 beauty. All right, so it's just about three o'clock here on the East Coast, so I will go ahead and get started. We are recording this just FYI to everybody. So hello and welcome to our third and final webinar for Giving Day for Apes. In this webinar, we're going to be focusing on storytelling and donor engagement. My name is Linda Gerhardt. I'm the Senior Community Engagement Manager here at Mighty Cause, and I've had the pleasure of helping out with Giving Day for Apes with First Arcus Foundation and now Global Federation of Animals Sanctuaries for a couple of years now. I think my first year helping with the event was 2017. So it's been great to get to know everybody who participates from year to year, and I handle the technical side on Mighty Cause, making sure that the site's in good working order and handling all of the onboarding and training. So that is my role if you haven't met me before, and I'm also joined by Jackie Bennett from GFAS. Hello, everybody. And both of us should be pretty familiar if you've participated before, and if you're new, hello, and you'll get used to hearing from us. So here's a quick look at today's agenda. I'm going to let Jackie give you some pre-early giving reminders, since this is the last webinar before Early Giving begins on the 13th of September. And then we're going to move into storytelling, which is where we will spend most of our time in this webinar. We're going to be going through the basics of fundraising storytelling and then go into the actual anatomy and how you break down and find your story and actually tell it to your audience. And then we'll be talking about some donor engagement since Early Giving is coming up, and we want to make sure that everybody is ready for that. And then we will have a question and answer session. If you have something that you want to ask while I'm presenting or while Jackie is presenting, go ahead and pop that into the Q&A box, and we'll make sure that we get to that at the end. And it's okay if it's off topic since this is your last chance to have us on a webinar, so feel free to ask any questions. We will just be answering publicly the questions that might be helpful to other attendees, and you will have access to the recording on the Giving Day for Ape site. And with that, I will turn it over to Jackie for an introduction. Thank you, Linda. Well, Early Giving for Giving Day for Apes is now less than two weeks away, which is kind of scary. It's coming up fast. And at that time, all the online donations from that date through the Day of Giving Day will be accumulating on your leaderboard and will count towards prizes. We have some new prize categories this year. I'll just go to the next slide. So keep going. All right. So before we get into storytelling, I'm just going to do a quick review of highlights of some of the prizes again, and a few more quick tips to get you ready, and then we'll go into storytelling. So for prizes, since the time of our last webinar, we've added all of the rules and prize descriptions to the Giving Day website. So if you haven't looked at that already, please do so. On that site, on that page, you'll also find an hour-by-hour schedule for Giving Day that you can download. It's a PDF file. And that document identifies when the power hours and golden tickets and other prizes will be decided. Our last webinar went over the prizes and eligibility for prizes and prize strategy in a lot of detail. And that recording is now available on the Giving Day website on the non-profit toolkit tab. There is a YouTube video of the webinar, and you can also download the slide deck if you want it. If you have any questions at all about prizes, after you've looked at that, not sure about eligibility, not sure exactly about the hours that they're taking place, just contact me or Linda, one of us or both of us, and let us know, and we're happy to respond to that. Let's go on. Okay, so if you've been involved with Giving Day for Apes for a couple of years, you know about golden ticket prizes, but just wanted to give a reminder because we've got a few new things about them this year. First, we have a lot more of them. We have 18 of them, but they are in different categories. So not every organization is going to be eligible to compete for everyone. Some are restricted by region, so there will be a golden ticket that only the Asia-led board participants can compete for, or Africa or North America. Some of these golden tickets are restricted to those organizations that we are calling smaller budget organizations, those that have reported their budgets of $500,000 or less. So you can check on the prize page and on that 24-hour schedule to see when these golden ticket hours are happening. Make sure you know when those are in your time zone because on the schedule, it's in Eastern time. So be sure to convert it. Make sure you know when it's happening for you. So you can put that information into your social media messages and emails and the other ways that you contact your supporters. Let's go on. And a reminder of the rules, both for power hours and golden tickets, our schedule gives a start time and an end time for those hours. These prizes are based on activity that occurs in those hours alone, and we don't know the winner until after the hour ends and then it will be determined through the Mighty Cause platform and announced. So as a reminder for golden tickets, during that hour, if you're eligible for that golden ticket, you have to receive at least one online donation to have a chance to win. The more online donations receive in that hour, the more chances you have. For power hours, it is again only based on activity occurring within that hour. So that would either be the most unique donors who have donated to you in that hour or the most dollars you have raised in that hour alone. Go on. Our prize based on early giving is the kickoff prize. This is a $500 prize. This is based on activity that occurs during the early giving period, which starts September 13th at midnight Eastern time and goes to October 12th at midnight Eastern time. The prize will go to the participant that has gotten online donations from the most unique donors during that whole early giving period. So we'll know the winner of this prize as soon as the actual 24 hour Giving Day for Apes launches. Whoever that person, that organization is will at that point be at the top of the most unique donors leaderboard. And so that winner will be announced shortly after the event launches. Let's go. Final prize reminder is that we do have a new prize this year, the Storytelling Prize. We're going to be spending a lot of time talking about storytelling in a few minutes. But just want to remind you that to be considered for this prize, because it's not through the Mighty Cause platform, your organization name and information has to be submitted. And we mentioned this in our last webinar. We now have this very short form on the prize page of the Giving Day website. You can see a screenshot there. All you have to do is put in the name of your organization, what region it's in, and then the web address, the URL of your Mighty Cause organization fundraising page. There are three of these prizes, one for each region. They're $500 each. And the winners will be announced midday. But we do ask you to submit your organization's name once you feel your page is ready by October 1, which should give you plenty of time to adjust it. Think about that during the early giving