Hi everyone, thanks for joining us for our first webinar for this year's Give Local NRV. I see a bunch of participants coming in. We're very excited that you've taken time out of your morning to join us. So if you are here, you can let us know in the chat, your name and the organization you're representing and we'll get started in a second. Awesome. Well, we have a lot to cover today, so we'll go ahead and get started. Again, thank you for joining us. So my name is Sarah and I am a project manag
er with Mightycause and we are the platform provider for Give Local NRV. I'm also joined by their fabulous team, so I'll pass it over to Lindsey to say hello. Hi everyone. Good to be with you all this morning. I think I know a lot of you on the call for but those of you who I don't know I'm Lindsey Gleason I'm the assistant director here at Community Foundation and I'm your primary contact for giving day. I help manage the event, but anyone in the office can can assist you with questions. So I'l
l just let Laura and Jess introduce themselves as well. Well, I'm Laura Pen with the community Foundation. I'm the administration. Manager. Great and hi everybody. I'm, Jessica, also with the Community Foundation and I am the CEO of the Foundation. Awesome. So we're gonna jump into the agenda and just a couple housekeeping notes. So this webinar is being recorded. It's going to be uploaded and added to the Give Local NRV website under the Toolkit resources. But our goal today is to really kind o
f dive into some of the give local NRV basics this year, just reminding you of key dates. I'll also discuss, you know, a couple different benefits of participating. There's lots of different benefits. And then we'll kind of talk through different things that your organization can start to do as you prepare your campaign. We'll walk through the platform overview, a couple of features, and then Lindsey and I are going to do a deeper dive into giving event myths and kind of thinking through differe
nt things that maybe you feel like barriers to you. So we have a lot of really great things to cover. We also will have a Q&A. If you can think of any questions as we're going through these slides, you can put them in the chat. As we're going through these slides, you can put them in the chat or the Q&A button on your Zoom panel and we'll get started. I'll pass it to you. And I'll also add as a housekeeping item, we have the automatic captions turned on at the bottom and they're auto generated s
o you might see some mistakes there but they're there they capture things pretty well we have those on for people who might have hearing difficulties or who are deaf or if you're in a loud space, you can understand what's going on if your sounds networking and so forth. So it's a good thing to turn on when you're in a Zoom Meeting, but if you don't want them on, you can go to the bottom and toggle them off so you don't want to see them. So, important dates to remember, we're excited that today i
s the day that sign-up opens and we already have folks registering, so thank you all for being the hot off the mark and for registering today. And sign up will be open until May fifteenth so you have a little bit of time but we highly encourage people to sign up early and as an incentive this year if you sign up by Friday, March, the fifteenth, you'll be entered into a drawing to win your organization $500 and 2 prizes will be given out those will be random randomly drawn sort of like a golden t
icket for those of you who are familiar with the giving day event. And so we're excited about that incentive and hope that it spurs people to register early. Because the earlier register the more opportunity we have to work together the more opportunity you have to ask questions and the more success you will be likely to have. So, after sign up closes will be. Seriously getting ready behind the scenes and then early giving will open Saturday June, the first so if this event is new to you, just w
ant to explain we have the 20 four-hour giving day event which is going to be held starting noon Wednesday June 20 sixth and end at noon on June, the 20 seventh. But we start early giving on June first, which means you can be collecting donations almost all month long. It helps you communicate with your donors all month and it lengthens the period when you can collect donations outside of that 20 four-hour period. So your donors can make gifts all that month. You can build up that momentum. You
can be reporting back on goals that you've reached and so forth. So by the time we start the the actual giving day, which is a period of time where we offer a bunch of different grants and prizes as incentives for you and donors, you've already built up that momentum. Once the giving day ends at noon on the 20 seventh, we can all take a nap. And celebrate our success. And then in July, that's when you will receive the funds that you raise. And kind of depending on how you have things set up, if
you receive money through an electronic bank transfer, for or if you receive a check, sort of depends on how you have that set up on the exact date that you'll receive that money. But I can send you the the kind of schedule to look at of when you can anticipate when you'll receive those funds after this meeting. And then in mid July, if you, if you win any grant surprises, from the community foundation, we will distribute them during that time period. And one thing I'll mention, that's not on th
is slide is because we're the community foundation we always have a lot going on and our responsive grant application will also open around this period of time. So it will open at the end of May and will close on July the nineteenth. So just to we'll be sending out more information about that. You can find it on our website, but just to let you all know that that's also happening during that time. And we'd love for you all to apply for those grants. So who can participate in this event? Any orga
nization that is classified as a 5, point, 0, one, c 3 by the IRS. Or if you're a unit of government such as a library or an animal shelter that serves the newer valley, you're eligible to participate. And when we're talking about the new River Valley, we know the New River is a it's a bit, it's a big place, right? But we're specifically talking about the counties of Floyd, Giles, Montgomery, Pulaski, and the counties of Floyd, Giles, Montgomery, Pulaski, and Width, as well as the city and we as
ked that a significant portion of your organization services or programs serve the New River Valley and a minimum of 25% is preferred. If your organization doesn't quite meet that threshold, reach out to us and, and we can chat about that. The whole point of this, you know, but this event is we want to keep money in the new river rally. We want to raise money that helps the people, the animals and the environment in our community and and so that's the goal of the organization. So that's why we h
ave those parameters. And you must sign up each year to participate. In the giving day event. So even if you participate in the past, we ask that you sign up so we know that you'll be actively participating. But then once you're signed up on the website you can use the platform year round to fund raise for your programs. You can use it all year should you wish to. But once giving day sign up opens the next year, please sign up so we know that you want to actively participate. And then new this y
ear, I'll mention, we're piloting a coaching program. So we have coaches lined up and we're looking for 2 more if anyone's interested and we're pairing more seasoned giving day participants with a group of mentees. So folks who might be new to giving day or maybe not sure where to start or what some more one on one pointers and we'll be pairing you in a small group with those coaches and kind of taking a deeper dive on things like fundraising, communications, event planning if you want to do an
in-person event and getting that more one-on-one support and please feel free to still reach out to the community foundation. We are here to support you and meet with you one-on-one if you would like but this is a supplement to the support that we're offering. So we're a small team and we want to And we also know that we work in a really collaborative region and we have a lot of folks who are happy to share knowledge and help each other out. Hmm. Yeah. And I'll add one thing about that when you
register you'll see an option. Sorry, Sara, an option that says that you're interested in coaching. Please select that so we know that you're interested and it'll be a first Pardon me, that you're interested in being coached. If you want to be a coach, please reach out out to me as well. But if you're interested in being part of the the small group, that in your form and we'll reach out to you. Okay. So we also wanted to talk chat through some of the benefits of participating in the giving day.
