 Thanks again for joining us. We are here to talk about end of year fundraising strategy. So we're already hard to believe at the end of October. Now is absolutely the time to be digging into your year-end fundraising strategy. It's the most generous time of the year. It is the busiest time of year. There's a lot going on and a lot of donations coming in. So it's important to take the time now to plan ahead, get your campaign strategy in place, get all of your ducks in a row, so that you can take the most advantage of this generous time of the year. For any of you that might be relatively new to Mighty Cause, just wanted to take a brief moment to make sure everybody knows who we are and what this platform is really all about. We were founded in 2006, have really spent all of our time focusing on serving nonprofits with crowdfunding tools, nonprofit fundraising tools, as well as all kinds of other products and features to support your online fundraising efforts, team fundraising, peer-to-peer fundraising, CRM tool, donation page for your website, lots of really great things available to our nonprofit partners. Our goal is really to help the nonprofit sector, our partners, our nonprofit partners to raise more funds for their mission, do it efficiently, effectively, and with easy-to-use tools. So over the years, we've helped raise quite a bit for our nonprofit partners. We've gotten lots of great feedback and support over the years from these partners to help constantly improve the product offering that we have. And we also, as I mentioned, have full suite of nonprofit software tools available. So depending on what you need for your organization, whether it's just a platform to host your end-of-year campaign or you're looking for your year-round solution to replace maybe a PayPal button on your website or your CRM tool, we've got lots of options available to explore and find the right fit for your organization. And with that, we will jump into really the meat of today's presentation, which is focusing on your end-of-year campaign. And it will be here before we know it. Lots going on right now, this time of year. So we wanted to really boil it down to 10 tips that you can start today to get this campaign running so that with all of the other things you've got going on, whether it's fundraising or multiple other jobs that you are responsible for for your organization, you can take some actionable steps right after this training to get your campaign up and running. So the first is, of course, to set a goal. Similar to any campaign or really any undertaking that you might start, always important to start with a goal. That is going to help keep you focused, keep you on track as you move throughout the project and then at the end give you something to measure against. So one of the easiest ways to set your goal for your end-of-year campaign is to look at any deficits or gaps that you have in 2018 goals that you set, whether it's goal set within your development team, goal set by your executive director, or actual dollar amount deficit to reach your budget for the end of the year, starting there and working backwards. If you have still $20,000 to raise to meet your goals or to hit the expected income for your budget for the year, that's a great place to start. But there's lots of other things that you can set goals around for your end-of-year campaign, whether it's the number of individual donors that are going to contribute, the number of recurring donations that you'll have new donors sign up for, maybe it's launching a new program or initiative, lots of different types of things that you can set goals around. So think about what's really important to your organization and then set goals based on that. And whatever your goals are, always helpful to keep in mind your smart goal strategies, so be specific with your goals, not just I want to raise more money, I want to raise a lot of money, give something specific that way you can measure progress throughout your campaign to see how close you are to meeting that goal as well as post-campaign looking back. Something you can measure, always important to make it tangible, something that's attainable. You may want to raise $100,000 in your end-of-year campaign and that may be great and would be really exciting. But look at what typical fundraising campaigns that you've run in the past, how they've done and set attainable increases in that. So be realistic about what you really can accomplish and set a goal that is a little bit of a stretch but not too much of a stretch that you will get discouraged too easily on in your campaign. And finally, time down. Of course, with end-of-year campaign you've got the benefit that that end-of-year season ending on December 31st is a great end to your campaign and to your goals. So just a couple things to keep in mind when you set those initial goals and really taking the time to step back and think about those goals now will help make sure that every other step that you follow throughout the campaign really is focused on that key goal. That's really important to making sure that you don't have mission creep or idea creep with your end-of-year campaign. There's lots of really cool fun creative things you can do but a small organization or an organization with limited resources you've always got to take the time to think is this going to help me reach my goals for this campaign. So once you've set a goal you can move to the next step which is of course setting the focus for your campaign and this is something that you will need to do for any campaign that you run year-round but the end of year it's even more important to set a focus because you're competing against all the other nonprofits out there that are also running their end-of-year campaign. So donors are seeing much more information receiving many more asks than they do in a typical month so you need to make sure that your campaign