations on giving Tuesday as intentional as possible,
as personal as possible and as meaningful as possible. And that could really be refreshing. So spend some time before giving Tuesday,
you got two weeks, spend time before curating that conversation, go through your donor list
and know who are your most active supporters. And if y
ou know that there's someone who supported
you about this time of year, every year, reach out to them and say, thank you, let them know
that you've noticed and goodness supporting you on giving Tuesday or year end would sure
be really great. And then, you know, curate your, your communication
to show impact. I saw one, somebody mentioned that the San
Diego Zoo already sent an email out saying, hey, you know, because you supported this
amazing thing happened. Absolutely do that. You can write tha
t email this afternoon and
send it and show some of your impact. get in the forefront of your supporters' minds
now. And so that on giving Tuesday, that, that
that conversation is relevant to them, also personalize the email communication if they've
supported one program over a number of years and maybe not other ones speak to that one
program when you talk to them. So prep your existing network and then ask
them, ask your most you know, generous supporters to share your posts on social media, l
ike
Jenna mentioned with the board forward your emails to a friend and use giving Tuesday
as an opportunity to introduce people to your organization. So that is my recommendation on standing out. Just be intentional as possible, pick up the
phone on giving Tuesday. You know, that might make things a little
more actionable than the inbox too. And then we got this question to our friend
Lisa from Miles Message Incorporated approached us with a unique question and situation and
she wrote this. Our
organization is right in the middle of
where hurricane Ian hit in the devastation that followed. It doesn't feel right to ask for support this
year when so many in our community are hurting. What are your suggestions in a situation such
as this? And that's hard, that's very difficult. And when natural disaster strikes, it can
really be hard to know how to respond. The first thing to remember is that your organization
is still needed. I'm not sure Lisa, what exactly your organization
does? And ho
w broad your reach is. People are still in need of support and you
may have people outside of that hurricane zone that are, that are eager to step up and
support you. I remember writing a direct mail letter, right
when hurricane Katrina hit in the mid two thousands and we had to very quickly pivot
what we did. It was a national organization. And so we pulled out zip codes from the mailer
and made sure we didn't mail to zip codes in that region in the Southeast and we did
change some of our conte
nt that followed up that mailer to, to speak to that. So just very sensitive, use a, you know, use
your gut feeling if you don't feel right, asking for donations, give people an alternative
way that they can support you. You can still ask for volunteers or supplies
or something else. But you know, those are some welcome ways
to, to engage people as well and then consider reaching out to supporters beyond your immediate
area. There may be many who want to give the help
you need during this time.
So, you know, if you are a regional organization,
who outside of your geography might be willing to step in. If you're a national organization, you can
talk to your supporters in other areas about, you know, the programs and services that you
deliver. And if you are in need of more disaster relief
fundraising tips, we have a great blog post. The donor box blog, if you haven't visited
is a great resource and it talks more about the tools and best practices you can use when
fundraising for crisis
situations. I hope that answered Lisa's question. It can be delicate. Use your gut feeling. Go to your board, go to your most loyal supporters
and, and run it past them as well. So, is this something that you would be willing
to support at this time or should we table it for, for another time? As we move a little farther away into your
end, I think, you'll find that people are generous to your organization and to hurricane
relief. Both right now. All right. OK, and then we talk. I first of all,
thank you all for submitting
your questions prior. This was really very helpful. This is a great question. What's the best way to encourage past donors
to give again before the end of the year? And this is a great question because so many
times the conversation is around, how do I get new donors? New donors are certainly important. But this question hits on a very important
point. Previous donors are certainly more warm. They're more warmed up to your organization
than a non donor who's coming i
n cold. Repeat donors likely know about your organization
and all the good that you're doing in this world and it costs less to renew a donor than
to acquire a new donor. So if you're writing, if you're making phone
calls, if you're emailing, reach out to your past donors first, you'll want to use personalization
if you can. you can be sure to use their first name or
men and their giving history. Something like when you gave $100 last year,
it did this. We had one organization we talked to yeste
rday. They, they mentioned the date of the first
gift that they received from a supporter in, in a recent mailing and that performed really
well for them. And use, you know, use that in a conversation. Would you consider renewing or increasing
your donation this year? There's a lot of research that shows personalized
solicitations, improve response rates significantly. So, don't hesitate to personalize those. And then we'll move in Jenna has some tips
here that should help you keep this year's y
ear end donors in the loop and ready to jump
up and support you again next year. You bet. Thank you, Kara. Ok. All right. So finally, the last question that we received