Giving days offer just really wonderful opportunities for a variety of different things. So I'm gonna kind of walk through a couple of those. So of course they offers you the opportunity to raise just a bunch of donations and funds during a short timeframe that kind of shortened timeframe really allows you to encourage a lot of gifts. It gives momentum for your donors. It's also just a really great, you know, kind of event to integrate into your annual giving campaign. So if you are new to givin
g days and you're wondering how it can fit in, this is something that you can start to do annually, make donors aware that you're a participant every year. It can kind of work into your emails, just work into newsletters, people can start to expect it and then they get excited about it because it's something to look forward to that you know there's prizes involved. It's also of course a great opportunity to educate the public and the community about your cause. Maybe you're a smaller nonprofit,
you feel like you don't have a large donor brace, this is a really good way to get involved. You'll be found in the search, different newsletters and things like that just kind of advocating and letting people know that you exist in the community. So that's a really great kind of way to get involved. And then through this process of just, you know, being kind of involved and give local NRV, people are going to find you. They're going to be able to search for, you know, different events and maybe
within the search itself they'll be able to kind of filter different causes that they're inspired by. So you'll also be able to find new donors. They're not going to just come to you and we'll get to that in some of our giving day myths but this is a great way to kind of reach out and find you know new people who are interested in what you do. It's also a fabulous way to engage sponsors or try to find sponsors. Maybe you have a couple of community partners or try to find sponsors. Or try to fin
d sponsors. Maybe you have a couple community partners. Maybe you want to try to get more community partners to maybe give you a match during the events to maybe give you a match during the event. Peer-to-peer fundraising there's just a bunch of ways to use the momentum from a giving event, like give local NRV to really engage your supporters, your board members. And really just make it a community effort to raise funds for your cause. Additionally, reinvigorating lapse donors. Maybe you have a,
you know, a group of donors that gave during a pre-invigorating lapse donors, maybe you have a you know, a group of donors. Maybe you have a, you know, a group of donors. Maybe you have a, you know, a group of donors that gave during a previous campaign. The goal is to really get these donors that gave during a previous campaign. The goal is to really get these donors, to come back to. The goal is to really get these donors, to come back to you. Hopefully, you know, you can, this is a great spe
aking point. Hey, we're participating and hopefully, you know, you can, this is a great speaking point. Hey, we're participating and give local N non-profit toolkit. And then additionally, Mighty Cause has a bunch of resources on our website. We have blog posts, we have on-demand webinars available to you. So if there's any kind of key area maybe that you struggle with, maybe it's matching grants. The goal is to try to challenge yourself, try something new and just hopefully carry what you learn
ed throughout the year in all of the fundraising that you do. So what does your organization need to do? I believe this is my slide. So first you definitely want to sign up. Sign up is available and open as of today. So first you definitely want to sign up. Sign up is available and open as of today. And you'll want to do that before Wednesday, May, the fifteenth. So that's when, sign up is going to close for the event. Once you are signed up, you have told the team that you're going to participa
te this year and you've been approved, you can go ahead and you can start filling out your organization page. So that means updating any content. So if you participated, last year, you'll just want to refresh dates, make sure nothing says, you know, an out-of-date year, make sure, you know. Anything you're campaigning for specifically is updated. And then of course just familiarizing yourself with the event rules, figuring out, you know, what's allowable gifts that can be added to your totals. L
indsey is going to cover that in a minute. And then just starting to set your campaign goals. So like I was saying, there's a bunch of perks of participating in a giving event, you know, try something new, maybe set a campaign goal for trying out a match. Any specific fundraising kind of campaign goals that you have as well. And then of course accessing the nonprofit toolkit. I think this is sometimes an overlooked resource center, but there's a bunch of really, really great things in there. We
have links. Templated types of emails and things to kind of get your brain thinking about how you want to pitch your participation to your supporters. So go through there we always try to refresh content every year. So you'll find something new that you find, you know, hopefully beneficial, but that's a good place to start and then you'll want to start broadcasting your actual message to your supporters. So using whenever existing communications you have, maybe you're, you know, you do a lot of
social media posting on Instagram or Facebook kind of figuring out the timeline for when you need to start pushing your message, you'll want to have early giving messaging. You'll want to have day of messaging and anything you can do now to prepare to take some of that load off during the live event is going to really help you. So pre-scheduling social media post. Everything like that is what you'll want to start focusing off on as well. And then keep in the back of your mind. Do you want to get
some matching grants to entice donors? What are you going to do to try to make it not all fall on your shoulders type of deal. We have organizations of all sizes and some of you are doing this you know as a one-person show. So trying to think about and consider how you can. Get some others involved. Maybe you have a board. What could they do? Could they do peer-to-peer fundraising this year? Maybe you're a little larger and you've participated before and you want to try doing an in person event
to kick it off. That's something you can consider as well. How pass it? All right, I'll share giving day rules and to kind of talk about some of the parameters of this event. We have more than a hundred organizations that register each year and we receive thousands of donations. So it's a lot to manage and so we try to be clear about the rules for participation and the types of donations that we allow just so everyone's on the same page and we can all have a good experience and everyone is on t
he same playing field. So again, please remember you have to sign up even if you've participated in the past. We always hear from people after the deadline. That they thought they were registered or they want to register and we just really want to encourage you to please sign up early and it's beneficial because you'll receive you'll have more time to reach out to us and plan and so forth. There are only 4 types of donations that are allowed for this event and I'll share more on the next slide.
