 Welcome everyone to Targeting Donors for Year End Success. Thanks so much for joining TechSoup's webinar today. Before we get started, I'd like to make sure everyone is comfortable using ReadyTalk, the webinar platform we are on today. You can chat with us using the box on the lower left side of your screen. You don't need to raise your hands, so just feel free to chat in at any time to let us know if you need help, have any challenges with the audio or the video feeds, or if you have questions for our presenter. We will be on hand to flag those and help answer those throughout the webinar, so ask them as you feel moved to do so. We will keep all lines muted for the duration of the webinar, so we get a nice clear recording for you to refer to if you miss anything or want to listen to this again. If you lose your Internet connection, we recommend you reconnect using the confirmation email you received or the reminder that you would have received this morning. For those of you who registered more than an hour ago, that final reminder has a link on the right side of the page that takes you to our presenter's slides for today. So if you'd like to follow along, you're welcome to do so there. For anyone who registered more recently, you'll receive those slides, and everyone will receive those slides in the follow-up email that you'll receive within the next couple of days. Most of you will be hearing the audio play through your computer speakers, so if you're hearing an echo, or if there's any lag, you may need to close out ReadyTalk and reopen, or you may have multiple instances of ReadyTalk open, and you'll need to close out any additional ones. If the slides and the audio fall out of sync, we recommend dialing in to the alternate tool-free phone number that Kevin chatted out. Feel free to refer to that at any time if you have any issues with the audio or video. We are recording today's event, and we'll make it available on TechSoup's website on our events and webinars page. You can also find our list of upcoming webinars there for any that you may be interested in that are coming up, and I'll mention some of them later in the event too. You can also watch our webinars on our TechSoup video channel on YouTube. And as I mentioned, within the next few days, you'll get this email with this full presentation, the recording, and links within the next few days. If you'd like to tweet with us, you can do so at TechSoup or TS webinars as the hashtag. So feel free to use that as it is useful. My name is Becky Wiegand, and I am the Webinar Program Manager here at TechSoup, and I'm happy to be your host for today's event. I've been with TechSoup since 2008, and prior to that, spent a decade at small nonprofits in Washington, D.C., and Oakland, California. And I'm glad to be here to talk about year-end fundraising because we know that so much of your annual fundraising success comes in this last quarter of the year that we're already into. And so I'm happy to have with us today Nate Nazralla, who's the Director of Fundraising Solutions and Network for Good. And you'll notice that it's a different name than what we had in the original promotion. We had a cast change early this morning due to a family emergency. Brian Lauterbach is not able to join us, and Nate has generously agreed to step in his place, and they work closely together at Network for Good, and have both at Network for Good and at Donor Pass where they both work together as well. So he's going to impart and share expertise on year-end fundraising in Brian's stead, and we're really happy to have him to do that. And just to give you a little bit of background about Nate, he is the Co-Founder and Director of Network for Good's virtual fundraising teams, and he has helped the Executive and Development Directors of 500-plus emerging nonprofits, primarily with annual budgets ranging from $100,000 to $2 million, addressed their most pressing fundraising challenges, including helping with strategies for donor acquisition, retention, board engagement, grant funding, and balancing it all with really limited resources. So he is someone who has a lot of real expertise to impart, and I'm glad that he's here to join us today to do it. You'll also see on the back end Kevin Lowe, who's joining us from TechSoup's team to help with your questions and any technical issues you may have, so he's on hand to help as well. Looking quickly at our objectives for today, we hope that you'll walk away from today's event having a good idea of how to assess who to target in your year-end communications around fundraising. We want you to be able to have a good understanding of what constitutes good fundraising communications. We want you to be able to consider what channels are most appropriate and how you may want to segment and target that audience effectively, and we're going to give you some templates to get you started on developing your campaign calendar if you don't already have that started, and we will do our best to answer your questions. Before we get started with working toward those objectives, I'm going to do a quick overview of TechSoup for those of you who aren't already familiar. We are everywhere in the world that's blue on this map, which is almost everywhere. We're in nonprofit 501c3 based in San Francisco. Go ahead and chat in the chat window to let us know from where you're joining us today on the map. We are working since 1987 to help connect nonprofits and libraries, foundations, churches to the resources that they need to operate at their full potential, and that includes technology resources, social change agents, foundation support, all kinds of things. So we've got folks chiming in in the chat, and we know you can't see what's happening in the chat, so if there's useful information shared, we'll try and chat that back out to you. We have somebody joining from Tahachapi. We've got San Diego, Long Island, New York, South Carolina. I hope you're staying safe and avoiding hurricanes today. Massachusetts, D.C., Pennsylvania, all over the place, Texas, Georgia. Thank you all for chatting in. We really appreciate you joining us. If you're joining us from outside the United States, we recommend that you visit TechSoup.Global and choose your country from this drop down. We aren't going to be talking about specific donation programs in the TechSoup catalog today, but for those of you who are interested in accessing donations, you can go to TechSoup.org for US-based donation programs, but if you're not, we recommend, again, choosing your country from the TechSoup.Global site. We have helped facilitate the donation of technology products and grants to the tune of more than five point, I believe it's actually $5.4 billion now in that time that we've been around, and I'm proud to be not only a recipient of TechSoup's donation programs, but a staff person here. So with that, I'd like to go ahead and get us started on the topic at hand today. So here's a yes, no, or maybe sort of question for you. Do you already know today what you need to do