 Hi, everyone. I will get started in just a minute here, but before we get going, if you're logged on already, hello. If you could just confirm for me that you can hear me and see my screen by typing into the questions box of your go to webinar panel. I'm just going to flip through the first couple of slides. That would be a huge help so that I know right at the top of the hour ready to go. Perfect. Thank you. All right, so I'm just going to give everybody a few more minutes to get logged on before we get started and put myself on mute. But we will get started right at the top of the hour. All right, hello, everyone. Thanks for joining me today for our webinar on how to get donors to give online. My name is Linda Gerhardt and I'm the Senior Community Engagement Manager here at Mighty Cause. I have been with Mighty Cause since 2016. And before that, I spent lots of time working in the trenches at nonprofit organizations, and I've had some firsthand experience with the types of donors that we're going to be talking about today. So hopefully we'll all leave with, you know, be able to have some laughs and also leave with some actionable strategies to get more donors giving online. My email address is listed here. It's lindaatmightycause.com. If you ever wanted to reach out or had a question about fundraising, my wheelhouse is really digital marketing and communications. So if you have a question about those types of things, I'm happy to help. And here's a quick look at today's agenda. There's not a lot listed here, but this should hopefully be a fun webinar. Just as a bit of housekeeping, I'll be taking questions at the end of the presentation. So if you think of something you want to ask while I'm going through the slides, please just type that into the questions box in your GoToWebinar panel. And I'll make sure that we have some time to get to it at the end. And just as another bit of housekeeping, we are recording this presentation. So if you have to step away from your computer or you miss part of it, you will have access to a recording of today's webinar. So before we dive into the types of donors who are hesitant to donate online, I just want to first do a quick refresher on the benefits of online giving. Because with a lot of these donors, the ones that we're going to discuss, it's easy to get complacent and say, well, if they like to give by check, what's the harm in that? And while we're not necessarily going to say that there's harm in that, there's definitely a benefit to moving them online. So we're going to talk about what those benefits are. First, having these donors give online saves time. Look, I've been in a development office before the times of online giving really took off. And I've seen the envelopes of money and even the envelopes of change that come in. And I've had to help add up the checks and prepare deposit slips. And I'm probably a little bit biased because I work for an online fundraising platform, but it really is reminding ourselves that online giving platforms are a technological miracle because they save so much time and effort. Because before we had these robust, easy, secure online giving systems, we were all drowning in seas of checks and dollar bills. So online giving eliminates that or at least most of that. And we no longer have to have full-time staff members opening envelopes and counting checks all day. Online giving also means that you don't have to prepare a deposit and go to the bank. Mighty Cause offers EFT so you can get your money deposited straight into your bank account and can start putting it to use more quickly. And I also wanted to talk a little bit about the miracle of automation. When most of your giving is done online, you can simply export one glorious spreadsheet that has all of the data pre-entered for you so that you do not personally have to spend hours or pay someone to spend hours putting all of that information into a spreadsheet or database for you. You have it, it's right there, it's accessible and it's easy to see and sort through. And obviously online giving is generally easier for donors as well. The technology has gotten to a point where your browser will auto-fill your name and address. And personally on my phone, I can literally just verify my identity with my fingerprint and all of my payment information will be loaded for me. So purchases and donations can be completed in mere seconds before I even have a chance to think about not doing it. Online giving also saves your nonprofit money. Our pricing guarantee at Mighty Cause makes raising money online cheaper than a PayPal button. All you have to do is opt into the pricing guarantee and your platform fees will never be more than 2.2% plus 29 cents. And that is many nonprofits fees at the end of the day when donors cover fees for them is much less of that than that. We've even seen nonprofits with an effective rate of less than 1% in fees. And for that price you can get a full fundraising suite with tools like peer-to-peer fundraising, event fundraising, robust reporting and all of these donor engagement tools. So you have all of that baked into one platform instead of having to manage all of these things separately and farm them out. And as I discussed in the last slide, having a platform that does a lot of the data entry and data tracking and donor tracking for you means that you do not have to utilize staff members or volunteers for those things, which means that you can have those people spend their time doing things that add value to your nonprofit, like creating innovative fundraising campaigns or communicating with donors or discussing how to bring in more revenue for your programs and services. So it saves you time and it saves you money and it helps with overhead. And this one is a big one that often gets overlooked, but online giving reduces human error. You have a platform that is doing the math for you. And again, you can just click a button and export a ready-made spreadsheet with all of the information you need. And really the only thing you need to do is sort through the data. Really, anytime you have a human being doing manual data entry, there are going to be mistakes. Someone makes a typo, gets a donor's house number wrong, types their email address in wrong, and those can all have repercussions for your nonprofit being able to retain that donor and stay in touch with that donor. And if you have someone making lots of errors, there can even be bigger financial implications for your nonprofit. But again, with an online platform, it's all done for you. Sometimes people don't trust it and they try to email us and say that the spreadsheet that they exported from us is wrong for some reason. And we'll work through it with them and dig into it. And in almost every case since I've been here since 2016, we find that the spreadsheet was actually correct and the problem was a human being trying to best a spreadsheet at understanding and manipulating data. So maybe some people are better than spreadsheets and algorithms and online programs. I have yet to meet them and I'm certainly not one of those people. And some of the really important things like thanking donors and sending tax receipts are automated through Mighty Cause as well. So all that happens so that happens really quickly and there's no donor who's going to miss out on a prop thank you or their tax receipt because someone was out sick or they were overwhelmed with other tasks or simply forgot. Online giving makes it easier for your nonprofit to take good care of your donors. And lastly, I wanted to talk about the reduction of friction for donors and when I say friction, we're talking about that in an e-commerce setting and how difficult it is for someone to make a purchase. A donation is essentially a purchase. So we need to think of this in terms of donations. If someone is giving by check in response to say your mailer, let's think about the friction that exists for that donor if they want to give again. First, they need to wait for another mailer that has an envelope from you, find their checkbook, write the check correctly, which is a challenge for some people in this day and age, put it into the envelope and send it to your office. So that's a multi-step process for them. And it probably takes at least a few days from them writing the check and putting it in the mail to actually receiving it at your nonprofit. Online donors can set up a recurring donation with just the click of a button so that they can give on a monthly basis without having to do anything to initiate that. And then they can save their credit card