All donations must be received, dated and added into the system between June first and noon on June 20 seventh. Please keep records of all offline donations and when I say offline donations, things like checks or a wire transfer or cash. I know keeping a record of cash is a little tricky. But particularly your checks and your wire transfers, please keep copies of all those in case we ask for confirmation of details. Sometimes prizes and grants, organizations are neck and deck. For, who might be
winning. So we just want to make sure we have all the details in place and we have everything accurate. And every donation that is every I should say every off line donations that is entered into the system will require this confirmation and will ask you to email us confirmation before we approve it, but please save it for every offline donation. Organizations are eligible to win up to one grant and up to 3 prizes. We don't have all the details nailed down yet for this year's Grant and Prizes. W
ell, now says later in the spring,'ll now says later in the spring, but that's it's a, and that says later in the spring, but that's it's a those are all good incentives to encourage your donors to participate, those are all good incentives to encourage your donors to participate, to try to go after a granter prize, to encourage your donors to participate, to try to go after a granter prize, and then results for grants and prizes are not final until they're not to try to go after a granter prize
. And then results for grants and prizes are not final until they're announced by the CFNRV. Sometimes organizations qualify for multiple grants and so we have to sort out, okay, who's second place and and and so forth. So it takes little time. So just wait to hear from us. And then the minimum online donation is $5. There's no maximum. Of course, any offline donation if it's if it's less than $5 it's perfectly fine and you can enter it into the system. And I can share a little bit about the 4 t
ypes of allowable donations. So what am I talking about? There. So what donations count for this event? As we all know, there are so many different places where people can give, right, online. It's, both, I think a great thing and can be challenging. There's so many systems to manage. But for this particular event, the only types of online donations that we accept are those made through the give local energy website. In this website is really flexible. Donors can pay via credit or debit card, Pa
yPal, Venmo, they can connect to their bank account if it's over $50 it's it really caters to everyone so please direct donors if they want to give online to give on the website no other donations will be accepted. That are online. And then 3 types of what the website calls offline donations. So we accept cash. Checks and wire transfers. So we try to keep things flexible there, and we know that aren't a lot of donors in the Newer Valley prefer to give by check. And that's why we have these types
of offline donations as allowable ones for this event. And there's a pretty simple process for entering those into the system and and we can share more about that in another time but you just you go into the system and add them. So what are what donations are not allowed. So if you receive donations regularly from your donors via your website or PayPal or Facebook fundraiser or. Go find me, fundraiser and or anything else. Those are not allowed to be counted for your give local totals. So pleas
e, make sure you're telling your donors early and often that if you want to make a gift on line, please make it through the give local website. Our goal is to drive traffic to that website and once donors are there they might give to your organization but they might go searching and find other organizations to give to. And then they can also track our success with the overall giving total. So we're trying to drive traffic there. Credit card donations processed out of give local NRV are not allow
ed such as at an event or box office or front office. Please direct folks either to go to the website or give in another way. We can't accept in-kind donations, for those, this event and then Make sure that your offline donations, your checks, your wire transfers are dated between June first and June, the 20 seventh. They they have to be data during that period to count for the event. And then if you receive a donation before June, the first or after June, the 20 seventh at noon and I know that
always happens. It's happened to the community foundation before. Unfortunately, it can't be counted for your giving day totals, but it does count toward as a donation to your organization, which is what matters, but it can't be counted as your, toward the totals. And the reason why I mentioned these pieces of these specific types of gifts, if when you go into the system and look at offline to enter in an offline donation. You're gonna get a pretty long drop down list of types of donations that
you can add. And that's because mighty cause works with hundreds if not thousands of fundraisers around the world and they give that flexibility to folks to give in a variety of ways. But to try to manage the the types of donations because the more you add the more kind of checking has to happen which makes it tricky for our small team. We've limited it to these 4. So, but if you have any questions about this, please reach out and just thanks for helping us kind of manage this process. And if yo
u tell your donors early and often these are the ways to give, you'll be able to get them to give that way. Alright, so next we're going to cover how to navigate to the site and log in to access your page. So you'll always wanna access your page via the give local NRV, website, even though Mighty Cause is the platform provider, you will only go to give local NRV. Org to log in. And so you'll log in at the top right corner. There's a log in button and then it prompts you to log in in there using
Google, Facebook, or your email or it also says sign up. So if you're brand new to the platform, on your email, or it also says sign up. So if you're brand new to the platform, you can create an account, so if you're brand new to the platform, you can create an account via the login button as well. But again, you're only going to access your page for the event directly through the give local NRV. Dot com website. And then you're gonna want to sign up again. We've been repeating it by May fifteen
th. You have plenty of time to register and make sure everyone knows that you're participating this year. The sign-up form asks you a couple questions about organization, just so that we can gather kind of, you know, different categories and stuff like that. But to fill out the form, you'll be prompted to log in first. So once you go to the site, which it's now the sign in, a sign up form button is live. So when you click that button, it'll prompt you to first log in if you're not already logged
