 Hello everyone. We're just about to get started. I'm going to give everybody a few more seconds to get logged on and then we will proceed with the webinar. All right. Hello everyone and welcome to our final webinar before giving Tuesday. This one's all about transitioning from giving Tuesday to year-end fundraising. This was not originally part of our lineup, but we decided to add it because giving Tuesday is starting on December 1st, around the same time as year-end fundraising. My name is Linda Gerhardt and I'm the Senior Community Engagement Manager here at Mighty Cause and you've probably spent hours listening to me talk if you've attended our other Giving Tuesday webinars. I've been with the company since 2016 and so I've weathered quite a few Giving Tuesdays in year-end fundraising glitzes with this platform, but also in jobs working at nonprofits before I came to Mighty Cause. So I hope I'm able to help you get a handle on how to move gracefully from Giving Tuesday into year-end fundraising. Here's a look at today's agenda. We are going to talk about some Giving Tuesday year-end statistics and information and then move into donor fatigue because that's always a big concern with end of year and Giving Tuesday and how to prevent it. And then we're basically going to present two options for how to handle the transition to year-end that are both equally effective and you'll have all the information you need to make a good decision about what your nonprofit would like to do. Just as a bit of housekeeping, we are recording this webinar now and we will post the video on the Giving Tuesday website in our on-demand webinar library and we'll also be taking questions at the end of the presentation just so I can get through all the slides. If you think of something while I'm presenting, just type your question into the questions box of your GoToWebinar panel and we'll make some time for it at the end of the presentation. Okay, so I wanted to start off by talking a little bit about the relationship between Giving Tuesday and year-end fundraising since obviously they're really close together and we actually have a ton of data about both. And that context I think is really interesting and important when you're thinking about moving from Giving Tuesday into year-end. So hopefully everybody at this point knows that Giving Tuesday is on Tuesday, December 1st this year. On Mighty Cause, this is actually a 27-hour event on our platform that begins at midnight Eastern time and ends at midnight Pacific time, which makes it a very long day for our staff here. Early Giving is open now for Mighty Cause's Giving Tuesday event and it actually opened at midnight last night or I should say midnight this morning. I do want to note here that since Mighty Cause has several different events happening on Giving Tuesday, if you're here from another event that's happening on our platform such as Georgia Gives or Richland Gives, right here in terms of Early Giving, I'm only talking about the Mighty Cause Giving Tuesday event. So if you're part of one of those events, check your event page to see when Early Giving starts for you and adhere to that. But if you're participating in Giving Tuesday on Mighty Cause, Early Giving has begun today. The information on this webinar will work for all of these events so even if you're here from one of the other events that's happening on Giving Tuesday, this will all make sense for your event as well. But I just want to be clear that when it comes to Early Giving, I'm only talking about the Mighty Cause event. And moving on, 2020 is going to be a first for Giving Tuesday because this is the first year that there have actually been two Giving Tuesdays. If some of you may have participated in Giving Tuesday now, that was on May 5th of this year and it was geared specifically toward COVID relief and lots of money was raised all over the country. So it'll be really interesting at the end of 2020 to drill down and see what impact that may have had on Giving Tuesday data and numbers. None of this should come as much of a surprise for anyone working at a nonprofit, but year end is the most critical time of the year for nonprofits. For many nonprofits, that means putting in lots of overtime during the month of December and many nonprofits kick into high gear at the start of December or even earlier and are just fundraising full speed ahead for the remainder of the year. And the reason for that is that December is the highest volume month for all charitable giving across the board in the nonprofit sector with one third of all charitable giving happening or taking place in the month of December. And one third of charitable giving throughout the year happens in December and a real mind blower to me is that 12% of all charitable giving actually happens in the last three days of the year. So those are key days for nonprofit development departments. If you've worked at a big nonprofit, it is go time you are working overtime during the last three days of the year, whether it's Saturday or Sunday, you are there working. So they're really big important days for nonprofit fundraising. One of the biggest concerns about giving Tuesday, especially when it first started catching on in about 2012 is whether giving Tuesday essentially essentially cannibalizes end of your giving by pushing it up a month. But the good news is that the folks at giving Tuesday org are super data focused and have done lots of work through their giving Tuesday data commons to track what happens. And we also track trends on our end at mighty cause. So we can say definitively that giving Tuesday does not just push up end of your donations. That was a big concern is, you know, if I have a donor who makes a big gift at the end of the year and instead of getting giving the appeal at the end of the year I'm giving it at the end of November or very beginning of December. Does that just push their gift up. That is not what we're seeing. We actually found that it results in donors giving multiple times. So donors will give on giving Tuesday and then they will also make an end of your gift on top of that. So thankfully that fear that a lot of nonprofits had turned out to be unfounded but it is a frequent concern. And it can affect how you choose to manage these two key fundraising events or times. And that's just, you know, an answer to clear up any concern that you may be eating into your end of your giving by participating and running a campaign for giving Tuesday. That said, while we do have a ton of data about giving Tuesday in previous years, as I mentioned before, giving Tuesday in 2020 is unprecedented in a lot of ways for and for better for worse. The whole year has been pretty unpredictable in terms of fundraising trends. So obviously concerns about the pandemic and the resulting financial uncertainty due to the recession has really been steering giving trends this year. And we actually did see a bit of a dip in charitable giving in March and April when everything in our daily lives shifted due to the pandemic and people were unfortunately starting to lose their jobs be furloughed laid off and so on. The good news here is that we ended up seeing a spike in giving in May and going forward which was comforting because that actually tracks with what we know and can predict about giving trends in the face of a disaster which I would say 2020 absolutely qualifies by in my book people turn to giving to charities to help out and regain a little bit of agency and control during disaster disasters and just large scale unrest. So what we saw after March and April is absolutely in line with how we know donors to behave. The other wrench in 2020 is the election. The election usually impacts charitable giving to some degree, obviously some nonprofits especially ones that are political may see that more than others. But we did see a big jump of charitable giving especially to certain categories of nonprofits in 2016 as a result of the election we actually ended up sort of having this huge spike. And then we saw a little bit of a dip in 2017 and 2018 and a lot of people who you know work in the nonprofit sector called that the Trump bump. So the thing that's really interesting this year is that both candidates are still fundraising actively, which is sort of outside of the norm usually