information to make donating again a super quick process that takes less than a minute. A minute it would be a long donation process. It's way less than that. So one of the things that we know about human behavior is that the harder something is for somebody to do, the less likely they are to do it. So we want something done by somebody. When we want them to do something for us, we have to make it easy. And online giving does this. They're designed to reduce friction between starting a task and completing the task. And platforms like Mighty Cause have additional measures built in to reduce friction for donors, like making sure that our site is really fast, mobile responsive, and can process each transaction without any issues and providing a simple, easy to understand form that they can fill out very quickly. We also give nonprofits the opportunity to optimize your donation process and your checkout flow and provide quick automated receding. So nobody has to wait for a mailed receipt or anything like that. It gets emailed to them automatically. So offline giving really just can't hold a candle to the ease of giving online. And one thing I did want to talk about before we move to the next bit is it's really a time in our lives with the pandemic when a lot of things are moving online. Our schooling is moving online. Work is moving online. A lot of things that have never really existed online before or existed in a very limited capacity. We're moving them online. So we're at a really important moment for a lot of donors who are resistant to online giving because they are being pushed in that direction more and more just out of necessity. So this is a really key moment. And we want to capture that moment and push these individuals online. So now we're going to have a little bit of fun and talk about the kinds of donors who are hesitant to move to giving online. So as I mentioned, we are in the midst of a sea change where more things than ever are being done online before. So again, this is a crucial moment where you're able to push these hesitant donors to giving online and there's multiple kinds of donors who give online. And they each need their own special strategy to successfully push them into doing what we want them to do, which is make their donations online. So we want to go through each type of donor and talk through the types of strategies that would work in getting these individuals to give online. First up, we have a person who is having a really hard time right now. And that is the Afraid of Technology donor. And I'm sure all of you have encountered this type of donor at some point. This donor basically locks up in fear when they're asked to do anything related to technology. They insist they do not understand computers, don't know how to do anything on the internet. And for that reason, they probably pay most of their bills by mail as well. This donor does not likely have a smartphone and will reject offers to use an iPhone, even an emergency. They don't know how to use it. And they may even have a flip phone that they bought on eBay, bonus points if it's clipped to their belts. These are the donors that always give via cash or check, even if you have specifically asked them to give online and they hate email. Often when you get an email from them, it just says, call me. These folks love doing business in person. They will not use the self-checkout lane at the grocery store just on principle. And they won't eat in restaurants where they're forced to order their meal through a kiosk. So we've probably all encountered these. Some of us may even have a little bit of this type of donor in us. So we want to talk about how we can reach out to this donor and encourage them to give online. The most important thing with this donor is to keep it simple. The more complicated the donation process is, the more likely they are to just totally abandon it and just give you a check because that's easiest and most comfortable for them. So you want to give them just one option for online giving. And it's a simple, easy breezy online donation process that they can go through without having to take too many steps or fill out too many fields or click too many buttons. That's going to get them flustered. And if you have too many options or too many fields, they're going to get upset. They're not going to know what to do. They're going to freak out. So you've got to keep things simple and easy. This is a donor for whom recurring donations would be a really good strategy. They can just set it once and forget it. Just go through the steps that one time and one time only because these donors really value talking to a person. It's also important to be available to them. Give them a phone number that they can call, help them through the process. And we're also able to help them with that at Mighty Cause. We do have phone support available for people who require this kind of assistance. And for that reason, because this type of donor really values human contact and a personal connection, getting this donor over the hump of giving online may be something that requires personal outreach. Odds are they don't read their email anyway, so sending them an email is most likely not going to cut it unless you also reach out to them offline with a phone call or a letter or something along those lines. And this is something we're going to come back to, but these are ultimately people who care about your calls, cause and want to help. So pitching online giving as the most direct and impactful way to support your nonprofit will make a difference to these donors. And equally important is not front loading them with information, making sure that you're emphasizing how easy it is to give online and just giving them the information they need to get going. So they can give it a try for these donors really the hesitation is before they actually do it. So if you're trying to get them over that hurdle of clicking the button in the email that says donate or setting up their recurring donation. Once they're in it, they're usually fine, but they have a fear of technology and sort of resist it. Next up is one of my personal favorite donors the spending detective donor. These are the people who keep a close watch on your spending and pour over guide star reports and want to make sure that your organization is spending their donations responsibly to the point of being a little bit hyper vigilant. These are the sorts of sorts of donors who call up and want to know right off the bat what percentage of donor funds you spend on overhead. In general, these are people who are very concerned about overhead and making sure that your nonprofit is using their donations in a way that they approve of they are very protective of their importance as a donor and that this is their funding. And this type of donor is very concerned about fees for online giving and processing transactions online and will insist on dealing directly with you to send you a check or give you cash because seeing the dollars and sense in fees is upsetting to them, even though, as we've discussed there are costs to accepting cash and checks as well. We actually hear from these donors quite a bit at mighty cause, and on one hand they are really enthusiastic supporters of your cause and want to make sure that your organization is doing everything you can to be effective. But on the other hand there's sort of dis their second guessing you at every turn and nonprofits can really develop a bit of a fear of these types of donors, especially the spending detective donors who have a bit of a vigilante streak, because we've had nonprofits just want to quietly eat the cost of any fees so that their donors specifically the spending detective type donors don't see that there are fees associated with their online donation, all just to avoid being under the microscope of a spending detective. So this type of donor can be a really tough nut to crack. But there are a few messages that tend to resonate with spending detectives. You may need to pull a little bit of rank with them and remind them that your organization chose the platform that you use to process online donations, evaluated it against others, and determine that it was the most cost effective and useful platform for your budget, and your organization and board were aware of the costs associated with it and worked that into your budget. At the same time you may also need to remind them that their cash and check donations have hidden costs that don't actually help anyone sidestep fees for the reasons we discussed earlier it takes more time. It makes