in. If you are not logged in and you also are new to your organization that you're trying to register, you're just gonna create an account on that same window. And by signing up your organization under this new email address, you're also automatically requesting admin access to the organization. So that admin request gets sent to the Mighty Cost support team and our team is actually the ones who approve these admin requests. And so you can expect between 2 to 3 business days for response, or if
they need additional information. Oftentimes they'll request additional information if you're using like a Gmail account or some way that we can't quite verify that you are a part of the organization. And that's just because we are very careful about who we allow as an admin because you have all, you know, this sensitive donor information available to you. So we want to make sure that, only those who are part of the organization requesting access are verified. But after you submit your actual s
ignup form, the give local NRV team is going to review viewing those and then you'll get an email separate to the admin request just letting you know that you're approved or if they have any follow up questions. I'm gonna grab my key real quick before I get into this. Okay, so you've registered, you're signed up, the team knows you're participating. Now you're going to want to access your organization page. So once you are logged in again at the top right corner, you'll have a drop-down venue. Y
ou can click your name and you'll be able to click your organization. And once you're approved, you'll see it in the little dropdown. By clicking that, it'll bring you to your kind of overview back end of your organization page. So you'll see a dashboard on your left hand side with a bunch of different kind of buttons and areas that you can start to work on or refresh if you are a previous participant. Your overview has kind of a kind of a general, list that we recommend. These are like your bas
ics at a logo, at a banner, at a logo, at a banner, at a thank you page. But if you go and you continue down, you'll see organization page. But if you go and you continue down, you'll see organization page. This is really the face of your this is the page that donors and supporters, people who visit your page on Givoco and our V are going to see. So this is where you're gonna want to spend a lot of time just making it look nice, make sure you know all the dates are current anything specific you'
re campaigning for is updated working down the page, we have fundraising tools I wanna highlight. This is where you're going to be managing your fundraising efforts for your nonprofit. This includes your campaigns, your peer-to-peer pages. You can see if there's anything that you want to hide, maybe an out-of-date peer-to-peer campaign, you can hide that from the search. This is where you'll set up your matching grants, your text to give is also available to you. Moving down, we have reports. Yo
u'll be in and out of this all the time. You'll probably be very comfortable with it if you're not already. This is where all your donation your donor data lives. So from the event from last year's event, that type of thing, and you can download these OCSV reports. You can filter by specific time periods. Maybe you just want to look at the donors data from the early giving time period. You can do that. Check out this is where you'll customize your donor checkout experience. You can update your d
onation form kind of you know decide how many donation levels you want to provide add some descriptions and then settings is where you'll, you know, add additional admins. Maybe you're an admin and you know somebody else. It needs to be added. You can go ahead and add them. And approve them yourself. And then you can also sign up for EFT. That type of thing. But you'll first mostly spend a lot of time or like updating your organization page. This is a beautiful example by the CF and RB. But this
is the main link, the main page that you're going to be sharing with your donors and your newsletters on Facebook. You'll be able to kind of see what the donors and the visitors see. So you can add a logo. We recommend a square because it takes a one to one aspect ratio. And that is a square image. So a lot of social media accounts, Instagram, Facebook, you might already have a logo that you use, just add that. It works great. The banner image you can also select from our kind of suggested gall
ery or you can add just whatever image that you feel you know beautifully represents the work that you do we recommend no text in your banner just because you already have a logo and text sometimes can get a little confusing when you have 2 images stacked that have text. But you can also set a theme color so you can decide what color you know. This is blue for example and CFNRV has a dark blue so you can select the color that you want on your page. You'll also take the time to set your goal once
you've figured out your goal. You can enable your metric bar. This is where you'll tell your story. We really recommend kind of putting your key, like what you're fundraising for, specifically at the top. We like to think, you know, you have all of me. 5 or 6 s to really capture the donor or the visitors attention. So what do you find most important to be putting at the top of your page? That's what you want to put there. When you're telling your story and then you can also optionally enable a
giving of activity feed. So if you want to highlight donors, it's going to honor whatever, you know, anonymous data the donor wants. If they've chosen to hide their name, it'll say anonymous donated if they're chosen to hide their amount, it'll say so and so. Donated. But you can also have images and integrate any social media as well. Next we recommend you editing your checkout flow. So what's really great about the platform is that you can kind of customize these different donation levels and
suggest a donor amount. So this is really impactful for a donor when they're tired sighting how much to give or even when they come knowing how much they want to give and then they can see what they can do maybe with a little bit more. So we suggest between 4 to 6 amounts suggested amounts is really the sweet spot. Anything more than 6 can sometimes overwhelm a visitor. And then, you know, you've lost their attention. They're not reading anymore. So we really recommend between 4 to 6 amounts wit
h varying levels so that you know the donation minimum is $5 what can they do with $5? Maybe you want to start with $10. But I sometimes see organizations put, you know, a thousand dollars and while that's wonderful. I think sometimes it can be a barrier to donors who really want to see how much maybe 50 bucks can do. So make sure you have a couple of dollars can do. So make sure you have a couple different levels. And always add a description, you know coming to the page and seeing okay I want