by December 31 to raise 50% more than you raised last year? And this is really to give us an idea of who already has a pretty concrete strategy in mind with a plan, with goals, with your audience, pretty well segmented. Maybe you got part of it. Maybe you don't. Feel free to chat in anything that you'd like to comment about this as well. And I'll give just a moment for everyone to chime in before we show the results. The great majority are in the no and sort of section. So hopefully you'll glean some useful tips and strategy ideas today that can help you firm up your plans for the rest of the year. Go ahead and show the results. You've got 65% almost in the no camp and 28% in the sort of. I like Lorraine comments on the back end. This is why I'm listening. That's exactly why we're here. So I'm glad that you're here too. How many hours per week do you spend on direct fundraising? So maybe this is just a snippet of your job. Maybe it's not actually part of your job at all and it's just something there's a need for. Maybe this is your full-time job. Maybe it's your part-time job, half-time. And feel free to comment in if there's something not on this menu of options. We have a comment 10 to 15 hours. So a little less than half-time as a full-time job. It looks like the majority of people chiming in so far are in a few or two or less categories. So that means the great majority of people are probably not the full-time fundraiser or maybe there isn't a full-time fundraiser at your organization or maybe not a team. Some organizations are lucky to have. I'm going to go ahead and show the results and we can go ahead and get started with our expert content from Nate today. So it looks like 45%, almost, what is that, 70% combined are a few hours or less. And Karen comments, we're so new, everything is about fundraising which it feels like that's often the case for newer organizations or very smaller organizations where fundraising is the full-time job of everyone even though you've got other full-time jobs. So with that I'd like to go ahead and have Nate Mazzarella join us from Network for Good to talk to us about how to get that year-end campaign strategy set up, how to target the right people, and how to help you walk away with a closer view of what your campaign calendar should look like for the end of the year. Thanks so much for joining us, Nate. We're really glad to have you in Brian's stead. Well, Becky, thank you for the introduction and I am excited to be with you and everybody logged in today as well. So the topic that we're going to focus on today is how to create a year-end fundraising campaign to raise more revenue for your mission, for your programs without an increase in expenses. And we are now, if you can believe it, less than 90 days from December 31st. And so this three-month period is the time window in which a little over 70% of individual gifts for the year will be made. Even greater than 30% of the gifts for the entire year will come during the single month of December. So for us as nonprofits, individual giving represents an incredible advancement or opportunity for our mission. Right? Oftentimes it's unrestricted gifts, it's more sustainable support, and so it's of the utmost importance and a time of great opportunity walking into really the year-end giving season that has already started. So while there's a lot of opportunity, there's also a lot of moving parts to managing a year-end fundraising plan. And as we saw from the second poll that Becky just did, for many of us year-end fundraising, individual donor cultivation is just going to be one of the many responsibilities or tasks that you manage within fundraising. But more importantly, fundraising is just one of the many responsibilities, tasks, or hats that you have to wear. Probably many of us joining field chief everything officer would be a more appropriate job description than what your title actually says. So the goal for today is to walk through creating a year-end fundraising plan that will be manageable and practical to everything that you have to manage. So using just your existing time, staff, and budget. And that's what we're doing every single day at Network for Good and how we fulfill our mission. We match small and emerging and even mid-sized nonprofits and their directors with a fundraising team who helps them to create and develop a fundraising plan focused on multiple sources right now, primarily individual giving during the year-end season. And we provide all of the tools, softwares, and systems to time efficiently implement that plan without the ability to add on or hire on more fundraising staff. So for everybody logged in and thinking, I only have two hours per week to fundraise or fundraising is just one of the many roles. You are in the right place because our goal is to help you balance the time of opportunity with all of the moving parts that fundraising presents and year-end fundraising. So I want to start by talking about my colleague while he's not in the room with us, Brian. And it's the story or the premise upon which I first met Brian and we began fundraising together. And I think it illustrates many of the key principles that we need to start with in order to create a successful giving campaign. So Brian thought himself as a fundraising genius. He was creative, he was witty, he was smart, and he was talented, and he figured we are doing good work at what was then the Detroit Symphony Orchestra who had hired Brian as their development director to raise $4 million for their annual fund. So seeing it was a year-end, it was a natural time when donors would be making their gifts and giving his abilities and creativity an easy task, right? Rating $4 million during the annual giving season. Well, the first part of an annual giving campaign for Brian at the orchestra as well as for you is first to renew all of the donors that provided a gift to you in the past year. So for Brian it was $370,000 worth of giving. Now if you do the math fundamentally, $370,000 is a number far lower than the $4 million that the orchestra asked him to raise, right? So as we are kind of speaking with Brian out of the room today, it should be very apparent that there was a clear gap in the current resources and the goal that was being asked to raise. So while Brian prepared his year-end letter, he focused on the stamp, the postage, the color of the envelope, had everything ready to go and perfect. His mail date was September 12, 2001. And it being the 15th anniversary this year, let's step back in time to September 11, 2001. Very obviously it wasn't so appropriate and through a small curveball and Brian's annual giving plans for the year-end. So as all fundraisers did in 2001 after the tragedy of 9-11, he held back the letter. There was no choice. And in the ensuing days, we watched the Red Cross raise a record amount of funding for emergency and disaster relief through an online giving portal. So stepping back and saying, wow, there's a lot of money, that $4 million annual giving goal for the orchestra