several tasks manual that would otherwise be automated and so on. There's also the time spent standing in line at the bank which you may not even be able to do to put the deposit in the bank. So online giving is much more convenient and immediately impactful than giving through other means. And it's helpful with these donors to be completely transparent about the fees. Number one on mighty cause they're really and truly not that much. And we show donors how much they are when we ask them to cover fees for you. And most people do opt to cover those fees because when they see that they go oh that's not very much at all that's just that's chump change basically. But the spending detective gets worked up when they feel that something is being hidden or kept from them. So it's best to just address it with them up front so that they don't feel like they were lied to and don't have an opportunity to go aha and accuse your view or the platform of or anyone else of shady shady dealings. And a good way to do this is to mention that donors can cover fees for you, which means that your nonprofits these 100% of the donation that they make, and the full amount that they give including the cover fees is tax deductible so if they itemize their taxes that is included any additional money they chip into cover fees is also tax deductible. And on the same note, publishing an annual report that breaks down your organization spending and discusses your impact can be a really great tool in dealing with the spending detective, because hopefully it'll all be there, you're being transparent about how you're using funds, and you can easily pull up the information in the metrics that you need to show that you're spending money responsibly you're being effective, and you're not wasting money because that's ultimately their biggest concern. All right, so the next type of donor is what I've called the Fort Knox donor. This is a person who is deeply suspicious of why anyone would ever need their personal information, especially online. If you ask for their email, they ask you why, and put you through the ringer making sure that you're never going to sell their email or sign them up for any lists. Any email they get that they don't recognize if they don't know who you are or why they're contacting, why they're being contacted, they are likely to fire off an angry, potentially all caps response, asking you who you are and how on earth you got their email address and insisting that you unsubscribe them right now, even though in most cases they did agree to receive the emails because they purchased something online, or made a donation. We actually hear from this type of donor a lot it might be caused because any charge on their credit card that they don't immediately recognize or remember is deemed fraud by them, even though when you dig it's usually that they made a donation to their nieces read a thought and they totally forgot about it. Because they are so convinced that their personal information is worth its weight in gold and so concerned for the security of their information online. These donors often prefer to give you a check directly to the nonprofit and because they're so vigilant about their privacy. They may even just stop by your office directly to hand the check to somebody that they trust at your nonprofit nonprofits that I've worked for we definitely dealt with this type of donor who asked to see a specific person and would hand them an envelope with a check inside. So the good thing about this type of donor is that if you are using mighty cause it should hopefully be very easy to allay their fears. If you're talking to them about donating online you'll want to make sure that you're using language that emphasizes security, like give securely at the link below. And since this type of donor tends to have a lot of questions. It's important to understand the security measures of the donation platform that you use, and the steps that we take to keep donor information secure. Since a lot of anxiety that they have is really just about having their information compromised. So mighty cause has a week there is a standard from the payment card industry called PCI compliance that we meet mighty cause is PCI compliant which means that we meet best practices in the industry for preventing fraud and protecting consumer data. An important information for website security is having an SSL certificate and in fact most browsers will just tell you they'll give you a notification that you're on a site that's not secure. So if you don't know what that is when you go to a website and it's HTTPS instead of HTTP that means that it's got an SSL security certificate. And in Chrome you'll actually see a little lock icon letting you know that you are on a secure site. And what an SSL certificate means is that you are protecting data through encryption that you're taking measures to ensure information is being sent to the intended server, which is called authentication and basically prevents a third party from intercepting the data like credit card information. And it also verifies that the data was actually received by the correct server, which is called data integrity. So mighty causes PCI compliant and our website is secure. And it's in our terms and privacy that we never sell donor or user information. And in fact we don't even contact donors outside of sending them transactional emails, such as receipts for donations or like a notification that they're recurring donation is about to expire the card associated with that is about to expire. So you can reassure them that the platform that you're using is definitely not selling or sharing their information and hopefully your organization can also give them that assurance as well. And finally this is not strictly necessary but highly recommended. If you are using our widget or donation form on your own nonprofit website, please take steps to make sure that your site is secure that you have an SSL certificate. Because the donations through the widget and the donation page are processed through mighty cause the transaction is secure, but it can obviously be alarming for any donors, but especially for Fort Knox donors to be asked to donate through your website and get a notification that your site is not secure. So even if in the widget within the little widget that transaction is secure if they go to your website and don't see that lock icon or they get a pop up saying that their site is not secure. They're not going to be inclined to donate and that does some serious damage to their trust. So get that SSL certificate through whatever host you're using for your website. If you don't have one already. The next donor type is one of my favorites that confused by the Internet donor. And the reason they're one of my favorites is that I've spent a lot of time helping them at mighty cause. These people are almost always super well intentioned and they want to help they want to support the causes they care about, but they just get lost online very very easily. And sometimes they manage to get mixed up and make errors that you honestly didn't think were even possible. My favorite example was a donor who was making a donation to a family friends fundraiser for a charity and they managed to put all of their credit card information into a comment field, which then displayed on the donor timeline for a few moments until we caught it. Because our donor timelines at the time displayed any comments that were left with the donation and it had frankly not even occurred to us that this was an error that could happen. But there we were and we were able to get that information removed from the timeline very quickly by the way so the donors information was not compromised. But that was just an example of how easily and sometimes oddly that this donor can get turned around. Another thing we see fairly commonly from this type of donor is that they'll contact us and ask why their receipt is addressed to Mastercard. And we look at it and we realize that they listed their first name as Mastercard when they were making their donations so bless their hearts they're really trying but they're just making mistakes that can be a little bit hard to understand because they get turned around so easily. These types of donors get easily flustered by needing to take lots of actions so the more buttons they have to click the more fields they have to fill out the more confused they will tend to get and the more strange things they will tend to do. And having to click from one website to another is often just way too much for them and that's typically