to give you know $10 but oh my goodness $40 10 pounds of dog food that sounds cool you know you can really encourage a donor to give a little bit more just because they're you know inspired by what they can do with the funds that they're giving you. This is a great opportunity to preview your checkout experience so you can really, in real time see these edits that you're making and see what a donor sees. And then you can also add any dedications or designation sections that you want to. If you a
re an organization that prefers to call donors to thank you, to thank them, you'll want to add a section to collect a donor phone number because that's not data. That we automatically collect. So just something to keep in mind. Your post check out flow, you'll definitely want to check out. . But this is your thank you page. So this is the message that is going to pop up on screen. As soon as the donor finish is going to pop up on screen as soon as the donor finishes making their gift. So this is
your message. What do you want to say immediately after they make their gift. So this is your message. What do you want to say immediately after they make their gift. So this is your message. What do you want to say immediately after they make their gift. Obviously I want to thank them, but you can also get creative. You can add video here. So maybe you want your board, you know, celebrating and saying thank you or maybe you want just a photo of your team altogether, anything that you can do to
make it kind of a personal experience for the donor is really valuable. And you can also add a custom button so you can click learn more. Maybe you want them to sign up for a newsletter so you can click sign up to learn, you know, to get a monthly newsletter from us. So think about what you want your next call to action to be after the donor completes their gift. Moving into reporting, so this is going to be a big section, like I said, that you'll be visiting and you'll get very comfortable wit
h very quickly. But one thing to note as well, all admins on your organization, they're going to be receiving email notifications. They're going to be receiving email notifications when a donation is made. So if you do not want to be notified every time a gift comes through, a donation is made. So if you do not want to be notified every time a gift comes through, you do not want to be notified every time a gift comes through, you can always turn that off under your own user account settings But
this is a section where you can access your donor data in real time, download those detailed reports. The reports are going to include any additional custom questions like that phone number if you decide to collect that during checkout. So you can kind of, you know, decide what time period you want to look up. All the reports are going to default to the last 30 days. If you're not seeing information that you need, you'll just need to change that time view. And then this is also, where you can ac
cess F. My zoom, screen. But this is also where you can access those retention reports. So those are going to be very valuable to you as well. If you were a previous participant, you'll be able to see that in a second. So you're retention port ports, very valuable data. This is, you know, available to those who have previously participated and give local energy. So if you participated last year or any year before that, you're going to be able to have this record of donors who gave to you during
the event. So this is something to definitely work into your strategy. The goal is to help you, you know, We-migrate those laps donors, retain your donors and grow your donors. So using this data you can see, oh, so and so G to our campaign last year. Let's, you know, add an email that goes out to all these donors during the live event that says, hey, knock knock. The event is today. We saw you gave last year like here's what we're trying to accomplish this year. So definitely work that into you
r strategy. And use that, download the report and send it through your email marketing system. And now we're gonna move into some giving event myths. If anyone has any questions on anything they just saw you're welcome to let us know but we will move into our first myth. Yeah. And so, each, each of these mess are things that we've heard from folks and also it's not unique to our event. I know Sara has heard these from other events as well, so we're not alone. So I think one of the most important
ones that I want to emphasize is the idea that by signing up my organization, we will automatically receive donations. So it's sort of the crock pot. I set it and I forget it. I put the ingredients in the morning and I'll have a meal at night. And it's while this event receives a lot of publicity, you should not assume that your organization will just be noticed and people will donate. There are definitely people out there that will that may find you. But But the vast majority, I would say, 99%
of the donations you'll receive will come from people that you have asked or your supporters have asked. So your supporters have asked. So you have to ask. So I would say when you're thinking about, okay, well, who do we ask? Your first outreach is to existing donors. Who's given to you in the past year? Look at that list. And reach out to those folks. And then maybe go to people who have given in the past that maybe it's been a year or 2 since you've heard it from them a little bit longer. The
n go to other supporters. Who gets your emails? If you have an email list or who follows you on social media, but perhaps hasn't given. Then ask your closest champions who they can ask to donate. So your closest champions might be a long time volunteer or a board member, maybe your staff. Maybe a really excited donor, ask them who they can reach out to and they don't have to reach out to a hundred people. Ask them to reach out to 2 or 3 people and you just see how it grows. And make your case fo
r support clear. Make your goal, whatever goals you set tied to something tangible. Don't just say I want to raise $10,000 because that sounds good. Tie it to something. And inform your donors early and often that you're participating. If you sign up today, you can tell your donors today we're participating in this event, save the date. That repetition is really important. Because we're all so busy. It might be top of mind for you. I know it will be top of mind for me in the next couple months,
but folks are busy. You got to remind them. And we can go to the the next one. So, number 2, we have giving events are only about raising money. I think a lot of organizations do feel like a giving event is only about raising money. But we kind of want to reframe that mindset is only about raising money, but we kind of want to reframe that mindset. Again, coming back to that, you know, one of those first early slides that we did at the beginning. Giving events, they're here to offer a very uniqu