at this time in an election year it's sort of settled we know who won. And everything sort of calm down election wise, but that is not the case this year. And so usually we don't see that political fundraising takes away from charitable giving, but it is just sort of another unpredictable factor in giving Tuesday and end of year this year. So it'll be interesting to look back and see what effect it has, if any. So there's a lot of ways in which both giving Tuesday and year and fundraising efforts are a little bit different this year. All right, so moving on from data I wanted to start off by talking about how to close the loop on giving Tuesday, which may be taking two steps ahead here. But it's really important, especially when you're talking about the transition from giving Tuesday to end of year. And I cannot recommend enough to you that you include a solid follow up plan as part of your giving Tuesday planning. So in your planning your campaign and you're thinking about what emails you want to send and what social media posts you want to do. Part of that process should be thinking about how you're going to follow up with your, your, your donors and your followers after the event is over, because it is absolutely necessary and important. So let's talk about why following up with giving to giving Tuesday donors will make them more likely to give to your nonprofit at your end. And there is a lot of data that bears this out. So one piece of data that I find particularly compelling is that first time donors are 400% more likely to give again and be retained if they receive a personal thank you within 24 hours. So a short phone call, a short email from somebody at your nonprofit makes a huge difference in whether or not that donor is likely to give again. So those 48 hours after the donation is made after the event are absolutely critical. Yeah, it plays a huge role in whether your donors are going to come back. And so on giving Tuesday since you're trying to set your up yourself up, not only for the giving on December 1, but for the end of the year as well it's really critical that you follow up. Following up also provides closure for donors. It allows them to say, okay, mentally, I gave to that campaign, I helped, I did my part, and the nonprofit thanked me for my gift, and they told me how they're going to use utilize it I'm done I can move on now. If donors don't have that experience, they can tend to lapse. So it's really important to, you know, give the story and end. And they really need that in order to shift into your next campaign, because if all they get is a receipt they are not likely to have a satisfying experience as a donor, you need to provide the full arc here and that includes ending one story before you move on to the next one. It's also just a really awesome opportunity to engage with your donors and work on building that relationship with your nonprofit. And at the same time, you can sort of set the stage for your year end campaign with your follow up, which makes it feel like a natural shift, and kind of sets the expectation with your donors that you're going to ask for their help again before the end of the year. One thing I do want to clarify here is that mighty cause provides a lot of tools to automate thinking donors with our thank you page and the message you can include in receipts, but we really don't recommend that you stop there, because you'll be missing out on meaningful opportunities to engage your donors. So as for what you can do, you can add anything you want to this this is just a general list of things that you'll want to consider as part of your follow up plan. But here are the general guidelines. First, you should plan an email which can be a blast. It can also be segmented that just reports on your results for giving Tuesday and thanks donors for helping you raise whatever amount you happen to raise, and then really lean into the because of you messaging here. That's really important for for year end is because of you think back to PBS, because of viewers like you. That is really effective with donors, especially around this time of year, and you can kind of set that up with your follow up email. One thing I think is really awesome if you can swing it is making phone calls to your donors. And this is absolutely an area where you can loop in some volunteer help, especially if you're small or you have a limited capacity due to COVID. A few years ago for giving Tuesday, I made a donation to an organization that I saw was fundraising on mighty cause and I just thought they had a really cool campaign. And then within 10 minutes of finishing my donation, I got a call from a volunteer with the org, thanking me for my donation and it wasn't like a particularly huge donation, but the phone call from the donor was such a kind gesture gesture. And I was so impressed with it that, you know, in 2020 years later, I'm here on this webinar talking about that phone call I received. So that human touch is really important that thoughtfulness when you're responding to donors, especially in a year like 2020. So even if you need to be super selective in the donors that you reach out to you by phone, just to make it happen because of your capacity, phone calls are a really fantastic way to follow up. And if you're able to, I really recommend thinking about making phone calls after giving Tuesday. Since you'll be using social media to promote your Giving Tuesday campaign, I mean the event is a hashtag so you will be using social media to promote your campaign. You want to also use social media to wrap up your campaign. So doing things like posting a thank you video or a graphic are really great ways to say thanks and also just stick a fork in Giving Tuesday so that you can move on to the next. And finally, letters are still important. I don't have the data on it at the moment but there is data that exists and a good chunk of your end fundraising is done through snail mail. So sending direct mail marketing, you know, letters to people and them sending envelopes back. And then also sending a thank you letter or even a card that signed by your staff or your executive director is a really effective way to follow up with them. And that's something that we can sort of forget about in the digital age when we're all just sort of keyed into our machines and sending emails, but there's still something really satisfying about getting a nice thank you letter or a card in the mail. And it works. So that's why it's worth planning on doing and that's why a lot of nonprofits are still making the time to send letters. Okay, so now I just want to chat for a bit about donor fatigue. Because that's the other side to the question we talked about earlier about whether giving Tuesday eats into your end giving this sense that maybe nonprofits are exhausting their donors and pushing them away by doing both things. So I find that nonprofits and this is not an insult is just an observation. They tend to think about donor fatigue in a very different way than I do. And they tend to regard it as like a mysterious condition that befalls donors, and it's sort of like a ghost that sneaks up on them in the dark. It's something that's uncontrollable. And a lot of nonprofits will use donor fatigue as a reason to not ask for donations and sort of treat it like something that's kind of out of their hands and they just have to account for because they don't want to fatigue their donors. But from my end as someone who works with nonprofits but has the privilege of zooming out and seeing the big picture because I'm hearing from a lot of nonprofits at you know by virtue of working for the platform. And I'm not in the weeds at a nonprofit anymore donor fatigue is actually something that nonprofits cause. It's something that it's not something that donors just come down with. It's created. Now nonprofits can create donor fatigue individually and we're going to talk about that in just a second. But it can also be collective, which is really important at end of year because year end is where donors can't even flip on the television and watch home alone on basic cable without having to sit through several commercials for St. Jude and the ASPCA. So it's a time when donors are really particularly being bombarded with asks and campaign messaging. So this is a time of