can stand out in that crowd rise above the noise of all the emails and mail solicitations they're getting and a really helpful way to do that is a meaningful focus to your campaign a story what sets yours apart and once you set that focus create testimonials copy video all kinds of content to support that focus so that throughout your campaign any emails that you send anything you post on social media any blog posts that you do your donation page the thank you experience any follow-up you're doing after the campaign all of that should tie back to that single focus they should all reinforce that key focus and so taking the time to create all that content ahead of time will make sure that you can plug and play into all of the different outreaching communication strategy that you have for the campaign and kind of taking this a step further there's a couple of different ways that you can help set your focus for the campaign of course always helpful to look at your needs internally as an organization and decide what it is that you need to fundraise for do you have a program that specifically needs to meet a budget or meet a goal by the end of the year that might help you determine where you should focus your fundraising efforts but if not there's a couple of other things that you can do to define a focus for your campaign the first is tangible impact fundraising similar to choosing a specific program that you want to support this is really all about making the impact of a donor's gift feel very tangible at this time of year it's especially important but it's always helpful for a donor to really see the impact of their gift especially donors giving it smaller gift levels it might be hard to see what my 10 or 15 or $25 gift can really do in your quest to end hunger or reduce homelessness those are really big goals so by making tangible by making gifts tangible for donors you can really encourage them to give at that level you can help them really understand your mission and why it's so critical so a tagline like $25 can provide 10 meals for a family in need that's something that's relatively simple but it's really focused and makes it very clear to the donor the impact that they can have to choosing something like that how that becomes relevant for your organization is of course different for each group depending on their mission and how they carry out their programming but finding something simple like that any donor can really understand $25 can provide 10 meals for a family in need that's something it really could resonate with the donor it's not complex it doesn't get into statistics or how how all different complex factors in society affect hunger it just gets to the core of how the donor can support so try looking at a donation level that would be meaningful for your organization and your mission and see if you can't create a campaign a tagline around that another approach is of course story-based fundraising this is especially helpful of course at this time of year when donors are really looking to they're looking to give in a meaningful way it's the holiday season whatever holiday they celebrate it's the holiday season it evolves often more time with family it's a great opportunity for donors to be reminded of what they feel grateful for how blessed they are in their lives so connecting with that emotion appealing to that part of a donor is even more important at this time of year so find a story about your organization an individual that has been served a family that has gone through your programming whatever it might be and create your campaign around that story when a donor sees statistics about you know a hundred there are you know 500 families in the Cleveland area that are homeless whatever it might be that's it's a big number it's a big idea it's a little bit harder for donors to connect with that but if you show them the story of one individual family and they can connect with them maybe they are also a mother or a father or whatever it might be that that personal connection with your story as a representation of your mission that's gonna really help donors connect so see if there's not something that you could create around that that story concept and then finally of course holiday-based fundraising it's a time of year where people are making gifts asking for gifts sharing with other people what they want for the holidays so you can have fun with that in terms of encouraging donors to ask their friends and family to donate instead of making a gift or getting a gift for them this year you can create a wish list of items like a Christmas list if you will for items that your nonprofit might need or things that might make a difference for your nonprofit lots of different ways that you can do that but again just appealing to a donor's sense of feeling around this holiday season so once you've done that initial work to set a goal and outline your focus for your campaign you can really dig into the process of putting pieces in place that will help this campaign be successful and one of the most important things that I think you can do to make your end of your campaign more successful is to secure a matching grant this is a very impactful strategy both for your donors when they go to make their gift and they see that potential to double their impact or triple their impact but it's also a very relatively easy way to see a high increase in your overall total raised if you can secure a five thousand or ten thousand matching gift from a donor then you only need five thousand or ten thousand from your overall donor base in order to meet that match and double your overall contributions so when it comes time to securing a matching grant couple of steps to take in mind the first is of course prospecting look at your list of supporters whoever that list might be and identify some key individuals or small groups that might make sense as a prospect for a major