e engagement opportunity for your organization. And there's just a whole, you know, slew of ways that that happens. Of course, like, Lindsay saying, engaging with your existing supporters. So, you know, who are your existing supporters? How can you get them engaged? Can you engage with them in a new way? So it's not just about raising money. It's about, you know, those connections that you have with your donors, with your supporters, with your board, your staff. Also adding that additional fundr
aiser to your annual giving campaign. So I know a lot of you already have a bunch of campaigns that happen throughout the year. How can this giving event be worked into, you know, your annual appeals. Kind of working that in thinking about those goals using that limited timeframe to really rally your supporters is going to be key. Also just, you know, the overall awareness about your mission, sharing your philanthropy with the community. Everyone's coming together during this time period. Everyo
ne's trying to raise, you know, awareness. It's just a really collective kind of, you know, everyone's coming together to raise funds, meet new donors and engage. Also, you know, not just thinking about funds, but thinking about how you can engage with your community of businesses, how you can maybe make new connections by being involved, you know, create a couple if you have the funds and the time, create a couple, you know, different brochures about like why you're participating in this event,
what you're trying to achieve and how like a local business could benefit by supporting you. You know, could they? You know, offer you something to help your campaign that maybe isn't funds. Could they do some free printing services for you? There's all sorts of ways that can help you during this without necessarily giving you funds. Of course, reinvigorating laps donors. It's a great knock on the door, for people just letting them know that you're, you know, working on this campaign. And then
a big one and we always try to reiterate it and I will probably come off an additional slides, but just using this as an opportunity to explore new fundraising and campaign strategies. So Lindsey has talked about it a lot. This is a great time to just also reach out to your local nonprofits if somebody's participated last year I mean that cohort sounds absolutely fabulous you can learn from each other maybe somebody else has had a match and you're brand new to it it feels intimidating you know t
alk to another organization, see if they can give you any shed any light on how they did it, learn from each other. This is really a community kind of event that's happening which is very unique. So try something new. Myth free, we need to raise a huge amount of money to be successful. So. And last year we had a hundred 6 organizations that received donations. The Community Foundation also received donations, but we kind of keep our numbers separate from participants. So, 106 of you raise funds
and that raised that that ran the gamut from $100 to a hundred $1,000. Our our Spring House raised $100,000 which is pretty extraordinary but that's not the norm. So as a participant snapshot, 50 organizations raised $2,000 or more. 42 had 25 or more donations. And then looking at that average amount raised and again some organization raised in the tens of thousands of dollars and others raised. Less than $10,000 or less than $2,000 all of all that combined into an average raise of, 7,300 and th
en the median raise so smack dab in the middle of those 106 organizations was just over 1,600. So these aren't necessarily record breaking numbers. They're not, it's not necessarily going to be the event where you you raise $200,000 if you do that that's amazing and incredible but there's has to be a lot leading up to raising those kinds of funds. So just in terms of managing expectations. If you're new to this event and you don't have like a big existing donor database, we still want you to par
ticipate and you can still find success but just Change those expectations, maybe set a goal for between $1,000 and $2,000 and say we're gonna kind of aim low lower it's any money you raise is a benefit right and then if you raise more that's great but kind of having those lower expectations because If your donors aren't used to giving to you, online or, course they can give it other ways too but if they're not used to this particular event and it's new to them. It can be you need to use the the
time for this giving day to kind of build momentum and educate your donors and other supporters like hey we're participating this is why it matters this is why it's great to give during this time of year. So, regardless of how much you raise, it's going to benefit your organization. But just thinking about what success means and what it looks like for your organizations. Is about the goals that you set for yourself. The fundraising and I know we keep emphasizing this but it's it's true that the
the you raise is important but the new donors you potentially, get or if you get your board involved, if more people hear about your mission and maybe you got a couple new volunteers. It's about those pieces as well. So that focus on the money. Yes, of course, we're excited about how much everyone raises and the collective total is raises and the collective total is important but there's all those other little successes and the collective total is important, but there's all those other little s
uccesses that build up into one big successes. But there's all those other, little successes, that build up into one big success in this event. Miss 4, if we don't win a grant or prize, then we are not successful. So I would like to shift folks thinking to whether you win something or not. Going if you decide to go after a grant or prize like for example we have a prize that's most unique donors And what that means is a unduplicated donor. So donor who gives one. So donor can't get they can give
more than once but they only count one time for this price. If you go after that, prize and you get 60 donors but someone else beats you in that prize. That was still motivating to your donors and it still compelled more people to give to you. Same thing with a power hour. It's the Most amount of money raised in a specific that's Is that correct? Did I write that correctly? Isn't that the most donors in an hour? Sorry guys, that's that's my error. So we have certain period times during the day
where it's the most number of donors in a particular hour. And if you have 20 donors in the hour but someone else gets 25 you still motivated your donors. So yes, try to go after those grants and prizes, but don't center your whole success strategy on winning a Granter prize. Shift it to a winning a granter prize would be the cherry on top of our efforts and center those those goals on other metrics. Myth 5 is giving events are best suited for large non-profit organizations. So it's certainly tr