period and get your page finally ready before the big day. Okay, so now I'm just going to run through a couple of quick tips for getting ready. And the first is to update your page. For organizations that have been part of Giving Day for years, you may have a lot of the same content year to year. But at a minimum, just look at it, refresh it, make sure it refers to this year's Giving Day for apes. It's not saying 2019 or 2020. Also that it quickly identifies where your center is located. And that may seem obvious, but a new potential donor coming to your page might not know. And especially for those organizations that have fiscal sponsors or US-based organizations that are actually kind of running the page, if potential donors scroll to the bottom of your page, they're going to see a US address, even though your organization might be in Indonesia or Cameroon or somewhere else. So just make it obvious at the top of your page where you are. But at the same time, and I'm sure Linda will talk about this during the storytelling discussion, don't be too wordy. This isn't a place to put like a big block of text that you've used in a government report or a grant report or something like that. Really summarize your key points if you want to say how long your organization has been working, the number of animals you have, if you are a multi-species, we of course want you to emphasize your apes. But certainly you can say that you have other species there also. Take a look at your photos and videos, update them so they're part of your storytelling. But we also wanted to remind you about the changes in our terms of participation this year. We have referred to and incorporated the IUCN best practice guidelines for responsible images of non-human primates. So just be thoughtful when you're thinking about the images. I'm not saying that there can be no images of a caregiver or a veterinarian caring for a baby animal who has been rescued. But do consider the context of the photos, not a lot of direct contact, hopefully no direct contact with adult animals. People, especially in these COVID times, should be wearing masks. If you have any questions, if you want to have your images looked at, just let us know. You can email me. I'm happy to talk to you about it. We'll also be looking at pages prior to the event. If there's anything that raises a question with us, we might reach out and say, hey, that's a great photo, but maybe you could consider using a substitute photo instead. So next, I had mentioned in one of our earlier webinars that I think last year it was over half of the donors made their donors on mobile devices, as opposed to desktops or laptops. So something to keep in mind as you're revising your page that a lot of people are looking at it on a very small screen. So when you're making any updates, check how it looks on your phone or on your iPad. Ask a couple of your colleagues to do that also. Is it easy to navigate? Is it too much text? Is your message getting out? It's just a good way to test how it looks in different formats. And a final quick tip here is to reset your page. Your page might reflect the donations that you received last year on Giving Day, or if it's a page that's been open at that time, it's an amount of donations that have been totaling over time. But we recommend setting it back to zero because if you're setting a goal for fundraising for this Giving Day and you have a potential donor going to your page and looking at a couple of pages, if they see, oh, well, this organization raised 20,000, they don't need our help as much as others. It's not necessarily the 20,000 for this year's Giving Day. And so roll that back to zero. Set a new goal and people can see how close you are to that goal and how much they can help you with that. It's very easy to do. If you're a page administrator, it only takes a couple of minutes at most. There are directions on the Giving Day website at the non-profit toolkit tab. Go to how to reset your profile's metrics. If you have any difficulty or have any questions, probably on this one, contact Linda or contact Mighty Cause and they can help you, but it's very easy to do. And let's go to the next one. Okay. Nope. Back. Thank you. Finally, just a few quick tips using social media. You probably know a lot of these, but let me just run down the list. When you are posting on social media, make sure that you link to your Mighty Cause page. Your supporters might be used to donating to you through Facebook or Simply Giving or a PayPal link, but be sure to tell them that the only way they can help you in prizes is if it's an online donation through the Mighty Cause page, otherwise that's not going to be reflected on your leaderboard total. The Giving Day for Apes logo, that little diamond-shaped logo up in the top right corner of this slide, is a download. It is in the non-profit toolkit. If your organization is registered and approved and you're participating, you can use that logo. You can use it as an overlay on your own images when you're getting ready to start your campaign. You can use it in a Facebook cover photo. However, you want to advertise your participation in Giving Day for Apes. That logo is available for you. We also ask that you consider using the Giving Day for Apes hashtag on your social media, especially Instagram or Twitter, where it's easier to search that. It is great because a lot of people follow that hashtag. I know we do. I know our prize sponsors do. Other supporters of the day do. It just also shows the collective strength of the day and the impact that it's making when people are seeing this Giving Day for Apes hashtag all over the place. Just something to think about, and Linda, you're probably going to talk about this a bit too, that it's a 24-hour event. People are in all different time zones. Probably no one's going to be awake the entire time. Think about doing some social media posts in advance and schedule them so that even when you are asleep and it's nighttime or you are, it could be daytime somewhere else and someone's getting a fresh message, reminding them to make a donation. Using stories on Facebook and Instagram is great. A lot of people don't have time to scroll through their whole social media feeds, but they might be a quick story that you can put up if a power hour is coming up or if you want to say thank you to someone. It's a great way to get more people's attention. My final tip is just a gentle reminder of the role for peer-to-peer fundraisers. These are the individual fundraisers that can be done by volunteers, supporters. It can be done by staff members. It can be done by your executive director, your board members, whomever. But these are separate from the organization fundraisers and separate from the organization page. And as I think it was Linda mentioned in one of our previous webinars, the organization itself should not be using its social media, its resources to promote those individual pages. So we just ask you to keep that in mind. You know, it's great if you have a lot of peer-to-peer fundraisers, but please don't post on your organization page saying something like, oh, take a look at our director's fundraising page because you're promoting it. You are pointing people through the organization resources to that page. We would ask you to take those posts down if we see them. If there's a lot of activity, donation activity following such a post, it may be that we determine that that peer-to-peer fundraiser