gift first and foremost always consider your board of directors do you have a single board member that might have the potential to make a gift like this or can you ask your board of directors to come together combine their impact to offer a match is there a major donor that maybe hasn't yet given their big gift this year you could encourage them to give that gift in the form of a match so that you can make it go further and of course corporate sponsors and partners matching grants are a great way to engage corporate partners because you have the opportunity often to promote that match you can share with your donors and supporters you can post on social media about the matching donor in this case the corporate partner and oftentimes that's a really important piece of corporate partners being able to offer the support in the first place is that promotion that you're able to offer them in return so first look at your list of potential contacts and prospects and identify some key people that might be a good fit for this and the next step of course is to cultivate the relationship with those individuals take time to communicate with those people learn about their interests learn about their goals when it comes to giving you may have you know a major donors perspective or motives might be very different than a corporate partner when they go to make a gift to your organization so it's it's it's helpful to take the time to have those conversations maybe go to lunch with that major donor set up a meeting with the corporate partner learn about their interests and then once you take the time to do that you can craft your ask to really appeal to their specific interests rather than just putting out a blast to everyone that's on this prospect list of will you offer a matching grant take the time for that personal outreach that personal ask with the individual or the corporate partner and craft the ask in a way that it's going to appeal to them so as I already mentioned corporate partners might be much more interested in the opportunity to have promotion when it comes to making their gift so when you ask that corporate partner make sure to share all the ways that you can promote their support all the ways that you will share their logo share their name post about them on social media how will they benefit from your promoting this matching grant a major donor might have very different motivations they may not be interested in receiving that recognition they may not want to be recognized at all but that major donor especially if they've given to your organization over time in the past might be very committed to the mission of your work so appealing to them on what you will be able to accomplish by their gift turning into a matching grant and leveraging that support for more donations from your general public that may be something that really appeals to that major donor so think about what it is that's going to speak to them and craft your ask your personal ask accordingly and on the mighty cause platform you've got lots of options to in terms of how to promote and how to offer your match so you can do a standard one-to-one match where the donor has the chance to double their donation but you can also do more creative other things you can have a triple match so that depending on the amount that you're able to receive from a donor you can offer for every one dollar a donor gives two dollars will be matched you can match a certain dollar amount of each gift that you get lots of different things that you can do to kind of make it interesting make it fun and again appeal to what what your matching donor is really trying to accomplish with their match you can do multiple small matches you can combine matches into one big match especially as you look through the end of your giving season whatever you start there's likely going to be a longer time frame perhaps than an average campaign you start fundraising in November and you're going all the way through December 31st that's a long time to be hitting the same exact message so you can keep it interesting by having a match that you offer whether it's maybe just for the day on giving Tuesday just for the day on the last day of the year or maybe the last week of the year think about how you might be able to sprinkle in the matching grant throughout the campaign to add some something new and exciting into your campaign and of course once you secure that match that promotion how you share it with your donors how you publicize it on your page is really going to make the difference in terms of encouraging that extra excitement and urgency from your donors visiting your page to make their donation so when you get that match you can post that on your mighty cause page you can recognize the donor if they'd like to be recognized you can also keep them anonymous if it's one of those major donors that might prefer their name to not be recognized there will be a countdown live on your page showing how much time is left on the match as well as what the dollar amount is left in the match so lots of different ways that right on your page you will be adding and sense of urgency encouraging those donors to make their gift and it's important you also advertise this match across all of your communication strategy for the campaign so posting on social media that you have a match and your progress towards the match as you get closer to meeting it making sure that that is mentioned in all the email campaigns that you have while the match is active let donors know that they can double their donation if they make their gift now those kinds of things are what's going to encourage that gift that donor to take the step and click the button in your email to visit your page and make their gift so make sure you really make the match work for you once you take the time to secure it how can you really use it to your benefit to promote it to leverage it as much as