was what do I do after giving Tuesday? I think that we're all really excited and
in worker mode to do all the prep before you've been doing all the prep with us since August
possibly. And then you're gonna be in the thick of it
and it's gonna be over like that. So what do you do after giving Tuesday? It can be really easy to forg
et about the
donor supporter after care, like I said, especially when you're really busy. However, this step is essential for maintaining
good reputation and a great relationship with your donors and your supporters. So after giving Tuesday, the first thing to
do is to say, thank you. So, send an email to those who gave and also
post on social media and tag your donors. If you can, you can also make phone calls
to your major donors or send, send handwrit. Thank you notes. You can have your whole
development staff,
sign those cards and send them out, whatever ways to show gratitude, work for your organization,
make sure you do that and make sure you do it pretty quickly after you should be showing
gratitude immediately after, right? You should also post those thank you graphics
everywhere on your social media the day after on your blog, on your crowdfunding page updates,
post those everywhere. Again, we want to see gratitude overload just
like a bomb of gratitude. and ask those super fa
ns so those super donors,
those volunteers to people who are really rallying behind this campaign to become ambassadors
for next year. So say, hey, you were really, you were really
behind us. You were really great. Will you be on our team for next year's giving
Tuesday? We would be honored to have you and you know,
your support. and then finally officially flip the campaign
into a year end campaign. So as Kara said, those giving days are only
gonna ramp up in those last 48 hours of the year, do
not stop here. You've got this final push. year end is a marathon, right? So turn that campaign into a year end campaign. So remember that giving season the last all
the way to the end of the year, continue posting, continue emailing, continue calling to bring
in more gifts. So continue reaching out to those who didn't
give yet. So here are a few more tips for you and I
know this is kind of speedy tips but continually remove donors from your campaign mailing list. So if you're using mailchimp or
whatever,
that may be, remove those people from your mailing list and your email list for solicitations
as they donate. Because yes, people may give repeat donations,
but you don't want to be spamming them with those asks. So make sure that you're keeping your list
tidy. So that you are sending the right emails to
the right people with the right asks. So instead those people who are you, you're
moving off of your mailing list, stay in touch with them by sharing stories of impact and
how their d
onations will be put to use. So again, Kara had some great examples of
this $5000 helped. Was it peanut whatever the dog's name was,
you know, it helped help accomplish this. This is this is what you the impact that you
created with your generous gift, used the word you so much in these communications. And remember, do not make another ask in your
thank you letter. There will be plenty of time for that next
ask letter. But the purpose of these messages is to celebrate
what your supporters have a
lready done for you. So again, showing that impact, showing gratitude
is really, really important. And then my last tip for this after giving
Tuesday, do not forget about your team. Some of you may be a team of one. So self care is essential here. But you may have a team of people on your
development team. They worked hard, probably working long hours
for the campaign to be a success. So celebrate your achievements with a cake
or other goodies, a pizza party, a part, a potluck, whatever that may
be and get your
team together to really appreciate them and motivate them to get through the year end
as well. So that's what I suggest. So as promised, we give you a practical action
during each one of these sessions. So the practical action for this week is simple. If you haven't already, you should start the
Giving Tuesday conversation today. So ramp up those gratitude and impact posts
this week that coincide with your giving season campaign messaging. So this ensures that donors are aware o
f your
mission and that they already feel the gratitude, right? And then Sprinkle in a couple of save the
date posts as well on your social media. Let your donors know that you're planning
to participate in giving Tuesday and use that hashtag use that hashtag so that the algorithm
starts picking you up. We also encourage you to take a look at our
complete giving Tuesday tool kit that we promised we'd share with you and I'll drop the link
in just a second. So it's got a whole bunch of giving Tues
day
tidbits, including where you can find those giving Tuesday graphics that you might want
to include in your post. So I'm gonna go ahead and launch the link
now. There it is. All right. And one last tip for you for bite size, nonprofit
tips, tricks and tactics. Be sure to check out the nonprofit podcast
powered by donor box. So this is a short weekly episode packed with
ideas that you can apply to up your fundraising game. So every single week, we've got a great episode
for you. That's really
easy to listen to that will
really help you in your year end planning. You can find it on Apple Google podcast, Spotify. And you can also subscribe to it on youtube
so that you do not miss an episode. I'll go ahead and launch the link for our
Apple podcast page. But again, you can type the nonprofit podcasts
into Google and find us on all those other platforms as well. All right, you guys, we'll go ahead and open
the floor to tackle as many questions as we can until the top of the hour. Are we r
eady? Let's do it. We'll, we'll go rapid fire on these questions. Yes. And now before we begin, we begin at, if we