should not be competing on the peer-to-peer leaderboard at that point because it is supposed to be separate from the organization. You can certainly thank them privately. And once the event is over, you can name all of them, thank all of them publicly on your social media, but please keep that in mind. And I think with that, I'm turning it over to you, Linda. All right, thank you. So I'm going to be moving on to talking about the basics of fundraising storytelling so that we can get into the nitty-gritty details of storytelling. So to understand how to tell a good fundraising story, it's really important for us to start at the beginning and understand the role that storytelling plays in successful fundraising. The biggest and most important thing in my opinion is that storytelling can help break down these big complex issues that organizations like yours tackle and make them digestible for the general public. So like in many cases, what you're dealing with are these big complex issues like keeping apes as pets, the use of animals in research, poaching, deforestation. And those are really big overwhelming topics for people who are not accustomed to them, who haven't really spent a lot of time with them. So storytelling really makes them relatable to people, and it allows them to understand how these issues affect the animals and the sanctuary. So it kind of explains the why of what you do. And through a well-chosen and well-told story, your organization can increase public awareness and understanding of these big issues that feel really overwhelming and intimidating and pull them in to start helping with it. So to the average person, the work that you do at your sanctuary can feel kind of mysterious, and it may be misunderstood by a lot of people. But storytelling can help people not only understand what you do, but why you do it. It pulls people in by getting them emotionally involved. And emotional involvement is one of the quickest and most effective ways to mobilize people to take action and donate. Emotions are also a big part of providing a fulfilling experience for a donor. Donating money to an organization is not by itself a fulfilling or exciting experience. Like certainly you could take your money and you could put it towards something for yourself, and that would be probably more fulfilling than sending it somewhere else. But the experience of taking your money and putting it toward a cause and understanding how it can really help that organization and how it can help address problems that are being addressed by this organization is what makes it fulfilling for the donor ultimately. So it's part of that experience that the donor has. It gets involved and it makes them feel like they've made a difference when they complete a donation. And when we talk about storytelling, that actually encompasses a lot of different techniques. We're not just talking on one particular channel or one type of story. And the best fundraising stories are actually multimedia stories, meaning that there's great copy, but there's also a video or two. There's maybe some photos, there's some infographics, and it's really a multi-sensory experience. And that is helpful because you're going to be telling the story on different channels. And not everything translates to every channel. You can't tell a long text story on Twitter, but you can certainly post an image or a video and get a little bit more mileage out of that. So having different types of media that you're using to tell your story makes it so that your story is adaptable to different platforms, but it also creates a more interesting experience to the person who's absorbing your story. And this is also something that we're going to be looking for with the storytelling prize just as a heads up. And it'll we want to see you really use different types of media to tell your story because that makes for an effective story. And it'll also help you figure out which stories that you have kind of in your back pocket or percolating at your organization are actually good candidates for becoming fundraising stories. You'll want to look for stories that you can tell visually. So having photos, video, or even just the possibility of easily getting those assets is really important when you're choosing which stories to tell. So keep that in mind when you're thinking about which stories you want to tell for Giving Day for Apes, because you're not just going to be telling a text story, you're going to be telling a multimedia story. It's also important to understand which channels you'll be using to tell your story and how you'll be telling the story. And for an event like Giving Day for Apes, you're going to be telling it in a couple of very different places. So typically you'll be telling your fundraising story through email. Email is a huge part of getting donations for Giving Day for Apes. It is the top place that people find fund raisers to donate to. It's the top source of traffic for Giving Day for Apes year after year. So you'll be putting together emails with your story. You may be putting together multiple emails throughout the day that tell the same story or tell different parts of the same story, or you can have them telling different stories. It's up to you, but you're going to be using email to tell stories on Giving Day for Apes. You'll also be telling stories on social media as well, because that's another really important place that you'll be promoting your Giving Day for Apes campaign. But you can also weave it into other communications that your nonprofit puts out, like putting it on your website. You obviously don't want to direct people to give through your website unless you have a lady cause widget installed, but making sure that people know about your Giving Day for Apes campaign on your homepage of your website is a really important tool that can get people to the page where you are accepting donations. You can also put it in your traditional communications, like newsletters, e-newsletters. Don't forget about traditional media. Sometimes we can forget about that in the digital age, but if you have media contacts, people you know at newspapers, people on the radio, you can also reach out to them and start telling your story through those avenues if you have those kinds of contacts. If you have direct mail marketing that you do at your sanctuary, you can incorporate it into any planned direct mail campaigns that you may be planning. So the people who tend to give via check through the mail also get the same story that the people who give online are getting. And then finally, and most importantly, you want to tell it on your mighty cause profile or a fundraising page. Now which you choose does not matter. Both are equally valid options when you're looking at how to tell your story. If it makes sense for you to use your organization profile because you don't really use it for any other purpose, you're fiscally sponsored and you're only really able to utilize mighty cause during giving day for apes, you may want to use your profile. But if you're an organization and you help animals that aren't apes and you want to keep your profile as a general place where people can learn about all of your work, you can also use a fundraiser that is connected to your organization but run by your organization. So neither of these are the right or wrong answer. It really depends on how you utilize your profile. But you definitely want to make sure that you're telling your