possible to get that further support from your existing donor base and kind of elaborating on that just a bit it's important to take the time now to plan out your communication strategy for your end of year campaign again it's a busy time of year lots going on people in and out for the holidays really great way to make sure that you have enough messaging consistent messaging across all of your channels you have all of the assets you need all the lists you need to actually send emails when they're supposed to taking the time to sit down and plan out your strategy now we'll make sure that you cover all the bases of reaching out to your donors wherever they might be so multi-channel communication strategy is of course critically important email is a central focus of your campaign when and how will you send emails but that's not the only piece of your end of your campaign how will you compliment that on social media how will you compliment that with the content that donors and visitors are seeing on your website are you considering any direct mail approaches to compliment as well you're going to do direct mail that's something you have to decide sooner rather than later so that you can get all of those pieces into the works so think about all the different places that your donors might hear from you all the different places where you have an audience and consider how you can really implement a strategy for that channel kind of looping back to the whole reason that it's important to set a focus for your campaign is really because you want to have a simple consistent message that is going to appeal to your donors across all of your communications so once you've set that focus you should be able to develop that that single message that you will hit across all of your emails all of your social media posts is it that tangible dollar amount donation level and impact that can be had is it something related to a story of an individual or a family served by your programming keep it simple again the average donor doesn't spend all of their time in the weeds of your nonprofit understanding the nuance of your mission and why you do programming a certain way so keep it simple with them always make sure that in every piece of communication that you put out you have a very clear ask to make a donation and including the link to your donate page the best content the best social media post if it doesn't have a really easy way for donors to take action and get to where you want them to to make their gift they won't be able to take action donors are not likely to go out of their way to search for opportunities to give to your organization make it really easy for them big donate button in your emails always making sure that it's really easy for them to find the action that you want them to take and of course doing this now will allow you to plan ahead make your schedule from now through the end of the year but thinking in particular really what you might want to do for the last week of the year which starts to really ramp up giving and then of course the last day of the year when people are really trying to hit that deadline for tax deduction what is your communication strategy again you may be out of the office other people may be out of the office for the holidays so taking the time now to prepare that strategy you can schedule those emails and social media posts in advance so those things can continue to fire and engage while you may be out of the office for the holidays and when it comes to email in particular there's lots of things that you can do to make your emails more effective the first and the most important is to segment your audience so you have at least this year but multiple years of data about how donors and supporters have interacted with you in the past so rather than just sending one email to every email address you have in your donor database file asking everyone to make a $75 gift for the end of year think about how you can break your audience up into different groups to speak more directly to them to acknowledge where they are in their process of supporting your organization take special effort to look at who maybe hasn't made a gift yet this year they've given in the past but they've not yet given this year that group deserves extra attention at this time of year encouraging them to make that gift making sure you retain that donor look also at donors that gave last year during your year end giving campaign that's your signal they've already chosen to give to you once at the end of year they like this time of year to give so again plans special communications for them as well as other groups that support your organization recurring donors volunteers board members maybe people that have never made a gift to your organization but have just supported at events take time to segment your audience and prepare emails to to engage those people in a way that they'll feel acknowledged also make sure that your emails are mobile friendly that is a key piece of how people will read and interact with your emails over this end of year giving season your donation page on mighty cause will be mobile friendly so make sure the email that will get them there is also mobile friendly a b test on different subject lines different images different stories see what appeals to donors what gets a higher open rate or click rate and then choose to adapt your strategy based on that whatever you do for your end of year campaign it's really important to involve your board of directors this is what they're here for they're here to support your organization to advocate for your organization and fundraising is a key piece of them so many board of directors will have had to set goals for the year in terms of dollar amounts that they will either give or get to contribute to your organization so review their progress towards those commitments if they have five thousand left to give before the end of