that I'm responsible for raising, what if we create the first online giving portal for the arts? So that's what Brian did. He went to his executive director and said, Pam, I would like $55,000 to develop the first online giving portal for the arts. And she trusted Brian. So after 11 weeks of planning, designing, testing, using only his own creativity, insights, and wit in order to create the giving process, it was finally ready for launch. So on October 25, he launched the first and the orchestra's first online giving portal for the arts. And the results, maybe you can go ahead and submit a guess. How much do you think was raised from the first ever online giving portal for the arts during the year and giving season of 2001? So if you go ahead and submit a guess, we'll see what you think. Wow, Karen, you were pretty close. $1,700. Karen guessed $2,500. And unfortunately, that was accurate and very far from the $4 million goal. So the ensuing months brought much reflection. It was a very awkward period around the orchestra, very obviously. But there's a few or a number of key takeaways that we need to identify from Brian's failure so that we don't make that same failure. The first was building a time to fail. In order to test a new idea, we need to build in an appropriate timeline that allows us to test the plan to refine the plan. Second, one method of giving, online giving over another, is in superior. So we need to think about how we begin to select the appropriate channels or methods of giving in order to create the greatest response or year-end giving appeal. So for many of us, this might be the first time that we're experimenting with it's kind of a walkie-fun raising term, but taking an integrated approach using multiple different channels. And so that is going to be our very first discussion topic. What is the appropriate channel given your donor or constituent's communication preferences through which to fundraise? Second, how do we take those preferences, those channels, and build a fundraising plan around that that is going to be right size and best suited for a limited staff, a very small budget, and not a lot of time with which to create and implement a fundraising appeal? And thirdly, but not least in its importance, is the fundraising message. How do we create a true donor-centric message that is going to compel renewal and also engagement with first time or new donors? So first, in order to select an appropriate channel to deliver our campaign, fundamentally we need to know why and how people give and what motivates them to do so. So primarily, a donor base, your community, your mailing lists, constituencies can all be broken down into four categories, with age being the number one data point that you can capture in order to inform their giving and communication preferences. And so the first of those four is Gen Y, a younger, more millennial donor which often is kind of a new topic or a buzzword within fundraising. So we hear about Gen Y donors, their interest in giving, and that we should all feel they are a primary source of revenue. The reality though is that Gen Y represents only about 11% of the total giving each year. However, what we need to know and incorporate within our year-end fundraising plan is that a Gen Y, a millennial, or a younger donor is very likely to be an advocate or fundraise on your behalf. They like to share stories, they like to connect with the community and with the network, and they have or present the opportunity to further message, develop, and tell your story and your appeal to help make a connection with new donors. Kind of the fundraising term that you'll hear or the channel that you'll hear is peer-to-peer fundraising. So we need to know that Gen Y donors are important, they're an opportunity, they give through multiple channels including peer-to-peer and online giving that the total dollar value we also need to plan for engaging other donors like the Gen X. So Gen X is more of a younger adult age 33, up to about 50 years old, kind of with the first family representing an increasing portion of total annual giving. And what's important to note is that they are equally active in giving through multiple sources. It could include fundraising on behalf of your organization and about 40% prefer over other alternatives or options prefer to give online or through a website. Now the third of the fourth constituencies within your donor base will be baby boomers and they represent the largest dollar amount of giving on an annual basis, most likely to you and nonprofits across our sector. What's important to note outside of just the total dollar value that baby boomers represent is that they are most likely to give monthly to give in a recurring fashion. They probably have a more stable predictable income and will be receptive to that type of appeal. They are also more likely than Gen Y and Gen X to give through direct mail, so a male fundraising appeal. So we begin to note and observe a trend which Brian failed to take note of and observe is that different donors have different preferences. And it's not about one but it's about multiple channels. So we begin to see an increasing preference as we move into the mature generation for giving in response to a direct mail appeal in solicitation and even with a varying ask such as in honor or as a tribute. So there are four primary categories or demographics of donors that will comprise every donor base. And as you begin to think about your own community, your constituency, a senior service organization and an animal rescue will probably have a varying or different demographic. So think about the ages and the categories of constituents in your community as that will help to inform the emphasis on the different channels through which we'll create our year-end fundraising appeal. The biggest takeaway that we need to focus on though is again it's not one or the other we need to begin to integrate both online and offline or direct mail giving in order to reach the highest number or greatest number of donors and compel the greatest response. So what that means for us practically is it's going to be best to focus on the channels or the avenues which will connect with the greatest number of donors. So while there's many opportunities you might even hear of nonprofits developing their own phone or iPhone applications. Focus on what is going to create the greatest impact. And for you this year-end that is going to be your website with an online giving button. It's going to be communicating by email and sharing campaign updates to Facebook. So website email and Facebook are the three channels that we're going to begin to focus on integrating or bringing into our year-end fundraising plans in addition to offline giving or direct mail. And further we want to focus on these because they are going to be the lowest cost. So if you think about your annual fundraising budget probably the portion that is consumed or represented by postage, stamps, envelopes and the time required to prepare them we can