story effectively on your mighty cause profile or your your associated fundraiser because that's going to help you win the storytelling prize. And we're also going to be looking for how you reinforce your story with the different donation tools that are available through mighty cause. For instance, your donation suggestion amounts and your descriptions. Those are places where you can reinforce your story with fundraising tools at a very key moment. We talked about that I believe in the first or second webinar, but that's a really powerful way you can sort of reinforce the impact of your story. So how do you start planning your fundraising story? If you're like any other non-profit, you have lots of stories that you could possibly tell. So how do you start? Personally, I find it helpful to actually start at the end of the story, meaning I want to start with the impact that I want my story to have. So what is the desired result? What do I want people to do after hearing this story? What is my call to action? What message am I hoping this story will help my audience understand or connect with? What aspects of the work my sanctuary does and my highlighting or looking to explain with the use of storytelling? What is the overall message that I want to want to send? Working from these questions will help you really hone in on what you're trying to say and help you filter any stories that you may tell. For instance, you may have a really fantastic story about a chimp that was part of a daring rescue that your sanctuary participated in, but even if it's a really thrilling narrative, if it doesn't represent the work your organization does on a regular basis and is not highlighting a key thing about your work and mission, it's not an effective campaign story. So I recommend really thinking about the impact you want your story to have, the goal of telling a particular story and then working backward from there. So that's why it's so important for you to have a clear vision of what messages you want to send with your story because you'll be building your story around that and the message that you're looking to send will act as a connecting thread through all the various places that you'll be telling these stories. If you're telling different kinds of stories throughout the day, if you're telling a different story about one APR and another APR, that message is going to be the thread that connects them and it'll also help you find the right stories. Again, you may have situations and stories that would make for a really fantastic email, but if it doesn't tie back to a key message about your sanctuary and your mission, they don't actually achieve what you want your story to achieve on a day like giving Day for Apes. Something I recommend thinking about as well as what challenges is your organization facing this year and whether you can illustrate that through a particular story. So using these as filters as you're starting this prep work and you're starting to find your story can be really helpful in making sure that your story isn't just interesting, but it also really works to drive home the deeper story of what your sanctuary does and why you do it. So as Jackie mentioned, we do have storytelling prizes available this year and you'll want to have your page submitted to us via that form by October 1st. That is on the prizes page on the Giving Day for Apes site. Now just to clarify what we're talking about, I think the form makes it pretty clear. So take a look at that if you're a little bit confused. In order to be considered, you will have to proactively tell us via the form that you would like to be in the running for a storytelling prize and you'll need to provide a link to the page that you would like us to consider. So where you're focusing your effort. So if you're using your profile, you would link to your profile. If you're using a fundraiser, you would send us a link to your fundraiser. It doesn't go outside of Mighty Cause. We want to specifically see how you're utilizing Mighty Cause to tell a fundraising story. So your website or your blog or your social media, those are not the links that we want to see. We want to make, we want it to make sure that everybody is sending us a Mighty Cause link so that we can evaluate how you are using the Mighty Cause tools. So that's, you just have to submit the form. And we're looking to really specifically see how you leverage the page and the tools that Mighty Cause provides to tell your story. So this is where multimedia stories are going to become important using text, images, video, graphics. And just as a note, Mighty Cause's fundraising staff will be judging. So these are fundraising experts. We see a bunch of pages. I am not on the panel of judges because I know some of you and I don't want to play favorites or have any bias. So these are people who are not involved with the event front on a yearly basis and are just simply looking at how well you tell a story and how well you are utilizing the tools on Mighty Cause. So this is kind of the breakdown of the storytelling prize. I've given you a ton of tips and I think I'm going to give you some more tips as we go on. But that's basically how it works. You need to submit your form to us by October 1st. It's very simple. Who are you? What's your organization and what page are you submitting and what continent are you on? And then we'll have the judging completed before the actual event. So just make sure that you submit a Mighty Cause page because we cannot consider an outside website or a social media account. Okay. So now I want to move into what I consider to be the fun stuff, which is how to actually structure and build your story. So when I'm talking about storytelling, usually I'm talking about the overall picture of telling stories that illustrate the impact of the work that you do. But I'm also talking about a specific type of story, which is an impact story. So an impact story is a framing device used where you use a story of an individual or group that your nonprofit or your sanctuary has served to demonstrate the kind of work your organization does. Basically, instead of telling people about what you do, you're showing them through this story. Impact stories are all about creating emotional connections and spurring people to act, which in this case almost completely means donate. That is the action you're trying to get them to take. Impact stories break down your cause into a familiar narrative. So it's something that most of us see and we're familiar with that narrative arc. You're going to have characters, you're going to have conflicts, and you're going to have a resolution. And the cool thing, in my opinion, is that impact stories do use a traditional story structure, which means that you have a template that you can basically follow, which we're going to get into. So what is the template that you can use? And it's the same building blocks for a story that a movie would use or a TV show would use. And I know it sounds like a lot, but I swear you can do this in a social media post. You can do it in an email. You can easily include all of these things and tell a story. And I'm going to demonstrate that in just a minute. So you start with exposition, which is basically the who, what, where, when, why questions. Who is the story about? You're introducing the characters. Where are we? Are we at your sanctuary? Where is your sanctuary? You're setting the scene. Who is telling the story? You're basically