when you lose them. These donors are generally a little bit difficult to troubleshoot for because it can be really hard to understand as somebody who's more internet savvy exactly when and how they got turned around in a specific way they did. And they often don't get confused in very predictable ways so they keep us on our toes. So how do you help this type of donor give successfully online without getting flustered or unintentionally telling us that their first name is American Express. So the general rule of thumb with these donors is do not assume that you're being insulting or obvious by including very clear step by step instructions. With these donors especially telling them the steps they need to take sometimes with screenshots and red arrows pointing to the correct area that they need to click is really helpful. Don't assume that they'll be able to figure it out because often they won't and like the afraid of the afraid of technology donor a little patience and hand holding can go a long way. So try to be available to them so that they feel supported and taken care of and you can help them have a positive donation experience if you're super small again we do have phone support available at mighty cause. And if you're doing some personal outreach to them share your phone number because these are types of the types of donors who often like to have you sit on the phone with them while they donate just in case they need help they usually know that they get turned around really easily so they might need a little bit of extra care as they're going through the process. And this is a good rule for all donors but make sure that you're providing a clear path to donate. We're going to revisit this idea in just a little bit but when you have a cluttered confusing donation process and provide multiple different ways to donate on your website when you give them the option to click PayPal button or give a check and you have your Amazon wish list and a mighty cause widget. You're basically really muddying the field for this type of donor. You're presenting them with unclear instructions and you're forcing them to make multiple decisions about what to do, providing multiple paths they could paths they could go down. And if they don't opt out completely which is the most common scenario with this type of donor, you're basically setting them up to fail and we very much want them to succeed in completing a donation. So think about the barriers and how many people have to sidestep or scale in order to complete a donation to your nonprofit because these donors are going to trip over any barrier you put in their way guaranteed. So next step is the hands on in kind donor which we probably all know and love. This donor loves giving things rather than money whether that's items or time or services. They're usually doing with the very best of intentions and the reason they are so into giving things instead of money is because they really value the experience of picking out items, imagining how they'll be used. And if you ask them what their love language was it would probably be acts of service because they really enjoy the act of helping, which can be a little bit more elusive when you're giving money let's be honest. They like to get their hands dirty, and they may actually tell you why they picked out a particular item and how they envisioned it being used when they drop it off. These donors are usually extroverts who like turning a helping session where they're dropping off donations or coming into help into a social call. They're almost always up for a volunteer day or an event that allows them to connect with your staff or other people associated with your nonprofit who care about the same things that they do. This donor can be a little bit tricky because you don't want to discourage them. In most cases they absolutely do give in a meaningful way to your nonprofit, but as we all know you need money to run your programs and services, much more than you would need something like hand knitted blankets for the cats at your animal shelter as lovely as a gesture as that is. So what you can actually do is build in the sense of giving real world items into your donation process. A great example of this is I was at a conference a few years back and heard a speaker from a food bank where this kind of giving was a huge issue for them. Talk about how they actually built a website program where donors could add a crate of apples, a gallon of milk, a can of beans and so on to a digital cart that looks like a shopping cart to replicate the experience of shopping for food to donate to the food bank but they would check out and they would just pay for the items. The items were not real. They were just digital items that represented what that money could provide. So we don't have anything quite that specific on maybe cause but you can utilize your custom donation suggestions to simulate the experience of picking out items and buying them for the nonprofit. What does $20 do for your organization? What do you buy with $20? What can $100 buy and so on. And with these donors because they really are operating from a good place of wanting to help, it's important to emphasize that your nonprofit can use partnerships and special nonprofit pricing to get items for less than they would pay in retail. And you can get really detailed about this, which I've seen a lot of food banks do because they struggle a lot with this type of donor. You can straight up tell them in an appeal about $10 at the grocery store can buy, say, nine cans of food, but through your partnerships with farmers and local merchants and grocery stores, you can turn that $10 into two weeks of fresh and self stable food for a whole family for two weeks. They often don't think about this. They are very caught in the experience of the feeling of picking out items for people to utilize. So this can be a really effective way to convert them into giving money instead of items. And finally, their desire to help is a really, really awesome thing. So give them outlets for that, invite them to volunteer events, invite them to service days and any social opportunities you have coming up. Obviously we can't do that right now, but you can also maybe see if there's some way for them to get involved online until things get more or less back to normal. Because these folks can be a really huge asset to your organization if you can effectively channel their enthusiasm for getting involved in a personal way into also giving funding that helps you operate your programs and services. All right, so this next donor is sort of the dark side of the donor we just talked about, which is the suspicious in kind donor. And this type of donor is also kind of an offshoot of the spending detective donor. Essentially, they prefer to give things because they are wary of your nonprofit using donated donated funds inappropriately. So this distrust gives them to give items rather than money because you can't really misuse donated towels as easy as you could misuse donated money. And a lot of times this is because they've either read some bad news stories about organizations who are not being responsible with their funding, or have even had a bad experience with a nonprofit, not being transparent about how their funding was being used or even abusing their funding. But sometimes it's just a general suspicious nature. Unlike the previous type of in kind donor who are social butterflies and who want to engage with staff and volunteers. These folks can be a little bit standoffish and mistrustful of the people involved in your organization, and they're really not likely to want to volunteer in person or attend events. People like this donor tend to love Amazon wishlist. It's something they can do from a distance that provides a specific item and is still helping. But they can be very wary of giving funds and they can be a little bit suspicious of nonprofits ability to appropriately use funds just in general. So these donors in general are much more prickly and the way to get through to them, the way to reach them really is with transparency. Don't shy away from answering questions about how you're utilizing funds and get ahead of those questions by offering that information proactively. These kinds of donors can sort of come to your organization with their own baggage, but if you are encountering this type of donor quite a bit, that can also be a sign that you maybe need to be more transparent and do more follow through with your fundraising, like showing how you utilized funds that you raised during your last campaign. You