begin as a small and developing staff and growing nonprofit focus on the lower cost means of giving and fundraising by integrating both online and offline giving. So now as we think about how to reach donors to their preference how to do so in a way that will compel and motivate them to give we want to translate that or put that into a plan that is right size to your nonprofit and is going to drive year-end fundraising results. So everybody step back and take a deep breath. Begin to move away from all of the emails, the phone calls, the meeting requests, the tasks in your to-do list that you come up against every single day let alone throughout the course of a month. And it is because of all that you have to do that is on your plate it is often difficult to step back and actually create a plan before doing or starting any type of work, right? So there is this saying you need to plan the work and then you work the plan. Well nothing could be more true than that saying during the year-end giving season and there are a number of reasons. First stepping back to create a plan before beginning any type of fundraising activity during the year-end season will help to align your limited resources whether that's time or staff or budget around what is going to work and what's possible. Further a plan is going to help you think beyond and before transactions and so what we mean by that is a year-end campaign isn't just about getting a new dollar. We need to think about what is going to be the communication, the thank you, the follow-up in the stewardship of those donors after the transaction to make sure that we're keeping and cultivating strong relationships. Now for each of us we also need the input and the participation of our board members who are equally busy and value community members. We need their participation during the year-end campaign and without a plan it is going to be very difficult for you to present the need or the why behind your ask for their involvement. It's going to be difficult to message or show the greater picture that when each unique board member comes together and participates in the campaign a greater impact or result will happen. So you need to be able to present a written plan, timeline, steps of activities in order to focus and to motivate your board to participate in the campaign. And finally it's going to provide a sense of rigor and discipline to creating new ideas. You know as we begin to plan this year's campaign we also want to look back to last year's to look at what we did, what was the result, how it went, and learn from that or apply that in a more systematic way to create a different approach and an improved approach to this year's campaign. The last piece that a fundraising plan is going to do, it helps you thread the needle between the multiple different opportunities that a year-end fundraising campaign presents. So your campaign could both secure new annual donors through the appeal. So an annual donor being somebody who's making often a first time or a lower level gift. It could be working on cultivating or upgrading an existing donor and making a major gift. So somebody who is stepping out making a gift beyond their normal level to significantly increase the financial result of your campaign. It could be a non-ask to cultivate some donors who might be going through a cultivation or major gift process in the upcoming year. And certainly board members are going to be an opportunity and a source of support year-end both giving of their own and their participation in cultivating both donors at the annual and major gift level. So to begin creating the plan now that we have context for why do we need to step back and start a plan. So how to begin that plan? First we want to go back to whether it's a simple spreadsheet, an accounting system, a donor management system, wherever you are keeping financial and donor information in order to take an inventory or an assessment of our known and current potential. So before we can create a campaign plan we need to set a goal. And a right size or a realistic goal that is going to be practical and manageable because the worst thing that we want to do is say we're going to raise $4 million when we have a renewable base or a current base giving only $370,000 if we think back to the beginning. So to set that goal which is the top or the high level piece of our fundraising plan we need to take an assessment of our current opportunities. So break it down very simply. You know how many households whether they've given or not given are on your mailing list. How many gifts did you receive in the last fiscal year from a variety of different sources? Board members, individuals and what was the net result of those donors, those households, how much did you raise during the last fiscal year? And of course as we look to integrate multiple channels part of the goal is beginning to save some of the cost and expense associated with producing that campaign. So how much did we spend? And together that's going to give us a good assessment of the current or known giving opportunities and expenses that we can then use to create a right size or appropriate fundraising goal. So how the plan then works after taking a goal at the top of the plan based on an increase from our known or existing opportunities, it's more than just a strategy and it's more than just a goal. It's going to be a calendar that sequences all of the steps. So beyond a goal, a list of to-dos, it is also a timeline that needs to be followed in order to implement the plan to its greatest effect. So first we need to create a timeline. We need to know in a back-dated fashion if our final appeal is going to go up, maybe it's the follow-up by email on December 31st what needs to take place on December 25th by December 1, what should be done by Thanksgiving. Are you participating in Giving Tuesday? So start by writing out a list of all of the known dates that are on your calendar and the essentially deadlines for the email send, the mailing, and the appeal. So in a back-dated way from December 31st we begin to list out all of the dates and deadlines. From there with a timeline so that we're beginning to speak with our board from kind of a basis of what needs to happen by when, we need to know what their level of commitment is and this can be secured practically through a simple commitment form written out with a variety of different options. Anything from signing up to create thank you calls to pass donors to give financially of their own needs and motivation to add a number of names to a mailing list. So there are a variety of different ways in which your board can participate in your campaign and you need to secure those in a written form then because that's going to give you an idea of the existing resources. We're creating an appropriate goal. We talked about identifying the existing donors and households. We need to know the existing resources that we have and securing a commitment from each board member will help you quantify that. Then after creating