just setting the context and making sure that people know what you're talking about. You're introducing your characters and you're setting the tone and you're laying the foundation of the story. And then you move into your conflict and rising action, which is the driving force behind the story. It's what propels it forward. So when your characters are facing a challenge. So if you think of a narrative arc as an actual arc, like on a roller coaster, this would be the trip up to the peak of the roller coaster. And then the climax is the top of that peak. That's the top of the arc. And that's when the characters must make a decision and find a path to resolution. And then you have the falling action, which is the trip down. You're, you're, you made your decision. You can see a path forward and you're on your way to resolving your conflict, which would be the bottom of the arc. So in this case, one of your characters could be an ape in your care or one that you were called to take in. And your sanctuary could also be a character, a specific person at your sanctuary could be a particular character in your story. But this is a basic narrative arc. So we meet the characters, they encounter a conflict, they must make some kind of decision, and then they resolve the conflict. And then we end the story. So when I say arc, I really do find it helpful to think of it as a slow climb. So you're starting at the bottom with your exposition, you're climbing up to your climax. And then after your climax, you're falling down and you're resolving it hopefully in happily ever afterland. But this is the basic narrative arc that most people who tell stories use. And it's also 100% applicable to fundraising. I know it feels like there's not a lot of space to do all of this, but I assure you there is. So just as an example, and this is a completely fictional story, but I was able to hit all of those points in just three short paragraphs. So this is a fictional rescue story about Max. So we're going to start out meet Max. This is our exposition. He had a rough start in life. He was born in a lab in 2001 and endured hundreds of procedures in his life, until finally the lab to agree to release him to our care last year. So that is your rising action. We knew we needed to help Max. But after a lifetime spent in a cage in a laboratory, we knew it was also going to be a long road to safety for him. So that's your conflict. Thanks to generous donors like you, we were able to take Max in and give him a second chance. So you're also setting yourself up as a place of hope and second chances, which is really helpful with with a nonprofit storytelling. He moved into our sanctuary last year. And while he took some time to adjust, we have seen him blossom in the safety of our sanctuary. So now this is our falling action. Max is safe. Today, Max is known for being charismatic and kind and gentle to his fellow chimps, his resolution. And then you have your call to action at the end, help us provide second chances to more chimps like Max and advocate for the end of the use of chimps in research. Can you donate $25 for Max? So even though that was not a whole lot of copy, you were able to hit all of those points in just a few paragraphs. This could easily be an email. This could be a Facebook post. This could be a story on your mighty cause page. So even though these things sound like a lot, you can distill them very quickly into an impactful short story. And when we're talking about impact stories, we also want to make it multimedia. That's one of the things we're looking for for the storytelling prize, but it also helps you build that emotional connection. People may not react to a story about Max as strongly as they would a picture of him or a video of him. So having these things to bolster your story or even help you tell your story is really important when you're telling an impact story. If you're telling a story about a person or an animal or an ape, people want to be able to see the subject. They want to see the thing that they're supposed to care about. So that's why you want to make sure that it's multimedia. You want to get permission so you can't ethically tell a story that you don't have permission to tell. And with the animals that are in your care, you obviously have permission. But when it comes to things like volunteers, staff members, you just want to make sure that you check in if you're going to be using their likeness, if you're going to be using a video with them in it, and just make sure that they know that they're going to be a character in your story. And again, you just want to choose a story that actually illustrates your work. Again, you can have so many great stories, but if they don't accurately tell people what you do at your nonprofit and they don't address the issues that your nonprofit or your sanctuary works on, then they're not really great stories. So make sure that it ties into your programs and services. If it was something way outside of the scope, like you did an extra thing for a particular situation that you wouldn't normally do, that's not really a great fundraising story to tell because that's not the kind of work that you typically consider to be within the scope of your mission. So just make sure that you're accurately illustrating your work through the use of the story. So other types of impact stories you can tell, you don't have to just stick to one story about one ape throughout the day. It's a really versatile structure. You can use it for anything. And you can apply it to a lot of different stories. So for instance, you may want to tell an organizational story. So if you're sanctuary is the main character, you're the protagonist, and you're facing down a challenge as a group of individuals, or you're reaching a milestone where you've helped a certain number of apes, or it's your 30th year in existence, you can tell an organizational story, and you can include the conflicts that your organization has encountered as well. So that might be a way that you can tell a different kind of story about your organization. If you don't want to use a story about an individual ape, or if you want to just provide a little bit of variety, you can also tell programmatic stories. So if you're starting a new program fund initiative or advocacy campaign, that can be a really effective way to show your work. You basically won't want to tell people what you do. You want to be able to show them what you do through these stories. So if you have a really cool initiative that you're starting, like maybe a new enrichment program, or you tell me what might be applicable there, but there are programs that you can hone in on at your sanctuary that might be an interesting story to people who care about the welfare of apes. And you can also focus on staff and volunteer stories. You can make them characters with their permission. Most of your donors are going to want to hear about apes, because with these types of donors, that's what brings them in. That's what they care about. But you can also incorporate staff and volunteer arcs into your storytelling. And this is also a great use for peer to peer. So you wouldn't want to do this as your storytelling that you are submitting for the prize. But that's also a really great use of peer to peer fundraising. So you can really allow people to tell their own stories. But if you have a really cool story about a staff member, or let's say you've got a new executive director and you want