year where you know collectively nonprofits as a whole can create fatigue in donors. But if you are noticing that your donors are fatigued or they're just pulling away from your nonprofit or not coming back to make donations. It's actually a warning sign that something is wrong in your fundraising and donor management strategy. Most often this is a sign that you're not checking with your donors enough as individuals. But it's entirely preventable with a good fundraising strategy and good donor management. And if you're already in the hole and you notice that donors are not coming back and being retained. You can course correct and get donors back. So what specifically causes donor fatigue when I'm saying that it's something nonprofits can cause themselves. So we're going to go through some of the most common culprits. The first and I see this a lot especially with small nonprofits because when you work at a small nonprofit you're kind of constantly putting out fires is sending too many urgent requests. This can be a really effective fundraising tool when you use it correctly. But you don't want to be the nonprofit that cried wolf. So sometimes unfortunately nonprofits constraint to making every request for a donation and urgent matter and use urgent language that goes along with that in appeals. And guys that just makes people really annoyed and tired, especially this year when we've got lots of real emergencies happening all the time. So if you want to make something urgent you just need to make sure that it actually is urgent. For instance, if you're just sending a regular fundraising appeal, don't use all kinds of alarm bells and exclamation parts, exclamation points and all caps to get your point across. If you're just trying to get to like an internal fundraising goal, and there are not any actual dire consequences involved. You just may want to reframe your appeal so that you don't have to use those alarm bells to get people's attention and to get them to go to your page and make a donation. As we talked about earlier, not closing the loop with donors can make them pull away. So for instance, if let's say on giving Tuesday you're fundraising for a new roof on your building your roof is leaking and falling apart, and you created a campaign where you're specifically fundraising for the money to replace your roof. And you hit your goal, but after giving Tuesday you never mentioned the roof again. That's going to give donors a really negative experience because they're left to wonder, did they get their roof. If you're closing the loop on your campaign, can they can really make donors feel invisible and in some cases wonder if they you even got their donation. And one clue, when it comes to this is the kinds of calls and emails that you're getting at your nonprofit. If you're getting calls and emails with donors checking in to make sure that you received a donation. This is a big sign that this probably applies to you. It's like your aunt calling and asking you did you receive that that letter I sent you in the mail. They're checking up on you because they was they weren't acknowledged or the acknowledgement that they received was not enough so that could be a big signal that you're failing to close close the loop with your donors. The next thing that you might be doing is it ties into the issue of poor donor management is just falling out of touch with your donors and not building a relationship with them in the first place, or not keeping that relationship going. So for instance, if somebody donates and then they just get blast after blast and they never have any personal contact with an actual human being at your org, they're probably going to feel invisible, and they're probably going to lose interest in your nonprofit. And so you'll most likely see that those donors are not retained year over year and something that seems a little counterintuitive to what I usually talk about on my webinars is only asking for money. That is something that can lead to donor fatigue. If you're just constantly hitting your donors up for money and not ever changing up that ask. So what can make a huge difference is as simple as asking them like hey do you want to volunteer, inviting them to in person events when we're able to safely have those again, or digital events in the meantime, asking them if they want to start a peer to peer fundraiser, proactively getting their feedback through a survey can be all it takes. If a nonprofit is only ever asking for money. That's a one sided relationship and like having a friend who only calls you when they need something and never asks how you are that can make donors ghost you so that's a cause for donor fatigue. So regular donor fatigue aside we've got a specific kind of fatigue to talk about this year which is general 2020 fatigue which I'm sure we're all feeling at this point. So since the pandemic kit at the beginning of the year, we've all really just been living in a state of emergency, which means people's nervous systems are literally fatigued from being in a state of high alert and stress for a whole entire year. And on top of that, we've got the election fatigue which we talked about earlier, and the election is still dragging on and I'm not taking any sides here but it's been a little messy. And people are fatigued by the news, and it's made people who are weary already from the pandemic even kind of more tired and defeated. And if that weren't enough we have to recognize that even though giving is still going strong right now, there are still lots of people who are unfortunately out of work, or they're working reduce schedules who are struggling to make ends meet. And we don't really know for sure what the effect will be on your end giving. And the good news is that while almost all of that is completely out of our hands we can't change the election we cannot change the pandemic although we can wear masks. Nonprofits can take some measures to manage 2020 fatigue in how you fundraise to keep donors engaged and to avoid being another source of stress, because this year more than any year I think if you're stressing out your donors. They're more likely to to ghost you. So as we talked about follow up with your donors after giving Tuesday, give them a sense of accomplishment and make them feel good for helping you reach your goals and supporting your cause. That's going to be really effective this year to you know hear that they mean something and they did something important. Reserve urgent requests for actually urgent requests. Nervous systems are tired from living in a year of emergencies. So just be judicious when how when you use urgent language, obviously something like give now or donate now is fine, but sending out emails with you know all caps and urgent written. That's a little bit much and that's probably going to make people just sort of archive your email without reading it. And a big thing that nonprofits are uniquely positioned to do right now is to deliver a message of hope, because hope and change and collective impact is what nonprofits are all about it's the, the fuel that keeps nonprofits going. So try to find messages that are focused on kindness and hope people helping each other out and doing good things, you know, not telling a sad story without giving it a happy ending, highlighting generosity and community, instead of just adding more doom and gloom onto the pile. So yeah that can be really effective and that's something that nonprofits are really in an important position to do is to deliver that message of hope. Reach out personally and make it a point to make personal connections with donors, whether that's through a personal email or a thank you card or a phone call. And really show some love to smaller donors and donations. A trend that we are seeing big time this year is that people are giving to charities for the very first time a lot of nonprofits are picking up new donors in large amounts and those donors are giving in smaller amounts most people don't you know make their first donation to a nonprofit, giving $500. They're usually giving a smaller donation. And so those are really important. You know, sometimes we can forget about the smaller donors in favor of you know sort of cow toeing to our major donors and our sponsors, but show some love to the smaller