the timeline, securing the commitment, we begin to create the content and select the channels to deliver that content for the appeal. So part three is going to focus primarily on how do we create that content? How do we create an engaging message and a direct mail letter or an email appeal? So we're going to circle back to that in the third part here. So once we have the content prepared to be delivered through the selected channels, one of the greatest opportunities that you will have during a year-end giving campaign to increase the level of urgency that a donor already feels in participating in your campaign before the end of the year is a challenge grant and a challenge grant is simply the opportunity to match dollar for dollar, anything that a donor or an individual commits to you during the campaign. And the matching funds for the challenge grant could be provided through a private or community foundation. Many will have a challenge grant program available to you for a giving day. I suggest beginning to look through your list of current funders and then researching if a challenge grant might be available. Many board members, this could be a commitment that they're making. They will match any dollars or gifts from their network or any donor overall during a year-end campaign. So if at all possible to include in the content to include in the campaign message, if you can include a challenge grant, that's going to increase the level of urgency and therefore response in the campaign. I'll pause here momentarily to ask, as you're thinking of questions, go ahead and submit them into the chat bar. The last part of our time here together is going to be talking through any and all of your fundraising questions relative to year-end giving. So as you think of them, write them down and submit them into the chat bar here and we will walk through them at the end of our time. So number five, stepping back to the first part, identifying the different constituencies within our donor base, we need to create segments. And segments is very simply beginning to delineate or split apart lists of contacts based on a shared trait. So it could be by age, maybe for baby boomers as we notice, those who have a more stable or consistent income for current donors who are in the baby boomer age demographic, we want to ask for a monthly gift, not a one-time gift. So creating a segment will help you to more appropriately send a message through a preferred channel to that donor to create the greatest response and ask. Then we need to make sure that our website is ready. As we called out at the beginning, online, your website is going to be one of the greatest opportunities to lower the cost of your campaign and to provide the option to donors per their preference to give. So make sure that you have a Donate Now button featured prominently on your website that the giving process is smooth, that donors are seeing a consistent branding or look and feel to the giving experience. Then once we have the content, the commitments, the segments, and the website ready, we want to move to production. And what that means is beginning to print the letters, stuff the envelopes, load up the list in an email, maybe it's MailChimp that you're using, load up the list into MailChimp to be sent. So we need to essentially have everything at the ready ahead of part one, the timeline that we've created. Then step number eight, before deploying the campaign, we want to make sure that each donor is going to receive a prompt and immediate acknowledgement of the gift. So for many of us, we need to make sure that we have a donor management system that's going to be able to record a gift, process a transaction, and send a thank you note. We need to have an online giving page that is able to send out a customized and branded acknowledgement of the gift immediately upon receipt. So make sure that you have set up the system in order to appropriately and in an automated and time efficient fashion acknowledge the receipt of a gift to the donor. Because again, this is the start of a relationship. Many donors, when thanked appropriately, messaged the need for their gift, might return multiple times during your year end campaign or certainly during the next year if they are thanked and acknowledged appropriately. Number nine, very simple, deploy the campaign. Send the email, mail the letter according to the timeline, and begin to follow up and ensure there's accountability from your board members in following through on the written commitments. And again, this is why it's important to secure a written commitment from each board member on their role within the campaign. Then send the acknowledgement letter that you have, whether that's by email, if you're doing a written acknowledgement, maybe for a gift above a certain size, your hand signing, sealing, and sending an acknowledgement letter. Part of the campaign is not just securing gifts, but also thinking the donors who provided the gifts that you've already secured. And lastly, initiating the monthly gift at work series. This is one of the tools and takeaways that you're going to have at the conclusion of our time together today. And it is a simple monthly communications planner that helps you to develop an email series to tell donors how you're using their dollars for good work every single month to keep up and strengthen that relationship so that they're returning their gifts year over year, but without a great deal of time and effort required from you. So what do you need to know? Well, you won't keep the dollars or donors that you don't manage, and you need a plan to do so. It's the single tool that will align your time, your resources, and the people in order to reach those goals. So thinking of all that there is to get done during year-end giving and your responsibilities for your nonprofit generally, the function and purpose of a plan is not just important for success, but really your sanity. An additional template that you're going to receive through the follow-up from today's training is going to be a fundraising plan template, and it will help you begin to quantify some of the opportunities that we talked about, like the number of donors through annual giving, major gifts, through events, how much they gave, and noting a timeline and staff responsibility for each opportunity. So you'll receive both of those materials again in follow-up along with our slides if you have not already received the slides upon registration. So the third piece, and not to be left out in its importance, but creating an effective fundraising message and a case for support. Now a case for support is going to help you to focus your work and avoid procrastination. So a case for support is a written message that illustrates to a donor why you are solving a measured need through a unique solution, your programs, with a plan to report back on that impact. So rather than spending time recreating that message every time you're developing a letter or an email, we need to create upfront a written bank of content