to introduce them, you can also tell the story of how that person came to your organization, or something extraordinary or interesting that they do at your organization. So there's a lot of different varieties of stories that you can tell. And this framework works for all of them. So it's a really handy versatile type of framework you can use. So this is really important. We want to make sure that you're utilizing the tools on Mighty Cause to tell your story. So again, you can use a profile, your organizational profile, or a fundraiser to tell your campaign story. They are both eligible for the prize, but you can only submit one. So you can't submit your organization page and a fundraiser you have to choose. You have to choose which page you want to utilize. And we are going to be looking at media on your page. So we have several tools available to you. There's a media gallery. You can also connect your Instagram and Facebook feeds. And that's really cool because they automatically update once you connect your account. So you don't have to go in and do anything on Mighty Cause. We will pull in those updates once you connect. And we also want to make sure that you are breaking up your text with videos, images, lists, whatever you choose to use. There's headers that you can use to sort of make your story skimmable. Most users on the internet don't actually read word for word. They skim. So they're going to look for headers. They're going to look for things that catch their eye. So structuring your story in a way where you're utilizing headings, you're utilizing lists and you have graphics that can sort of break up the monotony of reading. Most of us on the internet, we have a very short attention span and we have a short amount of patience for lots of text. So anything you can do to make it more dynamic and interesting and break it up with different media is really helpful. So that's something that our panel will also likely be looking for. And just as a little bit of a pro tip, if you're going to use a video, it does have to be uploaded to YouTube or Vimeo in order for you to embed it on a Mighty Cause page. Mighty Cause is a wonderful platform, but we are not able to do what YouTube does. So you'll just need to upload your video to YouTube or Vimeo if you'd like to embed it on Mighty Cause. We also want to make sure that you know that this is a really important place that if you want to win the storytelling prize, this is what we are looking at is the page that you submit to us. So really look at your page. Look at the branding on your page, your donation levels, your descriptions, your cover photo if you're using a fundraiser or your banner if you're using your organization profile, and even just changing up your logo to be cohesive with your prize. I mean, with your story can help you win that storytelling prize. So keep your eye on the details, make sure that you're telling a cohesive story and that everything looks like it fits together. And don't forget to use all of the fundraising tools that you have at your disposal. And one thing I do want to specifically call out because we see that this is forgotten from year to year and it's a really important piece of your storytelling is your thank you page and your receipt message. So after you've told your story and you've gotten somebody to complete their donation, they get an automated email from us and they also see a page on Mighty Cause that thanks them for their donation. Your nonprofit has the ability to customize both of those things so that you can follow up on the story that you just told. So it's a really important opportunity not only to thank your donor for their generous contribution, but to reinforce the points you were making in your story. And one thing that I also wanted to just recommend to you, if you are not a graphic designer and you don't have a graphic designer on staff, you can use a program called Canva, that's C-A-N-V-A. They are free. I have no affiliation with them whatsoever aside from loving them. And they do have a nonprofit program and they have a lot of templates that you can use for infographics, logos, social media. They have a lot of great stuff in there. So if you're just like, oh, I don't know if I have the capacity to create all of these images, check out Canva because you can really do a lot and it's mostly drag and drop. You don't have to be a graphic design expert to use it. So that can be a really great asset to you. If you're on the smaller side and don't have someone in-house who's great at doing graphic design, check out Canva. And I'll just pass it on to Jackie for a couple of slides about real stories. Thanks, Linda. And I just have to say, I love Canva too. It's very easy to use. And it's the kind of thing where you can upload a photo that you want to use. You can upload the Giving Day logo. You can move the logo on top of your photo and make a social media post. It's very easy. So I just pulled together a couple of samples from a couple of pages. I don't know if these are currently updated pages or what they had from last year's event, but they're just some good examples. I try not to play favorites, but I grabbed a few. This one is from Shumfunchi Wadley Vorfinich in Zambia. And just to show how you can set up your page to compliment your storytelling, as Linda was describing. So here is a section of Shumfunchi's page that was below. The page started with some very nice images at the top and some text, but then this was prominently displayed below it. And it's great the way there's a headline here. Our goal this year is to raise $35,000. In a couple of words, it's pointing out the goal. It's pointing out what they're trying to achieve. It's pointing out the number of chimpanzees they have. And it refers to their mission. So in a few words, in a prominent placement, it's really telling a donor about the organization. And then there's this very cute infographic that was set up, showing different donation levels and the impact that those levels can make and giving donors choice, which is important. A donor coming to this page who might not have that much to donate can see right there. Just if they can give $5, that is going to make an impact that is going to help buy medications and nutritional supplements. You also give suggestions that maybe the donors can come intending to donate one amount and maybe they'll go up, maybe they'll go up a little further. Someone who thinks they're going to donate $15 can say, well, you know, for $20, we're just $5 more, I can achieve this. And if I go up to $30, I can do this. If I go up to $50, they might not make it to $1,000. It would be great if they did, but someone may want to give more than $50 than saying, well, I can contribute toward rescuing another chimpanzee in need. That will make me feel good. So it's a way of giving choices. It's a way of showing the impact of the donations. It's done in a visual way that's very easy to understand and is enjoyable to look at. People will stop and take a look at it and see the little images that go along with the numbers. Let's go to the next one. This is another example of choice that was done by Center for Great Apes here in the U.S. And this page starts with a very visible and very positive message. Help make this the best day ever. Something anyone can relate to and then some great photos of some beautiful ape faces that will draw people in and start making that emotional connection. Again, Center for Great Apes is