do not get to your question today, do not fret. You can reach out to support at donor box.org
for any technical donor box tool questions. You may have. Their response time is amazing. They're available every Monday through Friday. And they are also active on the weekend. So if you've got any questions about setting
up your campaign, making sure that things are in the right place. An
ything techie, please reach out to support
at donor box.org. And you can always reach out to us at Academy
at Donor box.org for any fund raising questions. All right, let's dive in. I think we've got a lot in the queue. We do and we have some common themes and so
we have some communication questions here, Ka we have some general explaining crowdfunding
versus peer to peer and then some fundraising questions. So, Jenna, do you wanna go ahead and tackle
the, can you explain a little bit about what
to peer is versus crowd funding and how to
do that in donor box? And do you cover that in the demo? Yes. And I saw those questions in the chat. So this should be pretty speedy. So with donor box, you have access to our
peer to peer or, and, and our crowd funding tools. That is the great thing is we offer many fundraising
methods for you. So peer to peer and crowdfunding are a bit
different and they can often be confused with each other. I'll start with crowdfunding because it's
pretty straightf
orward. And while I'm doing this, if I can ask one
of my carers to drop in the nonprofit blog, just a general search for crowdfunding that
way. Everybody can see all of our crowdfunding
posts that would be great. You know what I mean? So crowd funding with Donor Box is basically
like our Donor box hosted fundraising pages. So every campaign comes with that hosted fundraising
page and to turn on that crowd funding, all you have to do is toggle on the crowdfunding
option. And from there, you'll be
prompted to add
in your social media links. So, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, whatever
that may be. Excellent. Thank you for downloading that or uploading
that. So what's great about crowdfunding is this
is a campaign that you're running on your own. You can have people subscribe for updates
so they're visiting your page, but you can also kind of create it as your own campaign
blog. So you can post updates on your crowdfunding
page, almost like blog entries and people who have subscribed to tha
t will receive those
updates. So you can keep them in the loop. I highly suggest crowdfunding for a giving
Tuesday because it can be your year end campaign with giving Tuesday, taking the stage for
the day and then it's very easy to move it back into that year end theme, right? So you can do that with your crowdfunding
posts. So the great thing about crowdfunding is the
share one click folks can share on their social media and with their friends and family. You have a donor wall which is basical
ly like
a comment wall you would see on Facebook or something else saying Joanne donated $500,000
to this organization. And she said, thank you for all the great
work that you're doing. So you see a whole donor while there a goal
meter. So if you set a goal of $50,000 you can see
where you are, your donors can see where you are. And of course, you've got that donor box donation
form right there within the form. So crowd funding is really great. We just launched a bunch of resources there. Now, P
eer to peer is a little bit different
where you launch a page and then you invite your supporters to create their own fundraising
pages. So they get to put their own personal stamp
to these pages or they can talk about why your cause matters to them, how they're connected
to it, what their own goal is for fundraising. So, what we call a parent campaign and then
child campaign. So you are the parent campaign and your supporters
will create their own campaigns to share with their networks with tha
t, with that personal
touch. So both are great options. It just depends on what suits your organization. So I hope that clarified it. We've launched a handout here that talks about
the difference between crowdfunding and peer to peer. Thank you both and a blog. So I'll, I'll go ahead and pass the baton
over to Kara. I do believe we can pull out some communication
questions. Yeah. Kara. first of all, how would you share your link
to give an Instagram? Sure. So I'm really sorry if I butcher this n
ame. It's beautiful, Anisa still. I took the answer right out of my mouth but
definitely create a you can add a link in bio now to your Instagram profile. Previously, I've used later.com is a great
free tool or also they have some affordable rate rates if you need a nonprofit scheduler. And they, oh, thank you, Anita and they have
a Lincoln bio tool built into there. So what you do is you just create Yes, Jennings
later is fantastic and they, you just create that when they click on your bio, tha
t link
in bio, it pulls up all of your social posts that are linked and then they just click,
click there and it will take them directly to and link tree. That's also a great one. Thank you. That, that, that takes you to your fundraising
page and you can also create a shorter URL and put that into the copy of your content
as well. But yeah, that's the long story short, Lincoln
Bio. Excellent. Thank you for that. Now I see a question for you. Let's see if I can find it again. We have a lot in the
queue. Someone asked,, we have a letter that is about
2.5 pages long. Is that too long? Is it long enough? And then I saw another person ask, I heard
that I shouldn't ever include pictures in letters. Is that true or is it not? So, could you speak to both of these? Do you want me to grab it? I can Yeah, sure. Honestly, data shows that 2.5 pages is just
fine. And so I think it's personal preference there. I, I haven't ever sent one quite that long. Two pages has been about as long as I've sent.