that can be used for any type of appeal or communication. And the most important function of the case for support is that it targets a donor, not us as staff. We need to speak to what motivates them and compels their giving rather than what we often feel throughout the day. We also want to speak very concisely. So we want to think in terms of characters, not pages of content. We want to be very intentional with the words that we choose and we want to make sure that we're drawing attention to our mission and outcomes rather than items like our history or number of years that we've been around or the founder. So a few points to consider to help you to develop a donor-centric and impactful case for support and fundraising message for your campaigns. There's three primary reasons that a donor will make a gift and it's your responsibility as a fundraiser to integrate all of them. The first is the head or a rational reason. I believe what I'm being asked to do is important and I understand it. The second is the heart. So a more emotional reason, motivation to give. I understand because I identify with, I had a friend, a family member who experienced this issue that your nonprofit solves and I want to help. And the third is the halo method. It's somebody who sees a big vision, sees a big problem, and they want to do their part in order to fulfill, achieve the mission, the outcome, and change the world. So as fundraisers we need to begin to integrate both the head, the heart, and the halo motivations in all of our communications. Secondly, we need to understand that donors are given through our organization, they're not giving to it. So donors at a very fundamental level are hiring you out to do the good work in their community that they care about, that they want to see happen, but directly they don't have the time to do. So be sure to always answer the question, why is your mission important to the donor? How does it impact them and how does the gift further or advance them? And we need to realize as tempting as it is for us to live in the world of our nonprofit every day, the founder or the facility or the history doesn't drive giving or compel giving from a donor. Now similarly, we need to be careful not to project our own metrics, needs, or milestones into the message. For many of us what a year-end fundraising campaign could represent is payroll, it's groceries, it's desperately needed supplies in order to continue operating for the next month. And that's a very real concern and therefore very tempting to include in the message. But no donor will give to an organization that's on fire, on the verge of collapse or is running out of funding. Rather they give because they care about the work that you're doing. And again, even if you are in a very desperate financial situation or an emergency, the emergency alone won't compel giving but the fact that you with funding can continue to accomplish the impact or your programs that you've set out to, that's what the donor will care about and that's why they will participate within the campaign. Fourthly, we want to tell the story. Tell the donor what they become, something that they want to tell their friends and something that matters. So an easy way, everybody take out a piece of paper, maybe you have one already, and draw three concentric circles. So start with one very small circle, draw one that is slightly larger, and then draw one that encompasses all of those. In the very middle and smallest circle write the number of people that you served in the last year. If you don't know it, that's a good homework item. In between the second and the third ring, draw everybody that could benefit from your programs. Everybody in the community that could benefit from your programs. What fundraising does and what you're here in campaign will do is bridge the gap between those that you have served and those who need your service. So that's the story that we want to tell. How the funding will help us bridge the gap between people who are in need of our programs and our services. Now lastly, we need to know and it's an opportunity at year end, tax deductibility, right? It's an opportunity, but it is a known fact and it's not what will compel a donor to act and give to you. Very, very, a very small number of donors will give because of the tax deduction and because of the, just think about the number of emails and letters that are going to be sent during the end of year. Because of the value and how precious communication, attention from a donor and the space that you have in order to deliver a message is, we don't want to waste any of that reminding them of tax deductibility because it's not what's important about the mission. So in concluding here, and then we're going to move into questions, what you need to know is that your campaign's message has the function and the job of creating an interruption, right? So we need to create an interruption and tell the donor why it's important to stop and hear from you. Then to anticipate and see the value in the story or the message that you have to share with them. So this is a view of the template or the communications planner that you will receive and follow up to help you create those monthly communications pulling on, again, be a message that we've learned how to develop more effectively. We're going to move on to questions here but also contained within the slides that you will receive are a set of bonus ideas that are low to no cost to help you better cultivate donors during the year-end giving season and year-round. So with that, Becky, I'd love to open it up for questions and maybe if you could help me out by reading some of the top or recurring questions that we've received and everybody who has submitted a question. Thank you. Becky, maybe if you could help me by reading out some of the common questions. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, thank you. A lot of really great, rich information in here and we do recommend checking out all of those bonus materials. They were included as bonus ideas that we weren't thinking we'd have time to cover during the webinar but we do recommend that you look those over once you get the slides again after or if you already have the deck open from the final reminder email earlier. So one of the questions that we just got asked but I think is valuable here that Kimberly asked, when you are talking about goal setting, then is it not appropriate from a sharing standpoint to have like, her example is the big old thermometer with here's how much we've raised, here's how much we still have to go. Is that something you don't think is useful to be sharing with the audience or with your recipients? That is a great question. It is useful but there's a strategy to it. So you want to start with what's often referred to as a quiet or a silent phase in the campaign. Most donors will not be the first to jump in and make a gift so you don't want to put a thermometer out there that's at 0%. Begin to secure gifts from those closest to you, a board member, a