ue that nonprofits with more resources may have more time to devote to the event, but organizations at every level can be successful. I would say, you know, even if for those of you who are on the call who work for a large nonprofit, we know everyone is super busy, right? So you might maybe you don't have a ton of time to devote to the event. It that is not necessarily the best indicator of success. I think the better indicators of success are planning early, sign up early and you get the benefi
t of working with us and information about the event and you can plan out your strategy and engage your supporters early, having specific goals. We want to raise $3,000 this year. Well, what's the why behind that $3,000 does it buy a certain amount of equipment does it pay for a certain amount of meals or a certain number of pets to be spayed or neutered? What is the why behind that number? Is your one of your goals to engage your whole board in giving each one of them to make a gift of $5 or mo
re it doesn't have to be breaking the bank. Do you have a goal this year of having 10% more donors than you did last year? Whatever those goals are, make them specific. And if you feel like you can't have 5 different goals, that's okay. If you have one or 2 things that you really want to focus on this year. That's and that's what you have time for, focus on those things. And then the third thing, have a good communication plan. Think about how your donors like to hear from you and what ways your
already talking to them and reach out to them. And then an existing donor base also helps, but again, if you maybe in the past you've relied mostly on grant funding and you haven't done a lot of outreach to individuals or businesses, but sometimes you receive those donations, but you're not actively seeking them. You can still have success, but again, maybe aim lower if you're kind of introducing your supporters to this new way of giving and introducing your supporters to saying, hey, you can h
elp our supporters to saying, hey, you can help our organization by donating. Because you might have supporters to saying, hey, you can help our organization by donating. Because you might have supporters out there who love your mission, but maybe just it hasn't occurred to them that you might need, And I'll add that in 2023 our small sized organizations. Which is which was a budget of under $35,000 i believe we had 33 organizations in that category who received donations and they raised a combi
ned total of $84,000. From 621 donations that's pretty extraordinary so certainly small but mighty and so I think it at every level you can have that success. But just consider your particular organization's capacity level, regardless of what your budget is. We know how busy folks are. If your time is limited, again, concentrate on doing a few things well. What can you do? What can you capitalize on what you're already doing? Don't go out there if you're not on social media and create a bunch of
social media. Accounts just for this event. Like if you have an email list or if you can engage folks in person, whatever your communication is. Concentrate on that. You don't necessarily have to reinvent the wheel and create a bunch of new things through this event to be successful. I'm muted. Our final myth, my donors already gave during the year and they won't want to be asked again. So that is a very very large myth because donors like to be asked to participate especially your core group o
f supporters these are people who know your work, appreciate what you do and are inspired. And so they want to be asked to participate. Think about ways that you could ask those donors who already, you know, gave or oriented or your anticipating to give. Especially maybe donors that give a larger amounts. Think about more creative ways that you can get them involved, especially in a special way, like we've suggested a match. Matches are really great ways to make the donation feel a little bit di
fferent for donors who have already given. And it's also a way to just strengthen that relationship with that donor. They like to know that what they're doing is going to help you and so when you you know pitch this idea of like hey you know you give to us really appreciate it would you consider doing your gift as a match this year let them know the impact that that match will have. You know, it's gonna inspire more gifts. It's gonna reach more people. It's going to give us something to talk abo
ut and share in our socials and our newsletters and our emails during the day. That's really exciting to donors. So think about, you know, how to make the ask and then get them involved in maybe setting this specifics. Do they want to, you know, have their donation be matched one to one, maybe 2 to one. You know, any way you can get them involved is going to be really special and just strengthen that bond with that donor. And donors who maybe don't give in large amounts, maybe they're not the ma
tch, you know, the ones you want to ask, you know, the ones you want to ask, but they're more than happy to give again if they know it's going to help you reach a goal or a special milestone or a special milestone or win a prize. So during the day, if you have donors who gave in the morning, or a special milestone or win a prize. So during the day, if you have donors who gave in the morning, or win a prize. So during the day, if you have donors who gave in the morning, but you're close in the af
ternoon, you have donors who gave in the morning, but you know, you're close in the afternoon, to reaching that goal. The event is almost over. It's almost noon. You know, don't be afraid to ask those donors that gave you know yesterday or in the morning to give again in a small amount you know even $5 you know is going to help you maybe win a prize so something to consider, just, you know, making sure you're very clear with the ask and making sure you're also acknowledging and thinking those do
nors for previous gifts. So you don't want to just ask and ask all day. You want to make sure you pull that list of donors who gave already. Using that report that I showed you on your dashboard, but add them into a different mailer, you know, let them know you gave to our campaign. There's 2 h left. We're trying to win a power hour give during this hour and we could potentially win. So just making sure you clearly communicate that impact and let them know and more than likely they're willing to
give you an additional $5 to try to reach out a goal. Sarah and Lindsey, can I jump in here for it with just a little bit of a tidbit? Masters. This is a very timely webinar and for those of you all who have older donors. That are over 70. It's a good time to ask. They have to have a minimum distribution from their, retirement accounts. And so it they are not text on that minimum distribution if they give it to a charity. So, but you need to give the financial institutions time to mail the chec