want to emphasize your impact wherever possible. And like the spending detective strategy, you want to explain in detail why monetary donations are more useful to your organization and get specific about that if you need to with pie charts, percentages and even infographics. And once again, an annual report here will be your best friend. They can get the annual report and see that you are being accountable to your donors and transparent about how you're using the funding that donors provide on mission focused work. All right, so we're down to the last two donor types. Next up is the big deal donor and this is a super high value donor. They consistently give at high levels, and they often will give one big annual contribution at the end of the year. These people know your development staff probably by name, and they probably are also palling around with your executive director and the directors at your organization to because their funding is so important to the work that you do. These types of donors are often a big deal in your community, whether that's a local community or a cause based community, and sometimes you'll find that they own a business. These are not necessarily narcissistic people who give for the purpose of having their name attached to good deeds, but they do consider philanthropic endeavors an important part of their identities, their self concept, and they like being seen as generous people who are reinvesting in communities or causes. So the thing is with this donor, it can absolutely make sense for them to want to give offline since they're often transferring large sums of money to your organization. So the strategy here isn't necessarily to get them to make their annual contribution of $10,000 through an online portal, but to leverage that donation to encourage other people to give online. One way you can do that is through a matching grant, which basically takes their big donation and offers and offers it up as a one to one match or an incentive for the donor. So a donor gives $50, the big deal donor matches their donation one to one and is able to turn that $50 into $100. And as a bonus, you can advertise the matching grant with your big deal donor's name and logo if they have a business through the mighty cause matching grants tool so that they get the credit that they are due for providing that contribution. Moving this type of donor down the pipeline can mean getting them into sponsorships instead of individual contributions. That can be another great way to engage this donor and leverage what they give to get more online activity. And finally, these donors can be great candidates for your board of directors. So don't be afraid to ask them about that as well. So this is the last donor and I'm being a little bit generous by calling this type of donor. This is the social butterfly. They are the first people to like and comment on and share all of your social media posts. They tag their friends in the comments and your social media manager knows exactly who this person is. But they're probably a complete stranger to your development staff because they have never actually donated to your organization. These people are usually not on your email list in most cases, even though they do appear to be very enthusiastic supporters of your cause on social media. A lot of nonprofits have tons of these types of people following them and engaging with them and they have no idea how to turn them into donors, how to cultivate them and get them into the funnel. And the reason nonprofits get sort of flummoxed about how to steward these people is because their social media CTAs or calls to action and their presence is a little bit disconnected from donation operations. But an easy way to get more from these donors is by leaving a little breadcrumb trail for them to get them into other areas of your nonprofit. For instance, by asking them to sign up for your newsletter on social media. You can even reach out to them via Facebook Messenger or direct message on their platform of choice. Some people might feel like this is invasive or weird or inappropriate, but it's definitely not if this person is interacting with you on that particular platform a lot. They'll probably be much more responsive to you there than anywhere else. So don't be afraid to meet them where they are and start getting them engaged. These are also great candidates for peer-to-peer fundraising so they can be excellent people to reach out to and you have a peer-to-peer campaign coming up or would like to add a peer-to-peer element to an existing campaign. And really you just want to try to keep the bar low here and get them engaged in areas that are off of social media in terms of starting a fundraiser, making the first donation, signing up for your email list and using social media as a bridge to get them to giving online. Okay, so now that we know more about the types of donors who are hesitant to give, we're going to move on to how you can actually strategically reach out to these donors, make the case that they should give online and actually get them giving. So first off, if you're struggling with getting people to give online, you may just not be giving them a compelling enough reason to stop mailing checks and start giving online. So it's helpful to think of ways that you can get them engaged online. That can mean something like participating in a giving event like Giving Tuesday or a local giving event if you have one that you can join. You can also try team or event fundraising that takes place primarily online to push them to give online. Your Mighty Cause profile may also need a little bit of polishing and you can take some of the tips from this webinar about the messaging to insert and make a better case for giving to your cause online. And generally, if you're still drowning in a sea of checks and cash, it may just mean that you may need to make more concerted efforts to fundraise online. So that can be a good clue if you're really struggling to get people to make the jump and start giving online that you really need to focus on this in your overall fundraising strategy and give them a compelling reason to start donating online. So we talked about this a bit with the specific types of donors, particularly the afraid of technology and the confused by the internet donors. But it's important to make sure that you are optimizing your donation channels. And specifically what I mean by that is doing an audit of where you're asking donors to give and making sure that you're providing a clear path for them. So look at your website right now if you have your own website. Can you immediately see where and how to donate? Do you have a button that says donate prominently displayed on your site? Does that button follow the user no matter what page they're on? So these are the things you want to take a look at because I see nonprofit websites every day and a lot of times it's not clear to me when I go to their homepage how I'm supposed to donate to them. So that's something that we see a lot, especially with younger nonprofits is throwing every possible way to donate on a page and then wondering why they aren't getting more donations. So what I mean by this is having one donation page and on that page you have a PayPal button. You have a mighty cause widget installed and you're listing your address for checks and you have your Amazon wish list linked and you're asking people to use Amazon smile so that you can get donations from that. You can kind of see how donors would easily get turned around and why they'd make the decision to donate in whatever way they want to because you're not giving them much of a clear direction. So cut through all the clutter and focus your web presence. Make sure that you're providing clear direction for the people who would like to support your organization about how to do that. And really, I mean this from the bottom of my heart you do not need to provide an address for checks. Number one, it should be listed on the footer of your website. It's definitely listed on your mighty cause page and number two, it's easy enough to Google so if you're getting a lot of checks stop soliciting them if you don't want them. I see that all the time people listen to address for checks on an online fundraiser and that's the reason they're still getting checks is because they're still making that an easy process. It's not hard for people to find your address if they want to send an envelope with a check inside of it, but there's no reason you need to list that specifically or distract from your online fundraiser by