the year very helpful for them to know that now and really use that as their their motivation to support your end of year campaign share your plans with them and give them a specific role ask them maybe to give a match ask them to solicit donations from their personal contacts provide whatever kind of information content drafted email that might help them do that see if they might be interested in hosting an event or supporting you or your executive director with any of those meetings you might have with major donor prospects or corporate partners kind of following on that this is a very important time of year to connect with major donors major donors will likely not just respond and make a large gift just because they receive one of your blast emails this is a really important time to take a personal touch point with your major donors who maybe haven't yet given this year or maybe prospects that you that you're trying to convert to a major donor take the time for that personal one-on-one engagement with yourself maybe inviting a board of directors member to come with you for this meeting really connect with these donors cultivate them just like we talked about with that matching gift ask it's the same kind of strategy here but prepare a targeted ask you can ask them to give a matching grant you can ask them to increase their gift email based on what they gave last year or based on your conversations your cultivation you may know of something else that might be a really appealing thing to them or depending on your relationship with the donor you may want to leave it open-ended and see how they want to give but making sure that you give them some opportunities give them some ideas of what will be meaningful and impactful for your organization and of course just like with all of your donors which we'll talk about in just a moment but make sure you plan a meaningful thank you for these major donors this is a time of year when you get really busy and bogged down in the detail and some of that really important stewardship and follow-up might fall between the wayside make sure that's not the case with these major donors they are just every bit as important as every other supporter and they deserve that extra special touch whether it's a phone call from your executive director a one-on-one meeting with a board member or the executive director whatever it might be make sure you take the time to consider what that meaningful thank you really will be for that donor as you think of your end of your campaign giving Tuesday is a great way to kick that off so happens every year on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving just as donors are really starting to kind of think about the holiday season they've done Thanksgiving Black Friday, Cyber Monday giving Tuesday it's a great opportunity to really kick off your campaign and it doesn't have to take away from end of year giving I know there's always a little bit of a concern well if I ask my donors to give at the end of November will they give again at the end of December and research over the last few years has really showed that giving Tuesday does not take away from end of year giving at all it actually has the opportunity to supplement end of year giving so you'll want to make sure that you have special plans of course to make giving Tuesday work for you in conjunction with your end of year campaign and that's going to involve both the messaging and the focus for both of those campaigns how do they connect to each other how do they build on each other but also how are you communicating with donors that give during giving Tuesday during the rest of your end of year giving season that's absolutely a case of a group that needs to have special segmentation if somebody makes a gift to your organization at the end of November they shouldn't be solicited just like everyone else in the middle of December if you ask them again you'll want to do it in such a way that you acknowledge their gift on giving Tuesday so taking the time to think through that now how the two play off it's really a great way that you can start the end of your giving early where you might not really see your traction pick up till the middle of December by starting with giving Tuesday you can give yourself a big boost right at the end of November and then carry that all the way through the month of December and Mighty Cause has our own Giving Tuesday event that we are hosting on our platform where we're offering lots of perks to our partner nonprofits that host their Giving Tuesday campaign on our site including fee-free fundraising for your nonprofit so donors will have the chance to cover a platform fee but if they don't your nonprofit won't pay that platform fee during Giving Tuesday we're offering over $10,000 in prizes that will go directly to participating nonprofits free access to our premium fundraising tool and free trainings and resources available on our website so if you haven't yet definitely take the time to sign up and join our Giving Tuesday event as a really critical step in launching your end of your fundraising campaign another thing to keep in mind for your end of your campaign is how you might encourage peer-to-peer fundraising so I always include this graphic here because I think it's a really important way to visualize why is peer-to-peer fundraising important valuable and exciting it might seem like something that's a little daunting to take on it might seem like an extra thing that you don't really want to incorporate into your campaign but you have such an opportunity to expand your network when you activate individuals supporters to connect to their own network on your behalf especially again at this time of year people are often looking for a way to get more involved to give back in a bigger way so channel that generosity by asking them to start a fundraiser for your organization really great way for them to