k so it lands in June. So it's a very good, time for outreach to your older donors to ask for that required minimum distribution to be sent to your charity. That is helpful information. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Laura. Already. So for our final slides, we just want to always, you know, make sure you have the support materials and links that you need to make sure your campaign, moves seamlessly. So I wanted to put these out here. So of course you have the fabulous main contact at
CFNRB Lindsey. Super helpful if you need anything you can call or email. If you have more technical questions, if you're running into issues, maybe registering, some button isn't working for you, donors need a receipt resent, maybe you need help setting up a match on the platform. That's where Mightcause can come in. So send our team an email at support at Miticas. Calm. We're also available via call. I would recommend just sending an email first though, cause oftentimes we can help you resolve
something pretty quickly so you're not waiting around for a call. And then we also have just fabulous online support libraries. Apart from, you know, the fabulous toolkit that's already on the website. We also have our own library of resources that are available to you. So you can go to support. Myicost. Dot com. Very similar to the email for support, but this is the website. And you can get just a bunch of e-books, you know, Sorry, that's for the guide. For the support resources, these are lik
e our frequently asked questions. So you can get donor support questions. Maybe you're trying peer-to-peer fundraising this year. You can usually find something because if somebody's asked it, we've put it in one of these guides. And then we have miticas.com slash guide and this is where you can find pre-recorded webinars on all sorts of topics if you want to know, watch a webinar specifically geared towards peer to peer fundraising. We have it. If you want to watch something specifically geared
towards matching grants. We have that. So just check it out. There's a bunch of e-books that you can download. If you don't want to watch webinars, you can download those guides and we just have a bunch of tips. And fundraising ideas for you also make sure you take advantage of it. Yeah, and when you register, we send out resources in the email of, hey, here's our planning worksheet, download this and kind of it'll help you start planning out the event and thinking about your goals. We also hav
e a kind of a getting started checklist and when you look at it you're like why is this checked list 5 pages long it's because it's broken out into time periods so here's what you should do first after you sign up and then within 2 months of the event do this and when early gabling kicks off do this so it's meant to kind of help you do those the step-by-step things. Do you have to do all those things? Absolutely not. But we hope it helps you as a guide. And, when you have a question, certainly f
eel free to reach out to me or or support like Sarah said, but I would just suggest heading to the website first and looking at our frequently asked question section and the toolkit, see if you can find your answer there. But just know we are always happy to chat with you or meet with you to talk over something and the toolkit, see if you can find your answer there. But just know we are always happy to chat with you, but just know we are always happy to chat with you, but just know we are always
happy to chat with you, or meet with you to chat with you, or meet with you to talk over something. So I noticed 2 questions in the chat, but if you all so, Katie asked about, how do you sign up to be coached? So when you sign up your organization, In the registration form, you'll see a question that says, what information or resources would be most helpful for D for to you and trainings, email communications or online toolkits. And there's a box you can check that says a cohort Othello nonprof
it leaders check that and we'll know that you you want to be part of these small coaching groups or you're welcome to email me and let me know that you want to be part of those groups and we're happy. To add you. If you want to be a coach, we would also, be delighted to have you as that so you can email me and let me know but we want to have these groups set by the end of February so we do have that deadline to get folks in those groups so you have time. With your coach. Over a couple of months
before early giving starts. And then someone asked about will this presentation be recording, recorded and shared with other folks? Absolutely. We've been recording and we will, post this webinar recording on our website and we will email you all when it's ready and also have the slide deck available as well so you can kind of look at the slides separately too. Lindsey, we'll remind them where on our website they would find the recording. Sure, that's a great question. Sara, do we store those in
the toolkit? I'm just looking at the website. Double check. I know we set up some new pages list here. Yeah. Yeah, I think so if you go to the website under the resources tab and then you go to nonprofit toolkit you'll already see that there's a video and some other resources a guide to download and other links and stuff we'll add the recordings there and we are planning on having another webinar. And we are planning on having another webinar. And we're working on setting that date and kind of
we'll dive deeper into some strategies around giving day. For, for that webinar, but we're working on setting the date there. So we'll upload it directly to the webinar library. And so if you want to write it down, it's give local nrv. Org backslash p backslash webinar dash library. Okay, thanks. And I'm sure you'll probably email that out to everybody as well. Yeah, for sure. We'll, get that out to you and, we'll make sure it's It's prominent on the website. And can it be on our website too, Li
ndsey? Sure. Yep, we can put in multiple places. Hmm. Alright, everyone. I know we're at time, so we can, we can wrap up, but thank you all so much for joining us. Today we know that we covered a lot of information today and there will not be a quiz. So if you, if you didn't catch something or if something wasn't clear, please reach out. We're always happy to clarify things and take a please visit that toolkit early and often and then the frequently asked questions, piece of the, the give local
website, that's going to answer a lot of your questions. But again, as you can probably tell, I enjoy being a part of this event. I get excited about it and always happy to talk to you. Just reach out early so we can work together and help you reach whatever success and whatever goals you're trying to reach this year. Thanks everyone
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