telling them that they can donate via check here. So trust me, your donors will figure that much out, or hopefully if you don't listen address, they will just give online which is what you want them to do anyway. Another thing that's really important to do when you're talking about giving online is pushing for recurring donations, really and truly these are the only way to have consistent online revenue is through recurring giving. They're usually an easy enough sell it's a set it and forget it kind of donation, and it increases donor lifetime value, meaning that donors who set up recurring donations give more in the time that they are active with the nonprofit, which really shouldn't come as a surprise if they're willing to commit to giving on a monthly basis. So something that you can do to consider building to focus on recurring giving is building a recurring giving program. That would be something with donor tiers and rewards, which allow you to build relationships with donors and deepen their involvement with your organization. It doesn't need to be extravagant or expensive we do have some blog posts about how to set up a recurring giving program. And it can be really simple like you know we'll give you a shout out on our website. You don't have to give them really expensive or fancy rewards, and they can be really really cheap rewards, and it can just be you know a little sticker. Once a year that says that they're you know a champion for your cause it does not need to be elaborate, but getting something like this in place that is really pushing them to give on a monthly basis is a great way to get a sustainable online revenue. And you can also run a campaign that's focused on recurring giving. For instance, if you do a giving Tuesday campaign every single year. Focusing on asking for specifically for recurring gifts is a great way to shake up your campaign and make it feel fresh, and it reduces friction for future gifts and that's another important thing is that donors who have recurring donations set up are generally just more engaged donors. And they're more likely to make one time donations on top of their monthly donations so if somebody is giving $25 a month and you're running a campaign, they're also likely to give to that campaign as well. So they're just more engaged donors and right now with the pandemic, it's an excellent time to run a recurring giving campaign, because generally you're asking for smaller monthly donations that add up over the course of the year, and that's more important than ever. We had a couple of webinars and blog posts specifically about fundraising during coronavirus. So if you missed them and like would like to get caught up, you can find those webinars on our YouTube channel and we also have them archived on our giving Tuesday now website that was on May 5, but you can access that at giving Tuesday dot mighty cause dot com. If you're curious about how to message, you know, COVID fundraising to your donors, because that can feel a little bit tricky but recurring giving is a great thing to focus on particularly now as you're looking to sustain your nonprofit through uncertain times. So if you want to nurture these types of donors specifically, you may want to develop a system for tagging them and building specific lists so that you can do some targeted outreach and easily identify what kind of donor they are and what kind of messaging is more likely to resonate with them and build your outreach lists from that. So there's some suggestions here, you want to keep it relatively neutral so like in kind donor a in kind donor be whatever internal lingo works for your team and just sort of build out these lists. And then once you've got an idea of who these people are, you'll want to try to implement some of the strategies we talked about. One thing I'll talk about more in a minute is creating some email segments, which is basically just a list of donors who meet a particular criteria. So you may want to have a list of your Fort Knox donors or your in kind donors in whatever email marketing program you use. And if you want to make some want to do some personal email outreach, make sure that you're spending your time and focusing on donors who are giving it amounts that make it worthwhile so somebody is sending you a $25 check every year. That's not something you'd probably want to spend a lot of personal time on, but if somebody sends you a $500 in checks every year. That would be somebody that you'd want to target to get them moved online. You can also try phone outreach, particularly if you have a campaign going on right now, especially with the donors that we discussed that don't like email volunteers can be a huge help with phone outreach. It's something that's easy for them to do at home just provide them a script and some phone numbers. And if you have a mailer going out if you use direct mail marketing, see if you can include some information about how to give online and include some information about why it's important to give online as well, especially because direct mail marketing especially can be a bit expensive. It's a little bit cumbersome to run, especially compared to much leaner online operations. So email marketing is going to be a big part of outreach for these donors. And as I mentioned just a moment ago, I really recommend segmenting your email so that you can be more specific with your message. Now, that does not mean that you need a new email for each group or segment, you're just tweaking small parts of the email that you've put together to be more specific to them. So for instance, if you have an email appeal going out for a campaign, editing an email just for Fort Knox donors that has some language and information about the security of donating online could make a huge difference in the number of donations that actually come out of that email. And perhaps you tweak a confused by the internet donor email list to include some step by step instructions and maybe a phone number to call if they need some extra help. The key thing here is repetition hearing this message once is not likely to convert them, but repetition will because repetition is part of what makes a message sticky, and it'll eventually nudge a lot of people in the right direction. And finally, follow up particularly with the donors who are a little bit email averse, they may not see your first email or pay it any mind, but following up with might would be more likely to grab their attention so you can just schedule a follow up when you you are putting together an email through constant contact mail chimp or whatever you use. All right, so we're in the home stretch here and I wanted to just go over some best practices. First and foremost, and this is very important try to document and take notes on what strategies you're using and when you're contacting donors, because it's going to help you build a better relationship with your donors. You can use a CRM tool like supporters that advanced customers on mighty cost have access to you, but you can also just use a spreadsheet. Whenever possible, please avoid the urge to get the credit card number over the phone and just process the donation for these donors who are hesitant. We see this happen a fair bit. It seems easier but unfortunately it violates our terms of service and it also violates the usage terms from most major credit card companies, and it can be considered laundering. So please be very careful with that and instead focus on empowering the individual to complete their donation online themselves and putting the power in their hands rather than just saying, I'll do it for you. And on that note, be patient. This is usually not a one touch conversion. You may need multiple interactions with these donors to get them to give online and practice active listening. It's a pretty basic customer service technique. Ask them questions, get more information, acknowledge that you hear what they're saying and you hear their frustration or their fear or whatever it is you're getting from them. Because there's often some really good information about what's the barrier for them that's hiding in their confusion or frustration. So it helps you be more able to reach them and solve the issue for them. As much as you possibly can try to handle donor engagement like account management where donors are assigned a contact that can remain as consistent as possible. This helps build trust and feeling like you're being passed around as a donor can be really frustrating and even angering to donors. So just try to keep the contacts consistent. And this is