familiar or past donor and then when you're at about 20% of the campaign's goal, that's when you want to publish it and that's when you're going to begin seeing an increase in participation. You're going to kind of go through what's common in every campaign more of a desert where you're trying to get from that 20% up to that 80% and then when you hit that 80% that's when you're going to see a faster close or conclusion of the campaign because everybody wants to be the different gift and need to close out and be a part of the final steps in the campaign. So the thermometer is useful. Great question in displaying your goal. Put it out there, let donors know your goal but do so after beginning progress to the goal. Yeah and I would add you mentioned challenge grants earlier and I feel like they are effective when you've got a challenge grant and you're counting down the clock because you've already got this money that's potentially there for you if you can match it. So that seems like a really useful strategy to whip it out when it's appropriate like that. We have a question from Susan asking when you're planning out your timeline and your calendar how soon after do you need to send donor thank yous and how late is too late if you don't send them right away? That's a great question. So I'll split the definition of thank you in kind of two pieces. First it's important that immediately upon receipt of a gift you're sending out an acknowledgement and the acknowledgement is letting the donor know that you received the gift. Sometimes it functions as kind of a small tax receipt just noting the amount, the designation that they gave so we want to let the donor know as soon as we can that we've received their gift that we appreciate their gift very sincerely. There's another type of thank you not so much the gift acknowledgement but really the thank you. We need to report back to donors, did we reach the goal? How are we going to use those dollars? What are they going to? What have we done to create impact with them? So it's important to immediately send an acknowledgement. It's okay to send a thank you telling them more about the campaign and their gifts later on after the conclusion of the campaign and certainly if it's going to be one that is hand signed in a slightly longer timeline than immediately after. Great, that's really useful to kind of have that timing in mind when planning out your calendar especially when you're walking backwards from December 31 and trying to plot things on the calendar. Diana asks, when you're talking about your year-end appeals and focusing on if you've got a direct mail, campaign, email, and Facebook do you use the same message at the same time through all of those media when you're looking at those different channels or do you have a different message if it's a printed direct mail letter versus an email versus what's on your Facebook page? Diana, that's a great question. We want the theme and the message to be consistent across all channels. That's not to say it won't be varied. For example, in an email we need to shorten significantly the amount of content that might be in a direct mail letter for example but it's going to be the same theme, the same message. We want to use the same imagery across all different channels to create kind of one consistent experience and most of all we want to make sure that the ask is the same. So if you're segmenting current donors from first time or prospective donors obviously we want to ask for different amounts. A first time donor lower. And so if a current donor we want to make sure that the ask and the letter that they're receiving is the same as the email that they're receiving. So the ask, the message, the content, and the images will be consistent across all channels but varied slightly as appropriate to shorten or condense. And Nate would you do those at the same time or would you stagger those? So if you know that some people are going to get some touches of outreach through the different channels do they go at the same time? Typically they are staggered. That's a great follow up question Becky. So typically the direct mail letter will be sent out first followed up by email. Obviously it's much more costly to do follow up by direct mail than email. You could do an email send very shortly after the drop date for your direct mail letter but email will be a few times throughout the course of year end. Normally three to four email sends, one direct mail letter, and then social media will be used kind of liberally throughout the course of the campaign in year end. Sending updates on the campaign, recognizing donors, sharing where appropriate comments or feedback that you're receiving from donors as well. Terrific. And how would your message differ when you're trying to reach out to individuals trying to reach out for a corporate sponsor or a challenge grant or maybe a local business that you're looking to have them support with in-kind donations? I know that's a bunch of questions in one. That's a very good question. So we want to recognize the why or the motivation for giving that differs between a corporation and an individual. So in individual if we go back to the heart, the halo, the head method, they give for more philanthropic intent. They're connected to your mission. A corporation has a business need. So to secure a challenge grant again from a corporation, you need to align how your mission helps to further their business need, whether it's brand awareness, brand reputation, acquiring new customers who see them as something valuable in their community versus an individual who is going to give for a different reason. So we need to, for a business, show how we need their business needs through the campaign which furthers our mission and to an individual we need to integrate the halo, the heart, and the head reasons or motivations for philanthropic giving. Really helpful. We had a couple of people asking how can we find a partner, a corporate partner for challenge grants? Do you have any advice on where people can look or search? If you're looking at Foundation Center or GrantStation databases, you can look for potential corporate partners in those kinds of databases. But how would you recommend people try and find someone to support a challenge grant? We have to be a corporate sponsor. Well, I'll use an example that just came up this morning. So at Network for Good, we help a variety of nonprofits, so of any mission type. We're working with a nonprofit director at an organization that works with Alephisha patients. So women who essentially are struggling with hair loss, it's a rare condition. So you would think, my gosh, that's a very unique mission. How are they going to align themselves or find a corporate sponsor or a challenge grant? Well, they align themselves well with a wig manufacturer. They produce wigs. Obviously women losing their hair or wigs, and so they secure a challenge grant by saying your name brand will be recognized among target customers or future clients that are going to be