donors, and don't forget about making those small donation asks. They're important and that's how giving is trending. And one thing that you could do with that we did actually do a full webinar on this is trying to get people to set up recurring donations, especially in a year when there's a lot of economic anxiety, setting up you know recurring donation for $25 to help your nonprofit feels approachable to people and it makes it a little bit more easy for them to give and it also helps you build a relationship with them because they'll have an ongoing donation to your cause which means that they've made an ongoing commitment to your nonprofit. All right, so now we're going to move into the two options that you have for approaching giving Tuesday and end of year. And again, neither of these options is better than the other. These are basically the two options that I have seen nonprofits use in transitioning from giving Tuesday to end of year. And so we're just going to go through the logistics of both so that you can make the right choice choice for your nonprofit, every nonprofit has a lot of different factors at play so again these are both effective approaches, and they can work. It's really just down to your nonprofits capacity and what feels right for you this year. So the first option is using giving Tuesday to launch your end of year campaign. And there are definitely some distinct benefits to going down this route and running just one campaign that goes from giving Tuesday through end of year. First of all, it's going to allow you to stick to a cohesive campaign message all month long, you're delivering the same messaging, it's consistent, and that can make it really sticky for donors that the need for sticky messaging is something that nonprofits all, you know, are obsessed with. And that's kind of how it works is having this cohesive message that you hit over and over again. That's what makes messages stick. It's also a little bit less work for your nonprofit because again you're just planning and executing one campaign instead of two separate campaigns. And you can also move a little bit more easily into end of year, because you're still running the same campaign that you were running on giving Tuesday you're not introducing anything new into the equation you're not launching a whole separate campaign. So it can make the transition a little bit easier. So with anything that has pros there's also cons. Some of the cons here are momentum, just keeping your campaign going, you will need a campaign that is strong enough to carry you from November 17 to December 31, which is about six weeks I haven't done the exact math but it's just about six weeks. So there is a chance that your messaging could go stale. And it could also have a less impact if you are stretching it out for a longer period of time you're telling one story over and over again you're kind of stretching it thin. So that can be prevented through careful outreach and communications planning to make sure that you're changing things up and that you're talking specifically to key groups of donors. But it's just something to consider if you're really worried about keeping your momentum up. This might not be the right approach for you if that's something that's proved hard for you in the past. Donors may be less responsive to your appeals. They could get an email from you asking for another donation and think well I already get to this campaign once. Again, many donors will happily give to you twice. In fact, most of them will. But without the separation of a new campaign for end of year, this is a risk that's worth thinking about. And obviously you'll want to think about how many appeals your campaign needs to lend itself to. So can you keep this campaign fresh and engaging for the whole duration of your campaign. So do you have enough wiggle room to create lots of different appeals and create lots of different content and send lots of different emails that will make donors interested in giving to you again. Or did you kind of choose something that's limiting. If you chose something that's sort of limiting in terms of how much you can get and how much mileage you can get out of it. You may want to choose option to which we're going to talk about in just a moment. So if you choose to go down this route and you launch your campaign on giving Tuesday and it's carrying you through the rest of the year. What I really recommend when you're doing your planning is planning your campaign in phases. So that you've got a plan that has distinct milestones. And you aren't just saying well we'll email everybody a bunch of times you're building a campaign that is built to that is built to sustain the momentum for the full six weeks or so between now and December 31. So phase one is giving Tuesday, where you're introducing your campaign you're laying the groundwork, and you're looking to tell a specific story that can have a big impact with donors on December 1. So you're looking to sort of kick things off with giving Tuesday, come out of the gate strong with phase one, and then move into phase two which is the period after giving Tuesday, where you really want to transition to talking about impact for giving Tuesday, explain what you did and sort of plant seeds for the year end of year messaging, following up with your giving Tuesday donor. And you may want to actually hit the brakes a little bit with aggressively emailing people and really utilize this time between giving Tuesday and about December 18 for personal outreach and targeted outreach so that you're really hitting your key groups of donors. And the last phase is the last two weeks of the year which as we discussed earlier is an extremely critical couple of weeks. And that's where you'll be taking your campaign messaging and weaving it into the story of your 2020 impact. So sending hard hitting content, especially in the final week of the year those last three days, you want to hit people hard and really make the case that your nonprofit is doing important in disposable work in your community, and just going full with your campaign. Now I fully recommend splitting up these phases as well by having different fundraising goals. So have a financial goal for giving Tuesday, so that you can give donors the experience of saying hey, our goal was $5,000 on giving Tuesday and because of you we were able to do that. And then you can transition into maybe a smaller goal for a phase two like that goal can also not be financial. It can just be to engage donors, and you know get people talking to and engaging with your nonprofit. And then setting a separate goal for end of year so that you're breaking it into three different goals. And that can help keep donors motivated. Again, you get the satisfaction of helping you hit your goal. And it also allows you to take a look at where you are at the end of the month and I've seen this happen before where a nonprofit says oh I want to raise we want to raise $10,000 on giving Tuesday and that's their end of year campaign. And they raise over $10,000 on giving Tuesday, and then they have to set a new goal anyway so why not bake this right into your plan. And it can be really effective and just keep your campaign from going flat. If you reach your goal a little bit early and it kind of builds in a structure where your donors can help you reach these goals and you can celebrate those milestones so you're building in opportunities to talk to your donors. One thing you'll also want to think about, and it's really important if you're planning a longer campaign like this is to create enough content that can keep your promotions and your appeals fresh. You're going to be sending out a lot of emails making lots of social media posts. So you want to make sure that you have enough content to carry you through. Next I would suggest our videos. Videos are pieces of content that you can get a ton of mileage out of. They don't have to be, you know, professional Oscar worthy productions, you can make them on a cell phone most cell phones have really great cameras and you can make great campaign videos on them, and even something like YouTube editors can help you build take what you've got the footage you've got, merge it with still photographs and help you build a really great campaign video. And one thing that you