But yeah, you research shows up to four pages,
gets responses. So I would just add to that, Kara, just make
sure that if you look in the emails, examples that we shared here, you'll see there's use
of bold and underlining. I would just make sure that you're still using
that to move people through your letter. So if there are people that don't want to
read 2.5 pages, they can still get the story by b those really important pieces and also
include that ps afterwards. So again, if someone is still
interested in
your organization but doesn't want to read all 2.5 pages, they'll still get your gist
of the gist of the letter. Yeah. Absolutely. And then the second part of that question
was, oh, emails with pictures. Yeah. You could do both. I think if it's coming from the executive
director actually, if you just send it from a mail merge from that, that person's email
account that performs really well and it looks very person to person communication if it's
coming from the organization. I thin
k the examples that Kara showed. I know Jennings mentioned that she likes to
include a photo, just one in our email to kind of tell that story visually. I think it's perfectly appropriate in an email. I do often discourage using photos and images
in a direct mail piece if possible. It just distract detracts from the point of
the letter usually. So keep your images to social media and email
and video can be really great, really powerful in both social media and email as well too. Yeah, Shon asked
, there's a couple of questions
about frequency of communication. What recommended, what's the recommended frequency
of these last couple of weeks? So social media every day. So if you can, I'm not saying post to save
the date for giving Tuesday, but those impact posts, those gratitude posts, even some fun
posts in there like a Happy Thanksgiving or a selfie Sunday or TJ A F. I always recommend if your organization has
the capacity to aim for every day, especially this time of year. However, if
your organization does not have
the capacity for that, that is totally fine, especially if you're a team of one. just pick a, I recommend a consistency. So pick, you know, three day, if you can post
three days a week, that's great. Just, don't post three times in one day and
then forget the rest of the week, do three days. email, I would say, do what do you think care
of once a week at this point? I think once a week would be fine from now
to the end of the year. at minimum five between now and
the end of
the year, not forgetting that last week of the year, for sure. Yeah. So if you're thinking between now, so send
one this week, send one for Thanksgiving. If you're in the US, send that one on giving
Tuesday and sometimes I break that rule the week of giving Tuesday, I usually, I used
to send a pre giving Tuesday that on Monday, say remember it's tomorrow and Tuesday giving
Tuesday send it's today and then the day after giving Tuesday send that thank you email as
well. But so you can b
reak that rule a little bit
around then. But yeah, at least once a week, I would say,
Kara, there was another question that kind of went along with timing. Here's one from Florence. We sent a save the date letter. When should a second letter and a third letter
be sent? Wow, you are on it with the letters. , and I'm assuming by letter you mean direct
mail? , correct. If you're still here, correct me if I'm wrong. , you mean mailed letters? , I would say try to get out that second letter
as soon a
s possible. , and then usually,, the third, if you, if
you were going for a three, good, good for you. , send it, I would say with about what do
you think? There are two weeks left in the year? Yeah. You want to, with timing for us mail, you
want to make sure that it hits mailboxes before the end of the year. So allow almost two weeks for it to be by
the time it leaves to the time it arrives in mailboxes, especially with holiday cards
and, and the demand on the postal service. So, yeah, what I m
eant was sorry, was hitting
mailboxes with about 1 to 2 weeks left in the air, not sending it my bad Guillermo. You asked,, if, if you have to open a nonprofit
organization in the US to receive donations or is it enough having your nonprofit in Peru? No, you absolutely do not need to open a nonprofit
organization, but you cannot issue tax deductions. , or, a donor cannot claim a tax deduction
on a gift that they make to your organization. A US donor cannot claim a tax deduction on
their US taxes
if they donate to an organization in Peru. But they can definitely, you can definitely,,
ask now,, opens up a whole new door. , if you're fundraising in the United States,
some states have parameters around if you need to file some paperwork before you solicit
in certain states. So check within those regulations of each
state. As you go deeper into fundraising across the
United States here, here's Elaine had a really good question. If you don't have an incentive, like the matching
donations, wh
at do you recommend to make your offer more potent? There are a few things that you can use that
are included in your donor box campaigns. The goal meter is one way to it's a visible