part of their story, gave a bunch of different donation levels showing the impact that $5 could make, $50, up to $500. And notice another thing they did to make it a little bit more personal is have different apes names at the donation amounts. So for $10 a blanket for Jesse at $25 produce for orangutan kiki. So just another nice way of laying out the choices, trying to make that emotional connection and making people care are not just about giving $5 or $25, but what change they are bringing about by giving that money and they can look at the faces as they do it. So let's go to the next one. The last example is from Loud Conservation Trust for Wildlife, one of our Asian participants. This is an example of an individual story that tells the bigger story about the organization. You see a little bit more text here, but as Linda suggested, it's a good practice. It's broken down by paragraphs. If you look at the whole page, the text is broken apart by images and just first. And it is the story about the rescue of one given named Pet Noi, but it concludes with a very powerful statement at the bottom there. Without a place for wildlife to safely receive care and rehabilitation, illegally traded species like the Northern White Cheeked Gibbon will be lost forever. So that's pretty powerful and it really points out the importance of their work, the need for their work. And again, kind of, you know, will help bring about an emotional response that makes it so I want to support this organization. I also put a little screenshot of a video that they embedded on their page. And this was a mini documentary, which was a little bit longer. It's 13 minutes long. And so it's at the bottom of the page. And I know a lot of organizations will have kind of mini documentaries, the history of our organization. And it's great to include those, but just as this page did, we'd recommend not making it the center of attention, the top of a page, assuming people are going to sit and watch it for 13 minutes or even five minutes. If you want to do videos more as part of your campaign, as part of your main message, and Linda, you can add to this, but I would say don't make it more than a minute. Make it something quick, something personal that people are going to just listen to and kind of take in because, you know, people don't have time and they don't have the attention span to sit through a couple of minutes. But, you know, for those who are on this example page and scrolling down and do want more information, they did put that down there at the bottom. So if people want to listen and learn from it, they can. And Linda, I guess that'll ask you a question. What do you recommend as kind of a maximum length of videos that are being used in storytelling? It depends on the platform. I would say more than like two minutes is probably a little too much. You want to condense it as much as you possibly can because people have really short attention spans. So you're probably not going to get them to the end of the video. You know, you can always look at the particular platforms and see what the best practices are there because, you know, Twitter has a limit to how much video they will allow on their platform. But, you know, keep it to a minute or two. I would say two minutes is probably as high as you want to go unless you have a lot of story to tell and you just have to understand that most people are going to be with you in the beginning. So get all the hard hitting stuff out of the way. If you think of it as like the press release structure of the inverted pyramid. So at the top, you want, you know, all of your big messages, all the need to know information. And then as the video goes down, have more of the information that is not necessary, but adds to the story. So have your stuff that you want to make sure everybody absorbs at the beginning. But yeah, a minute or two is probably like what I would recommend as the limit. Or if you want to do something longer, have a smaller cut. So YouTube will allow you to edit your video. And I do that with most of our webinar videos because they you can chat and you don't want necessarily everybody to see every chat that you've had before a webinar started. But you can also have a couple of different cuts, especially if you're working with like a filmmaker, a volunteer filmmaker who is helping you, you can also have a shortcut that is ready for social media and is ready to be quickly absorbed. So if you have, you know, your your board members or your trustees are they really want that longer video, and they would get value of that out of that, you can always have a longer cut and a shorter cut. But a minute or two is probably the most you want to do for a quick storytelling video. Great, thank you. Yeah, and I also just wanted to piggyback off of what Jackie was saying. So these both are using a technique that we know works wonders with donors because donors like to give things rather than giving money because what does $20 mean? Does $20 make a difference? $20 is not exciting. But $20 when you attach it to a real world item that you are purchasing and you give them sort of a shopping cart experience. Donors love that they respond really strongly to that they've done studies. Food banks in the United States have struggled for decades to get people to donate money because they can take the money and make it go so much further with their partnerships. And ultimately, what a lot of them have had to do to speak to that part of the donor that really gets a lot of value out of picking out a specific item and thinking about that item going to a food bank and a family enjoying it is providing the shopping cart experience in their donation flow. And you can actually do that with Mighty Cause. So that is a great way to continue telling your story and also use a powerful technique that we know resonates with donors. So I just wanted to call that out as well because we do have a mechanism for you to do that. And it's a really great idea to actually get in there and set those donation levels and tie them to real world items. But yeah, okay, so now we're going to move on from storytelling and get into donor engagement tips. And I know we're running up on our time so this is not going to be particularly long. But one thing that you do want to think about in terms of donor engagement, especially as early giving is getting closer is donor retention. So anybody who has donated to your sanctuary in the past is low hanging fruit. And you want to make sure that you're planning to bring them back in 2021. So you have a report that you can use. It's in your Mighty Cause profile. It's in your admin dashboard. And it helps you easily identify past donors. You can filter it to find people who have given versus people who haven't. And you want to make sure that you have some emails planned specifically to this group of donors that acknowledges their giving history and ask them to come back. It's a little bit of a different ask than give for the first time or give for this purpose. You're asking them just to do what they've done in the past. And one thing that I strongly recommend is keeping an eye on your donor retention on the big day and having an email built that you have ready to go that is specifically to the donors that have not come back yet to make a donation. I would say probably midday early evening in terms of like Easter, like the event hours is when you want to send this. But that way you can just go into your