can try, especially if you have, you know, the resources through volunteer or just through your staff to create, you know, a more professional production is you can have different cuts of that video and sort of plan for that so that you can keep the content fresh because you really only got one campaign video with one message you can use different cuts of it. I recommend having a library of photos that you can use for appeals email social media. You know that's really important to think about because you know people see the same picture over and over again they're just going to kind of not see it anymore. So you want to keep your content fresh and have some photos and images that you can use at the ready. Infographics are really popular at end of year, especially during the very end of the year. So infographics with statistics and information about what you did in 2020 can be really important and can be a really strong campaign message. During the rest of the year statistics are not really super appealing to donors they really go for the emotional stories, but end of year is when you want to share those things with people you want to let people know. We're doing important work and we're we're trying really hard to create change. And one thing I did want to mention is that canva, which is a program that I use a lot has infographic templates available, where you can just sort of plug in some images and some information customize it. They do have a nonprofit pricing available so canva is a really great resource if you don't have a designer that you work with. So finally this is kind of the foundation of all of this, but choosing a campaign story or a campaign theme that you can sort of approach from different angles and use it for multiple appeals over the span of time that you need this campaign to work for you. So if you, you know, choose let's say you're an animal shelter and you choose a story of one dog. Do you have enough of this one dog story to carry you for six weeks and maybe, I don't know, like 20 emails. If you don't that might not be a great focus for your entire campaign it might be a great story for within the campaign to tell. But make sure that you're choosing something that serves you for the entire duration of your campaign and you're not choosing a subject or a story or a theme that is limiting you in keeping you constrained in the amount that you can sort of squeeze from that in terms of content. Okay, so the other option and I've seen a lot of nonprofits do this as well as well is hosting separate campaigns for Giving Tuesday and end of year. So there are some benefits to hosting a separate campaign for Giving Tuesday and end of year. Chief among them is the idea that you can keep your campaign messaging fresh and exciting. These are two different campaigns with different messaging. So you don't have to worry about how to keep telling the same campaign story for six weeks you've got a new campaign, new story to tell. It also can help you sustain momentum from November 17 to December 31, especially at the beginning of December you may experience a little bit of a lag time between Giving Tuesday and end of year. So it's a you can sort of time it so that you're accounting for that period, when you may not have, you know, people's attention the way you will on Giving Tuesday and at end of year. It allows you to optimize each campaign for fundraising impact, which is sort of what we were I was saying earlier is, you know, instead of making one campaign message work for all of your fundraising in December. You're, you can sort of take a look at what you want to say at end of year, that may be a very different message than what you want to want to give on Giving Tuesday. So your end of your campaign, for instance, maybe all about the impact and sharing stories of what happened throughout the year. And you may want to choose something that's very focused for Giving Tuesday, so that you have a lot of giving happening on that one day. And then your nonprofit if you have separate campaigns can do a noticeable and distinct shift into end of your fundraising. So people will see that you're shifting gears. It's a new campaign and that can sometimes mentally make it easier for people to transition. So there are some challenges as well. Potentially it's a little bit more work for your nonprofit because you're planning two campaigns instead of just planning one campaign, you're kind of starting from scratch with each one, and that can create a little bit more work for your nonprofit. You do need to fully wrap up your Giving Tuesday campaign before you shift into end of year. So with one campaign, you may have a little bit more time to stretch those conversations out. But if you're going to start, you know, a different campaign in December after Giving Tuesday, you want to make sure that that's fully wrapped up before you start sending appeals for your end of your campaign. And it may feel to your donors like you're moving from one ask to another very quickly, which can be a little bit jarring. And you also miss out on that messaging repetition. That is what makes campaign messages and marketing messages sticky. So if you're moving from one set of messages to another set of messages, that can make them a little bit less sticky with donors. So some tips for success for this type of approach for, you know, having two separate campaigns is that you want campaigns that are distinct, but kind of mirror each other a little bit. And they're telling a similar story about your nonprofit's work and impact. So instead of, you know, totally different campaigns that have different messages telling, you know, making them distinct but similar. So for instance, if you wanted to talk about, you know, let's say you're an animal rescue and that my background is animal rescue. So that's why a lot of my examples come from animal sheltering and rescue when I come up with them off the top of my head. Let's say you wanted to focus on, you know, the work that you do to help, you know, animals in the community. Well, you know, for Giving Tuesday, you may want to talk about your foster care program and all of the great work that goes into that and how important the fundraising is. So you can sort of talk about your adoption rates and the successes and some of the stories of the adoptions that you've done in this year at end of year. So you can sort of make them mirror each other in terms of the overall story that they're telling about your nonprofit, but still having distinct campaigns. One thing that is really helpful is using visual cues and branding to make these campaigns distinct. So for instance, you for Giving Tuesday and I'm seeing a lot of nonprofits do this right now is to make the Giving Tuesday prominent for your Giving Tuesday campaign. So changing your Facebook profile photo and your cover photo and your logo on your Mighty Cause page, you know, adding the Giving Tuesday logo into that. And you can also use images that kind of evoke the holidays or new years for your year end campaign. So using a different set of colors, a different set of visual cues to signal that, okay, we're not in Giving Tuesday land anymore. We are moving into end of year. And that can look a lot of different ways. But, you know, make using those visual cues will let people know that you're shifting gears without you having to say, hey, we're starting a new campaign today. Again, focus on your impact in your year end campaign. That is really what donors are looking for at the end of the year. They want to, you know, put a cap on your year and hear about your impact. What did you do? Share some statistics with them. Again, the rest of the year statistics are not compelling to donors, but at the end of the year, they are. And also mix in some stories so that you can sort of tug at the emotional strings, along with sharing some impact information. And then make sure that you're giving Tuesday campaign has a distinct end. You want to make sure that you have an ending to the story. So report on your results and send all of your communications with a clear message that it's over. That's your app giving Tuesdays finished just so that they can mentally move on to end of year. There's a little bit of housekeeping that is likely involved with this approach because you're building two