encourage their family and friends instead of a gift for the holidays make a donation to this cause that I'm supporting with this fundraiser it's really easy messaging at this time of year when when donors are already kind of in that holiday gift giving season and you have opportunities to encourage that making it even easier by starting a team fundraiser for example you could start a team campaign where each of your board of directors has their own fundraising page for your organization they can customize that page to tell that story they send that page out to their friends and family they can kind of compete against each other to see which board member can raise the most for your organization that's just one example of a way to use team fundraising and to really make the most of peer-to-peer fundraising to allow those supporters that are really at that ready to take that next level of supporting your organization ready to engage their network share their own personal story about why they love and support your organization whatever you do throughout your entire campaign it's really important to think about the thank you think about that follow-up so I already mentioned it a little bit earlier but this is a really busy time of year and if you don't plan ahead with your thank yous it can be very easy to let some of those thank yous fall through the cracks let that that important stewardship go because you're so focused on that acquisition of gifts so taking time to plan things ahead of time will make sure that you really do have that comprehensive strategy on the mighty cause platform you've got a couple of options to really tell that thank you in a meaningful way the first is you for every campaign that you host you can build your own thank you page with a custom cta so that's the example you're seeing here you can customize this thank you page after every donor makes their donation this thank you page is what they'll see you can decide the text that goes there you can add photo you can add video and you can customize the cta if you want donors to go back to your blog go back to your website whatever it might be you can set that cta for them so that's immediately what donors will see after making their gift really important that you again kind of continue that message that you've started in your email social media on the donation page about what this campaign is all about continue that message through to the thank you page through to the thank you receipt you also have the opportunity to customize to add customized language to the thank you receipt that every donor will receive so both in these tools and outside of these tools this is a great way great time to try and incorporate video it's a really great way to connect with your donors in a different way especially at a busy time of year when donors might be receiving lots of emails how can you stand out by making a fun meaningful video that a donor might actually take a couple of minutes to watch rather than read through text plan for personal follow-up who are those donors whether it's donors that give over a certain dollar amount matching grant donor major gifts donor brand new donors who are those donor groups that might need personal targeted follow-up beyond the email that they receive and the thank you page that they'll see who might need a personal phone call or personal handwritten letter from your executive director plan that out ahead of time so that you know who and when you'll be doing those kinds of follow-up tasks and finally think think beyond the end of year into your follow-up next year again with a busy time of year donors might easily miss your thank you that comes during the end of your season once things kind of quiet down in January and February they're not seeing many emails from nonprofits they support that's a great time to follow up and remind them of the impact they had with their gift share what you've been able to accomplish with the funds you raised during your end of your campaign that follow-up will really encourage the donor donor that they made the right decision by giving to your organization in the first place and that is going to have an impact when they receive that next solicitation from you when they receive your communication throughout the year and kind of how they think about when they might come back to make their next donation to your organization and finally start planning today uh end of year might seem far away but we're already at the end of October the giving season has already started so guest started today you've got lots of action items that you can take right after this webinar to get started organize your team whether it's staff members volunteers board of directors whoever it is organize your team and start getting these plans in place so that you can really make sure you set yourself up for a successful end of your campaign and with that I will open it up for any questions that we have and looks like so far the only question is for a copy of the presentation we will have the presentation recorded so anybody who registered will definitely have access to a recording of the presentation so that you can follow up on any of the items and or share with any colleagues so we will make sure to get everyone a copy of that and I'm not seeing any other questions right now so I'll let everybody get back to their day if you have any questions as you are putting together your end of your fundraising campaign please feel free to reach out to support at mightycause.com and we'll be happy to get you started we also have tons of resources available both on our blog and our support forum helping you to actually move through the setup process of how to get your page set up so make sure you check out our blog for more information there and again we'll send this information follow up thanks for your time and good luck with your end of your fundraising strategy thanks everyone