thermometer of sorts that shows your progress to goal. You can encourage participation through social
media. So, you know, we're looking for 10 donors
in the next hour to give $10 a month or something along those lines. That goal meter can show dollar for dollar
progress. I think you can use countdown calendars, cou
ntdown
clocks and use a lot of just those time sensitive fundraising techniques to, to do that. And, and people have people advocate on your
behalf to, to, to share those messages and something was there too is,, if you don't
have your board or someone else matching those donations, something that you can do is add
on company gift matching with double the donation. That is an add on,, right there in your donor
box suite. It's 40 bucks a month. You can turn on add-ons and off at any time
and we p
rorate for partial months. So you can turn on double the donation through
the end of the year and folks can search for that company to match their donation. There are thousands in this database. If you're not using this, you're leaving money
on the table. And that serves again as instant gratification
for your donors knowing that say AAA or Missouri or whatever that may be will match their donation. So I highly suggest looking into that as well. I'm seeing a lot about slogans. So what, yeah, wha
t call the action? So I recommend especially with giving Tuesday
and end of year. I really like so for one, especially giving
Tuesday, I like urgency. So if you can have a goal help us meet this
goal by the end of today so that XYZ can happen for our members. I know we see one of our lovely academy students
is working on finding building latrines for villages and so she can use that. So help us raise X amount of dollars so that
we can purchase another latrine. So something like that, that you ca
n have
that concrete item or a thing like that in that urgency or also something that Jenna
mentioned was that it's the season of giving. So this time of year, I really like to look
at that, give someone the gift of a donation or of supporting XYZ in your organization,
things like that. So that's something that's really powerful
this time of year is actually giving giving donations either in honor of which you can
do with a donor box. We have tribute options. So you can allow people to give an h
onor or
memory of someone. That's a simple switch on your donor box campaign. Or even just give, you know, give a child
the gift of medical care, give a dog a gift of a forever home, something like that messaging. I really like this time of year. Did you guys have anything to add to that? No, it kind of goes into an ns question here
of asking to asking donors to support one project or multiple projects. I think, support, asking support for one project
and then re emphasizing that story to suppor
t that one project, you know, like almost like
Kara showed the examples of the one dog. I think that could be very effective this
time of year. When you talk about two or three or four different
pillars of your organization that can get very confusing. You might want to even do when you think about
fundraising throughout the year, talk about one program at one time of year, another program,
another time of year and introduce them at different times of year so that you can have
a whole communicat
ions campaign around one program. Or if you feel like multiple programs need
a little help. Do what Kara was talking about and segment
your donors, I wouldn't promote them all via social media or to a general audience. But if you have donor history and you know
that they donated to a specific campaign, more than others, I would say you could, don't
you think Kara promote it just to that specific audience? This time of year, if you think that they
would be more likely to donate to that program, y
ou can do it via segmented and targeted emails. But again, yeah, I agree with Kara for those
general communications definitely pick, you know, more one program to focus on. Yeah. Anna, I know you asked, what do you, what
do you recommend if this is your first time asking for donations? Keep it simple, keep it straightforward. Keep it clear And make sure that people understand
why you do what you do. What makes your organization different from
the organization similar to yours down the road? What
is your unique approach to handling that
and really advocate that but persons and personalize that outreach so person to person as much
as possible. You bet. Well, I think that wraps up our special hour
long and 15 minute session. All I want to thank you for these fantastic
questions. I hope that we answered them for you. If you think of anything, if you need support,
again, any technology based donor box tools reach out to us at support at donor box dot
org and any fund raising questions you c
an reach out to us at academy at Donor box.org
again. Thank you all for all that you do to serve
others. And thank you Kara and Kara for being here
today. Thanks Jenna for having us and thank you all
for joining us. It was so great.
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The great work