separate campaigns. So you want to do a quick profile update on mighty cause. So check for and remove any mention of giving Tuesday from your story. A lot of times references to old campaigns can hide in your checkout flow. So make sure that you're going into your checkout flow on your dashboard. Checking on your descriptions and the donation amounts that you're using, because sometimes we'll customize those for campaigns and then not see that they have old information. So make sure that you're looking at your checkout flow. And two other places that unfortunately old information can sort of hide from us is the thank you page and your custom thank you message. That's what's included in the receipts that we send to donors automatically. If you have the opportunity to add a little bit of a text message there just to thank the donors to automate like that quick acknowledgement for you. And that is under checkout flow and then you'll just toggle over to the area that says post checkout. And that way you've kind of wiped giving Tuesday from your mighty cause profile, and you can start working on putting end of year messaging on there. You just want to add in anything that's necessary for your year end campaign that may include adjusting your about section or your story just so that you're sharing information about your campaign. You want to reset your goal and metrics. So those are the items on your page you have the progress bar that shows how far you've gotten toward your goal, as well as the number of donors. You may want to reset one or both of those just moving into your year end campaign, start with a clean slate. Again, updating your custom donation, sex suggestions and descriptions, if necessary, if you kind of have those on your page, and they're static and sort of evergreen for your nonprofit. You don't need to change those but you may want to alter those. If you're hosting a separate end of year campaign because that can be, you know, a place where you can reinforce your campaign messaging is in the amounts and the descriptions that people see when they go to donate, and you have the amounts listed there. That's a really critical point in the donation process. And then just add some year end flair to your thank you page. If you have a video for your year end campaign, you can post it there. Just make sure that it doesn't say giving Tuesday. And if you're fundraising for something in particular, definitely reference that and, you know, make sure that people are getting thanked for the specific campaign that they were giving to. Alright, so that is it for the presentation. If you have any questions for me about giving Tuesday or end of year, just pop those into the questions box of your go to webinar panel. Let's see. So there is I just wanted to note that we did record this webinar, and you'll all have access to it usually go to webinar sends you, you know, a link where you can watch the recording we're also going to have that posted on the giving Tuesday site and I will email the recording and slides to you. So that seems to be it so far if you have a question please post it in the questions box will give everybody a minute if you have any questions for me, whether that specific questions about you know changing your profile or planning your campaign I'm happy to answer those. See. Thank you guys another another few seconds I don't want to have too much dead air but I do want to give everybody the opportunity to have their question answered if you have something that you would like me to talk more about, or something you'd like more details about from the presentation. Alright, so I think that's it if you have any questions for me, you can always email me at Linda at mighty cause calm. I'm always happy to talk about campaign planning. Oh, oh my goodness, I'll say a bunch of bunch of them just popped up so let me go back and I will not say goodbye and I will answer these questions. Let's see. Oh okay so this is actually interesting this is a marketing question and I like this. I personally get tired of saying because of you. I wonder if it gets old. So you don't literally have to say because of you, you just want to flatter your donors and make them feel like they are part of your organization they are part of the work that you're doing. You don't literally need to say because of you, although a lot of nonprofits do and that's really effective. You don't need to hear that they are important and they helped. And so that's the basic mindset of the because of you messaging. You don't necessarily need to use exactly that but particularly when you're thanking donors and you're talking about impact. You want to make it clear like hey donors, you made this happen, because we can't exist without you. So all of the great things that we did this year all of our successes. Those are also your successes. And I know that can sometimes feel a little bit weird when you're in the trenches at a nonprofit, and you're putting in so many hours and blood sweat and blood sweat and tears into working for your cause. But that is what donors need to hear and unfortunately it does get repetitive especially if you're the one saying it over and over again. But donors do need to hear it they're they're people who want to be flattered. They want to feel like they're doing a good thing and they want to feel like they're part of your cause. So even though you don't literally have to say because of you, you want to just have that mindset, particularly when you're following up when you're thanking donors and when you are, you know, talking about impact that you want to make it clear that your successes are also your donors successes and none of it would be possible without them because honestly that's true. I mean not every $25 donor is the reason you're able to operate, but you want to make them feel that way you want to make them feel important. That can really keep people engaged and coming back. Let's see. Have I seen either option have greater successes in the campaigns. That's a really great question. I really do mean that they are equally effective. Every nonprofit has a unique situation. I think especially if I had to choose between the two of them. A lot of it comes down to when giving Tuesday actually is so for a few years giving Tuesday was in November. This year it is in December so there's a shorter period of time to kind of pull off the trick of two campaigns. So that may be something you want to think about since you really just have a month. How much can you do in a month? Do you want to do two separate campaigns in a month? Or, you know, it doesn't make more sense to have a campaign that runs through the end of the year. So I've seen in years where giving Tuesday does fall in December. I tend to see people trend more toward having just one campaign and launching it on giving Tuesday. So that is something that is worth thinking about. I don't have any data on it. I'm very data focused. So I don't have actual numbers to give you. But a lot of times when giving Tuesday falls in November or falls in December, people do choose option number one where they just have one campaign that launches on giving Tuesday and runs through the end of the year. And that can make a more natural transition and it can also, you know, donors, they know what you're doing and that you can just send the emails and focus on your campaigning and your fundraising without having to run two separate campaigns. So I would give a slight edge to that option this year, but it really comes down to what you have in the hopper in terms of the campaigns or you're giving Tuesday campaign and whether that lends itself well to fundraising for a whole month. So just think about, you know, what what your fundraising for on giving Tuesday, if you're sending general appeals out, then you know that you're not limited by that you can do whatever you want with that. But let's say you're fundraising for a restricted fund or something like that on giving Tuesday, you may be limited in doing that for the entire month of December because you just want general fund donations. So there's a lot of different ways you can go but yeah, slight edge to option number one in this case. Let's see how effective our mail out requests would you recommend using these for end of year campaigns. So they can be