another great reason why it's important to document. So try and be willing and available to address any donor concerns, because it makes donors feel that they're taking care of that it helps build trust. And if they give you helpful feedback, note it, write it down and do what you can to address it and follow up with that donor and say hey, thanks for bringing this to our attention we did this to address your concern. Sometimes even things that aren't particularly specific like I didn't know what to do and I got to this point in the donation process can be really helpful if there's a trend of people reporting that it can sort of tip you off to a bigger problem that you can solve. And one thing that is a great idea is to do a survey at least once a year and get some feedback about how the donation process is how they're feeling as donors and synthesize that feedback into some action items that you can do to make it a little bit easier to donate to your nonprofit. Alright, so this is the last slide. Some other things you can do to try and encourage more people to give online is try publishing a blog post about the value of online giving and why it's important to your nonprofit, which in the given, which given in the current situation could be a really helpful and timely topic to discuss, as we're all adjusting to having more of our lives online and people are really looking for ways to help the causes they care about so giving them that direction that information could be a really great topic for a blog post. Talk about this subject on social media once in a while. Let them know why donations are important. Again, repetition is what makes things sticky. So the more you say it, the more you make that point, the more it will sink in with your donors. Something that you can do that's shareable and creative and kind of shakes things up is create an infographic. If you're not familiar with Canva, they have lots of templates for infographics and creating one with statistics and some bullet points about why online giving is helpful is something that you can do for free. They have a program for nonprofits and a lot of their templates and resources are free and you can get a lot of mileage out of that. And finally, if you have a website, dedicate a page on your website to financial accountability and transparency, if you don't already have a page like that. And if you don't have a website that can be a really great use for the custom tab function in your story on your nonprofits profile. All right, so we're just about at an hour. I did want to make some time for some questions. So if you have a question for me, just go ahead and type that into the questions box of your go to webinar panel. I'm just going to take a quick minute to see what we've already got there. All right, can you provide an example or any two campaigns that encourage donors to create online giving. So in terms of online giving giving Tuesday is a really great time that we see lots of creative campaigns that encourage online giving giving events like giving Tuesday that are based on an online platform. We see a lot of people encouraging people to give online because it's an online based event so it's kind of baked into it. There's a you know a leaderboard where people are being tracked. So those are really great ways to get people through the door for the first time say hey we're participating giving Tuesday. There's a leaderboard if you send us a check it doesn't count for the leaderboard so please make your donation online. In terms of some specific campaigns. We've we've had a lot so that there's kind of I'm searching my brain to try and find what a good example would be I can certainly follow up with some good campaigns that I've seen. That encourages people to give online a lot of it's really just in the details, people utilizing their custom donation suggestions and pushing people to consider what their donation provides in real world items like using those suggested amounts and the descriptions beneath them really effectively. That is something that is really easy to do and it is super effective because you're catching people at a moment when they are deciding not only to give to complete the form but they're deciding how much to give. But when I put together an email that has the recording and the slides I'll try to include a couple of examples of great online campaigns. Let's see. Alright so just to let everybody know we are recording this so you'll get the recording, and you'll also get the slides so you can download the slides and take a look at them or share them if you want to. Oh, this is a good question and sorry for being inside baseball about this. What is peer to peer fundraising peer to peer fundraising is a fundraising technique where instead of you going directly to donors to say can you please donate to support our work. You're getting your supporters to ask their friends and family and their social network and the people that they know online to make a donation so it's really a great tool for donor acquisition. You're getting access to people that you would not otherwise have access to Facebook does a lot of peer to peer fundraising I don't particularly care for the platform that they use, but they do support it so people starting with fundraisers for instance like hey it's my birthday instead of giving me presents can you please donate to this charity I care a lot about. That's an example of peer to peer fundraising. A lot of times for giving events like giving Tuesday, people will start campaigns for organizations that that they care about that they want to assist with and ask all their friends and family and people that they know to donate. So that's what peer to peer fundraising is. Again, it's great for donor acquisition, you're getting new people in the door, but it can also be a great tool for people who follow you who support you to either, you know, they're very online based and online savvy and they're on social media a lot. This is a great way for them to sort of engage the people that they know online in a useful way for your organization. And it's also just a really great way to get people to build a relationship with your nonprofit you're getting them involved in raising money for your nonprofit and we do have free peer to peer fundraising available on mighty cause so if you are a mighty cause nonprofit people can start a fundraiser for your organization. At any time it's the button that's right next to your donate button on your profile. So if you wanted to encourage some peer to peer fundraising, all you need to do is say hey, go to our mighty cause profile and click fundraise and they you can, they can build a page there. You can also do a fundraiser templates that allow you to sort of pre fill some of the areas of the page for them to make it easier for them to get their page published that they can start raising money. And I believe I talked about that mostly with the social butterfly donors or supporters and the reason it's such a great tool for them is it's not really asking them for a lot of money it's asking for their effort which they've already demonstrated that they are happy to give you online so it's not really handling that energy they have for tagging their friends and letting people know about your work into something that raises money for your nonprofit. All right. What was the name of the site for templates for infographics. It's canva.com c a n v as in Victor a dot com accounts there are free but they do also have nonprofit accounts if you'd like to apply for that. I did a little bit of additional materials and templates that you can utilize, but that c a n v as in Victor a dot com like canvas, but without the s canva.com, I use them all the time they're really great, and they do have some really easy to use templates for infographics. All right, let's see. I live in a small town with over 500 nonprofits, and people are just tired of giving all the time. That is a really great question. So donor fatigue is an interesting thing. Often we find that it's really not that the donors are just fatigued or out of money is just that they're tired of being asked constantly. The way for donor fatigue is, instead of just sending appeal after appeal after appeal please give us money please donate to support us, you know, sending them a newsletter, what do you have going on. Here's a look behind the scenes here's what we're doing at our nonprofit and just engaging them in a different way. Actually, it's a sign that you're just asking and asking and asking and not really giving them any content outside of that. So