coming to you by wigs in our campaign. So we're going to put your name out there to people with a close connection to Alephisha and in need of your services in our campaign. So practically what that means for you, again step back to begin to think about what's the criteria of a corporation that will align well with your mission. Then begin to match that criteria against maybe a list that each board member can bring of corporations that they encounter or work with through the course of their career, their business, see where there's overlap, and then you have a method or a warmer way to be introduced to a corporate contact to inquire about maybe there's an established matching program, maybe there's a workplace giving program or another opportunity there. Great, and I think any of us who listen to public radio stations also know that a lot of challenge grants are individuals who say I'll give $1,000, and if you can raise $1,000 on your own. So it doesn't have to be big, it can be joint corporate donations or even in kind large donations. They can be small individual donations. They can be big individual donations. To follow up with the content that would be shared in your communications, Emily wanted to ask, is it better to communicate those specific needs and what will be fulfilled from the donors or from the donations acquired, or is it better to tell that emotional story and explain the need? Do you give people the numbers and the breakdown of this is what the money will be spent on? Give $10, it'll go toward a bike, rental, or is it better to just put the picture of the kid who'd be impacted? Yeah, that's a great question. So when we talk about numbers, what we want to avoid is large statistics. There's a great study to Google by NPR called Why Your Brain Gives to One, Not Millions. So it's not effective to use large statistics. It is effective to include something as tangible as a single accomplishment from each gift. So you often see it on an online giving page, $10 versus $25 versus $50 versus $100 do these different things. So that is often displayed in helping a donor decide what amount to give, but it is not as effective as the story is in helping them to decide should they give. So people will give to a story of one person that they can connect with. The NPR study references that. So to help the donor decide should I give, tell a story of one, then to help them decide how much should I give, anchor that specific gift to a measured outcome or need. That's terrific advice. You get kind of the one-two punch there. I like it. I want to go ahead and wrap us up here, but I wanted to end with one other question. We have a question from Karen, and I imagine many of our organizations are in this situation. Your first step was to really assess how you did last year. What do you do if you're starting from scratch and you have never really done any fundraising? You don't have a big contact database. You don't have a history of donors. Where do you begin? Yeah, that's a great question. I think first by recognizing that many of the goals will be non-financial. For you, creating a list of contacts is going to be a win. Creating an understanding from each board member that there are going to be active participants in your campaign and taking first steps to that is going to be a win as well. So begin to set some long-term and non-financial goals and recognize that that's okay. And then the second piece of this is recognize you need to put a stake in the ground. Pick a number, set the number, run very hard to it, and know that it's okay if you miss the goal very largely because it's the first time and you need to put a stake in the ground. And by how much you miss, it's going to be informative not to say that you did well or bad, but what you need to do differently moving into the next year. So set non-financial goals, put a stake in the ground, and learn from the variance between how the campaign results and what the goal that you set out to hit was. Great closing advice there. And you know to keep in mind that it's not all about always getting in the money. It is about developing those relationships and getting those contacts so those can be wins too. With that I want to go ahead and wrap us up by inviting you to chat in one thing that you learned today that you're going to take back and try and implement or apply to your own campaign planning for this last quarter of this fiscal year. We also would like to invite you to share this information with your colleagues and friends that may benefit from it within their network. And lastly, we'd like you to complete the post-event survey that pops up when we close out. I'd also like to invite you to join us for any of our upcoming events and webinars. We have a whole spate of webinars coming up in October. The first being next Tuesday should you contract out your nonprofit's tech learning about managed IT services. So if you don't have in-house IT folks and you're looking to try and farm that out we'll talk about what that looks like, what it could look like, and whether that would work for your organization. Then we'll have a webinar next Thursday on QuickBooks specifically targeting the religious and faith-based organizations within our network because we know that they manage their finances differently and that they should be using QuickBooks a little bit differently from a regular 501c3 nonprofit. Then we'll have a series of webinars on Microsoft's cloud products. So is the cloud right for you moving your data and services to the cloud? We'll have one specifically on Microsoft Azure which is a really robust program that I imagine this will be much more technical webinar for those of you who have IT folks. This might be the webinar they'd want to attend. Then we'll have a webinar focused on libraries and planning for broadband and how much internet connectivity is enough to support their patrons and their community. We'll talk about data visualization in an introduction with Tableau. We'll talk about technology planning for nonprofits and give you the basic 101 level on how to create your own technology plan. Then we'll have the last in that webinar series on Microsoft Cloud Services and going over specifically what's available from Office 365 to Power BI, all kinds of different options. So join us for any of those. You can find those on the TechSoup events and webinars page. We'd also like to thank our webinar sponsor ReadyTalk for providing the use of the platform for us to present these webinars to you on a regular basis. Thank you to ReadyTalk, Jackie on the back end. Thank you to Kevin on the back end. And lastly, thank you so much to you, Nate, especially stepping in last minute to fill in for Brian. We really appreciated all of the expertise you shared with our audience today. And thank you to you, our participants, for joining us for today's webinar. We hope you found it useful and that you'll complete that post-event survey to help us continue to improve our webinar programming. Thank you all. Have a terrific day. Bye-bye.