really effective so typically what nonprofits will do and this is sort of midsize to large nonprofits, they'll work with a direct mail marketing firm. And they will actually they handle the mailers and they you know kind of can help you get lists as well. And they have owners to sort of get they have the addresses because they've donated to similar nonprofits and they have permission to contact them, and they can sort of give lists to you as well as you pay for them of course. It can be a little bit pricey direct mail marketing is is a pricey enterprise it involves mail houses and building you know these mailers with lots of paper and the design that goes into it. So basically, what I'm referring to when I talk about you know year and fundraising happening through the mail is nonprofits that use direct mail marketing. They at this point already have their mailers planned they are approved and they are ready to go out for end of year, because of the way those cycles work. So it's not something that you've considered before you don't have any connections to a direct mail marketing company that I would say don't worry about it, and you may just want to think about how you can follow up with donors in the through the mail, like sending a thank you card. If you have a graphic designer or even if you just you know are comfortable using Canva, you may be able to put together sort of a custom thank you card that you can have printed and just have people at your nonprofit or have your executive director sign and mill those out so if you're not currently using direct mail marketing at your nonprofit. Absolutely fine I wouldn't worry about it for end of year but I would want to suggest that you think about it in the follow up phase. Let's see. Do you recommend us talking about specific needs or uses for the money we're raising. Yeah, I mean that's definitely a really effective way to grab donors. So there's, I think it was feeding America or may have been a specific food bank but I went to a conference where food banks, people really like to donate cans and you know goods to them, but they have partnerships that allow them to take $5 and turn into a week's worth of food for a family. So they really prefer money, but people like to give in kind donations so what they actually did. And this was hugely successful for them is they actually designed a website where users had the cart experience so they could put, you know, a bag of apples into the cart, they could put some canned beans into the cart, and they would sort of translate that into the monetary value, and donors got to check out like they would at the grocery store. And so that experience of sort of buying things for a nonprofit is really, really important to donors. And that's why some people will not give money they will only give in kind donations. So getting specific about how you use your money can be a really great way to get people to give. It can bump up their donation and it gives them a satisfying experience. You certainly don't have to but that's something that you'll see a lot in fundraising is like let's say you're for your Giving Tuesday campaign you're raising money. Again, going back to the references I know you're raising money for like a foster care program through an animal rescue. You may put in there at $25 is shots for a litter of kittens. I'm pulling the numbers out of thin air or $50 allows, you know, it pays for foster care for a month with a volunteer or something along those lines, they can be really effective and they sort of bolster your campaign messaging, but you obviously don't have to talk about your specific needs but people donors really want to know how their money is being spent and obviously when they donate it is not their money it is your money. But the more information you can provide to them about your needs as a nonprofit, the more effective your fundraising will be and so, especially if you do have a specific need. So let's say, again, the roof example your roof is falling apart you need a new roof. That's a great way to run your Giving Tuesday campaign raise the money for your roof. You could do a raise the roof campaign, and people really like those kinds of appeals because it's something concrete and specific that they can sort of visualize it gives them the experience of gifting something to you. So yeah, you don't have to but it is something that you know really works and we see it happen a lot on our platform. Okay, let's see. How do you feel about text to donate messages, and how do you get thank you information from that fantastic question. So if you want to we do have advanced on mighty cause which is sort of an additional set of tools that you can use it does require a subscription, but we do have text to donate or text to give, which is basically they text a short code, and they get a link and they make their donation. If you use mighty cause you will have all of the information you need to contact the donors. So text to donate is something that I you know is great. If you have donors who kind of tend to give that way it's all down to demographics of your donors and how they tend to give. So if you get a lot of mobile donations typically, then you know that may be worth trying out for the end of year or for Giving Tuesday. But one thing one thing that is kind of hindrance for traditional text to give campaigns. So the ones where you're texting a short code and the money is sort of tacked on to their phone bill. Those, you don't get the donor information typically. So be cautious about what what program you're using mighty cause will give you all of that information. You do have to sign up for advanced. We do offer a free trial of that where you can also sort of try out text to give, but there's two different ways of doing it. If you think about like the Red Cross campaigns where you text, you know, text Red Cross to a short code and then it's added to your phone bill and that money goes to the Red Cross, you wouldn't get that information. But if you do it through mighty cause advanced. You do get that information so you can follow them up follow up with them like any other donor. If they show up in your donation report and you have all of the information that you would need to follow up. How often should emails or communications be sent to a donor during a campaign. Is there a rule of thumb for spacing out emails. That's a really great question and I that actually gives me a chance to expand on one of the things I was talking about which was kind of communicating with key groups of donors. So something that we talk about a lot at mighty cause is segmenting your donors. And basically what that means is you take your donor list, and that has all of your people on there, and that might be a huge list if you have a ton of donors. And you sort of from that list. Look at who those donors are. Okay, who are my volunteers. Who is on my board. You know, do I have any recurring donors on that list. And then you can also sort of separate them into sort of groups. So people who maybe give $200 and above to your last campaign and people who gave beneath that. And you can sort of customize it from there so that'll give you an idea of who is more engaged so for instance volunteers I forget what the percentages I think it's something like 60% don't quote me but it's it's a really high percentage volunteers are way more likely to donate than the average person because they are invested in your organization they're invested in your campaign. So for instance it may be worth doing a little bit more effort to reach out to them, because they're not going to be lost. If you email them too many times most people don't operate that way, especially if they're getting an email from a cause they care about. So, you know, talking more to those donors, recurring donors people who have a recurring donation setup, they're making a monthly gift to your, your cause. They're going to be engaged so it's okay to send them more emails, whereas maybe donors who've given once, or you know you haven't really heard heard from since last year, you may want to email them a little bit less. There really isn't a rule of thumb but we do have some giving Tuesday planning materials on the giving Tuesday website. Obviously you want to hit people more with emails leading up to the