that's a great strategy is to sort of email them with things that are not asks. You know, a lot of people when they get an email that just, you know, they know is going to be asking them for money. They are likely to just delete that email or never look at it. So taking up your content and what you're sending them and just, you know, offering them something different than just asking them for money. That's a great way to fend off donor fatigue. Building relationships with them like checking with them how are they doing, getting them to fill out a survey and see how they're feeling as donors. That's those are ways that you as an organization can handle fatigue. It sounds like there's a lot of competition in your particular town and that's really tough. You know, we see small towns have giving events on mighty cause all the time and everybody's really philanthropic, and it really just comes down to the messaging and you making your case a little bit better than the competition. No matter what your causes right now, certain nonprofits are going to be sort of in the spotlight because of the nature of the work they do like healthcare organizations food pantries, that sort of thing. But it's really just about making a good case for your nonprofit keeping them engaged outside of just asking them for donations. And a lot of times when we dig into donor fatigue. People just don't have a complete experience of giving and what I mean by that is that they'll give to a campaign, and then they just never hear from the nonprofit until there's another ask. There's no follow through there's no saying hey, thank you so much for your donation. Here's how we used all of the money that we raised and giving them specific information about how the funding was used. So that's often what we can sort of attribute to donor fatigue is donor frustration that they're not getting information from the nonprofit about how funding was used. So that can be something to take a look at is how are you communicating with donors. How are you talking to them what information are you giving them and are you just inundating them with asks. But in most cases donor fatigue is really more about the messaging and the cadence with which you're contacting your donors so I'm happy to take that conversation online if you'd like to email me. It's definitely hard but you really have to go hard and make that that that case that your work is the right work to support during this particular moment in time so that you shine above those other organizations competing for those donations. Oh, how often should you do online fundraising campaigns. Well, it really depends on what your overall fundraising strategy is and what your capacity is for big nonprofits you should always have an online fundraising channel available to them. Generally speaking we see a lot that we see three periods of the year where people tend to run fundraising campaigns spring. Most people have spring fundraisers. This is a little bit strange right now we had a lot of people who did giving Tuesday now, which was a COVID relief effort in May, but spring is usually one of the seasons you want to hit fall is usually an important season and end of year. Summer fundraising tends to be a little bit slower, but fall and end of year are kind of the, the big times for fundraising, I'm giving Tuesdays at the end of the year it's the beginning of December this year so a lot of nonprofits will roll their, their end of year giving Tuesday fall fundraisers together and just sort of fundraise consistently from a lot of times October and through the end of the year, but I would say just, you know, it's seasonal do a spring fundraiser, try to do something in the fall and you definitely want to do something at end of year because people are looking to give to nonprofits at end of year. But you want to make sure that you have some sort of online channel where people can give throughout the year, and a lot of it is needs based if you need something in particular if you're trying to get a particular program off the ground. If you need to, you know, repair your roof, you should start an online fundraiser. So there's really no hard and fast rules but generally we see lots of spring activity fall activity and end of year activity and fall and end of year tend to sort of bleed into each other. So I hope that helps winter fundraising like beginning of the year is kind of the slowest time, but that can also be an opportunity if you wanted to run something, you know, in February, there's not a lot of competition. So it really depends on your specific strategy but those are the times of year we tend to see fundraisers. Most organizations are doing multiple fundraisers throughout the year some seasonal some annual events and some that are based on their particular needs. Let's see. Oh, this is just more of a comment but it's definitely helpful so I want to share it. Canva has provided full use of all of their products for nonprofits during COVID-19. It's been great no limit on available graphics, not sure how long it will last but worth checking out. Definitely, I love Canva I have no affiliation with Canva but I love them so much I use them. So when I had a small nonprofit where we could not afford a Photoshop license, and you can actually probably get rid of Photoshop if you just get Canva account. So definitely check it out it's so easy to use you don't need any graphic design skill whatsoever it's kind of drag and they have a lot of elements that will enhance your emails that will create great social media graphics for you so definitely I was not aware of the free use of their products but check it out. It's definitely a hot tip, especially if you're small and you're looking to keep your costs down. Let's see. Would this be a fit to run a campaign for a golf marathon where it would be a peer type event of event. Yes, so golf charity golf tournaments are typically peer to peer events we have a couple that are on the Mighty Cause platform we have some veterans based organizations that do an annual golf tournament and the people who participate in the tournament raise money before the actual tournament so that's part of the process is they have an event page set up on Mighty Cause and all of the golfers who have signed up to participate have to raise a certain amount in order to participate in the golf tournament and so some of them I'm not sure if they are paying a fee to participate on type on top of that or if it kind of acts as their participation fee, but charity golf tournaments are a whole thing. Definitely it's great for peer to peer fundraising we do have a blog post on that so if you go to blog.mightycause.com and search golf you'll be able to pull up that article that I wrote not knowing much about charity golf tournaments but learning all about them that kind of explains how to incorporate peer to peer fundraising into that. But yes definitely charity golf tournaments are great peer to peer opportunity. I don't think about that because they can sort of be sort of old school, you know, fundraising events where you're fundraising mostly offline, but by incorporating peer to peer into that with an event page that can be a great way to sort of bolster the event and make it even bigger and move it online. Just to note on our events product on Mighty Cause nonprofits have access to it for free there's no additional charge to use it, and we do have an event bright integration. So if you are selling tickets for the event or you're just, you know, you want to use event bright to manage people who are actually attending the event. We do have a direct integration with event bright that will help you manage that event through one platform so that's definitely worth checking out if you're going to be doing a charity golf tournament or marathon definitely add peer to peer to that get that online because it really shakes things up it makes it interesting for the golfers and also we find that for people who are participating in these sorts of golfing events. It allows more people to participate because sometimes charity golf tournaments, you have to pay a fee to participate and it can be a little bit exorbitant but it gives the opportunity for more golfers to participate because they can raise money as opposed to just cutting a check for a certain amount. Alright, so I think that is all of the questions we have for this webinar. If you have anything else you think of you can always email me at Linda at ladycause.com. You've been an amazing crowd. Thank you so much for spending this hour with me today and happy fundraising.