campaign, and a little bit less afterward you want to wrap things up. It's really up to you. You know, it's okay to email once or twice a day when you're, you know, in the in the thick of giving Tuesday. In fact, we recommend it when you want to do some donor retention emails. But it really kind of depends on the donors themselves, and it's okay to break up your list and sort of engage more with donors that have given you a little bit more in terms of engagement. There's not really a rule of thumb. Obviously you don't want to spam people. You may see more unsubscribes if you email them a lot. I would say you wouldn't be careful with blasts. So you can send lots of emails, but if you're going to send lots of emails, you may want to make sure that they're targeted to certain audiences and you know maybe I wouldn't do more than one blast on a day unless it's like, and by blast I mean an email to your whole entire list. Unless it's like giving Tuesday or the last day of the year, you know, you can do multiple blast those days, but I would be cautious about that, you know, and try to concentrate on targeted outreach. All right, so we've got a few more questions absolutely understand if people need to bow out at this point but we will record it so you can always come back to the question section of the recording and I do want to make sure I get to all of these. So obviously we if we have a large capital campaign like purchasing a shelter with a large campaign with the option one work for this. Also how do you close out giving Tuesday, and continue messaging. So yeah so option one, I think would work for that. It kind of depends on the goal so if you think that that might be something that you reach your goal on giving Tuesday. You know it sounds like that's a pretty hot, like large goal. So I think that is more than enough to sustain you. And it also gives you an opportunity to talk about, you know, your plans going forward which is a really great end of your messaging like here are all the things we did. And we want to purchase this new shelter so in 2021 we can do this. So yeah I think option one, you know having one campaign. It works for giving Tuesday and that's a really great launch day because people are looking to give on giving Tuesday so I think that would work really beautifully for you know having one campaign that lasts you the whole duration of giving Tuesday and end of year. There's definitely enough there that you can, you can work, you know there's a lot of angles what do you do at the shelter. What do you want to do why do you need the bigger facilities or why do you need a new shelter. There's a lot of different ways that you can sort of tell that story and hit different messages so yeah I think option number one would be really great for a large capital campaign like that. And then how do you close out giving Tuesday if you're going to do one campaign through, you know, giving Tuesday through end of year. It's just report on your results. You know, do some personal outreach, and that would just be part of your normal campaign to because you know giving Tuesday is a special day. So just say hey on giving Tuesday we raised X amount and it was all because of our wonderful donors. And if you had donors who really came through for you, reach out to them specifically but definitely you know you want to report on your results for giving Tuesday and then just use that as a segue for the rest of the year. You could do it as a, you know, hey on giving Tuesday we raised $10,000 toward our goal toward getting a new shelter here's what we still need to do so that you're planting those seeds and continuing your campaign messaging so that might be something that you would want to consider. Let's see. We are going with a split campaign approach but launched giving Tuesday with a more general campaign. It's for a program that has broad impact on other programs. I think that works really well. So general giving Tuesday campaign like hey it's giving Tuesday let's be part of the movement. I think a general campaign message as opposed to something specific is absolutely fine. It's easy to pull off. So you don't have to do like really specific storytelling you can just generally ask for support you have a shorter frame of time to do it. So I think that works really well. And then you know you just want to wrap that up. And then when you're moving into your second part of the campaign or your second campaign, get more specific and then you know just remove the giving Tuesday from it or just call back to we raised this amount but we still have X amount to go to get to our goal. But you know it's really just down to you know that lag time in between how you want to handle that and just wrapping up giving Tuesday and actually sort of putting a pin in it and being like okay giving Tuesday is done. This campaign is over. But I think you know that approach works really well if you wanted to do some more specific end of year fundraising as opposed to like having you know a giving Tuesday campaign that goes through the end of the year. Oh there's a lot of questions I want to make sure I get time for all of them. Do you see any significant significant differences in data for performing arts nonprofits. I don't have the data for it but we did have a lot of giving Tuesday now fundraisers for theaters and you know places that host classes for performing arts because obviously you know if you have a theater and that's what your nonprofit does, people can't gather anymore and that was really, that was kind of scary for performing arts nonprofits especially in the beginning of the year when a lot of states were on like a lockdown. So I don't have the numbers in terms of like what the difference has been for performing arts that's something that I could potentially pull, because we do have that as a category on mighty cause. But we did see a lot of campaigns that were very successful sort of emergency relief funds for performances like we need help in order to continue going because our main source of revenue is tickets. So a lot of those organizations were really hard hit by COVID and the campaigns to support those organizations have been really strong and gotten a great response. I'm sorry I don't have the data but that is what we've seen in terms of like just what's popped up on our, on our platform there was definitely a lot of fundraisers from performing arts nonprofits that were just trying to get through and they got a great response so their supporters are not going to, for the most part just turn away from them because they can't have live performances right now. And they were absolutely eager to give to them so they were one of the groups that had a little bit of a lapse, and then spiked up with the rest of the nonprofits in May and I did notice that there was a lot there were a lot of performing arts nonprofits raising money and so they're engaging donors they're just trying to there you have to change up how you do it. Let's see. Okay it sounds like somebody's had connection problems just to reiterate yes you will have access to the recording and the slides, and I will put together an email said everybody has it. And yes I can also provide a link for the trial and text to give. If you are on Mighty Cause and you're already using it, you can actually get there through your dashboard. So if you go to plan management, you can initiate your free trial period so you can just go there and do it, but I'll make sure to include a link so that you can investigate text to give in the follow up email that I send. I think that's it. So thank you guys for hanging on. There were some really fantastic questions there. I was afraid there weren't going to be any but you guys really came through so thank you for asking such wonderful questions. And thanks for showing up today I know it was short notice we added it at the last minute said thanks for registering. I will make sure that everybody gets recording and slides of this webinar. And if for some reason you missed the webinar, the webinar email you can also go to giving Tuesday dot mighty cause calm, and then go to our webinar library and I will make sure to post it there. So happy fundraising giving Tuesdays just around the corner and I look forward to seeing all of the great fundraising that will happen on that day.