retention report, pull it, get all of the people who haven't come back to give on October 12th and send that to them. Make an appeal directly to these individuals because they've given in the past. You've already done the hard work. You've converted them. You've turned them into donors and you just need to bring them back. So especially if you've participated in years past, make sure that you're planning for donor retention. And you may want to do some specific efforts, especially with those higher level donors who've given in the past. In terms of emails, you're going to be using emails a lot. As I mentioned before, email is one of the top ways that people find organizations to donate to during Giving Day for Apes and really any Giving Day, they go make a donation because they were specifically asked to in an email. So here's a couple of email ideas that you can incorporate into your day of plan or not depending on how you feel about them. The first is the head honcho email. And what I mean by that is sort of an email plus that's set up like a personal letter or an email from somebody who's high up at your organization, like an executive director, maybe your board chair, somebody that has some weight behind their position and have them speak directly to donors. That's a really great tool that a lot of nonprofits use in sanctuaries that have participated in Giving Day for Apes have used in the past to great effect. So that's a really personal way. And it's also a great way to get people to open emails, because when they get an email from your executive director, they go, Oh, wow, they're talking directly to me, even if it's an email blast, and those people don't know, and they'll answer, they'll open that email up talking about your accomplishments and showing what you've done through the impact of your accomplishments in 2020 or things that you've made happen in 2021 already. Those are great things to highlight in an email. If you're running out of content to send your donors or you're not quite sure what to say in an email, you can show your impact by showing people what you've accomplished. You can also talk about your goals in an email. What are you looking to do? What are your short term goals? What are your big picture goals? And then ask for their support in meeting those goals. That's a really direct approach you can use to talk to your donors and get them involved in your organization and invest it in your future. And then again, as I was talking about operation costs and tangible items. So sanctuary work, I mean, I don't have any experience in it and it's not familiar to the average person. So what a normal day is like, what it costs to provide food and care to the apes at your sanctuary, tying the dollar amounts to specific items that people can provide is really helpful. Tapping into that love that donors have of giving things instead of money by making the monetary amount equate to a thing and giving them that shopping cart experience or even just breaking it down and asking for $30 and telling them what $30 helps you do is a really powerful email that you can plan to send on giving day for apes. And in terms of social media engagement, Jackie covered quite a bit of this. I did want to mention that feeds are not chronological anymore. So you want to make sure that you schedule as much as you can ahead of time. But you also want to make sure that you're planning it with the understanding that users are probably not going to see your post in real time. But what you can do is you can post a schedule. So if you know you're participating in these power hours, you could make a cool graphic that lists those power hours so people can plan their gifts. But saying like this starts now on your your timeline doesn't really help because people are not seeing that in chronological order. They're seeing it according to when an algorithm through the social media platform tells it to show it to certain users. So not everybody's seeing it at the same time, which is a real bummer. But just thinking about the kind of content that you can post that allows for that and gives people the space to plan. You also want to use your stories on Facebook and Instagram. They are real time. So even though your feed is not real time, they are real time they will post as soon as you post them and people will be able to see them as soon as you post them. And they expire generally within 24 hours. Although you can make a story highlight on Instagram if you want to archive them and make them accessible in perpetuity. You can create a highlight. But that's a really great way to reach people if for something time sensitive and get their attention. And what I would also recommend is if you're using stories for the first time, don't start on the day of build up some momentum in your story so that people know to look for your stories. And so that they've hopefully watched a couple and Instagram and Facebook are suggesting that users who follow you view your story. Because if you haven't used your stories ever in Instagram or on Facebook, people just may not see them because you haven't used that feature before. And then you also want to make sure that your story your storytelling on social media is, you know, you have some continuity with the stories that you're telling on your page and elsewhere through emails and on your profile. So just make sure it's all tying in together, although you can certainly use social media to tell different types of stories. So definitely if you are in need of assistance, please reach out to support, don't suffer in silence, we're here to help you. So you can email us at support at mightycost.com. You can also give us a call. We're on Monday through Friday operation and we are here 9am to 5pm Eastern time. We're happy to help you with any technical questions that you may have. But yeah, reach out to support if you need any help related to your profile leading up to the event. And that is it for the webinar. I do want to make some time for some questions since this is the last webinar we'll have. I know we're at four o'clock Eastern time so if you need to go, that's also fine. But if you have time to stay, I'd love to take some questions from the crowd of five who is here to, you know, make sure that you feel confident and ready for Giving Day for Apes since early giving is starting on the 13th. So I'll give you guys just a moment to answer any questions. And it looks like there was a question in the chat about previous webinars. Just to reiterate, you can find previous webinar recordings on the Giving Day for Apes website. They're in the non-profit toolkit. And we also had some webinars from last year that we've archived there that had great material in them that had helpful information. Just don't use that for guidance as far as the prize schedule. Make sure that you're using this year's schedule. But a lot of the information about how to run your campaign and plan your campaign can be really helpful. So we included some old webinars as well in case you would like to watch those. I'm not seeing any questions come in. Jackie, did you have anything else that you wanted to add or cover? No, I don't think so. Other than wishing everybody luck, I know every year I'm just blown away by the storytelling. And I think it's going to be great again this year. And I think we're going to have a good event. And as Linda said, if you need any help or have any questions as you're doing your final preparations, don't hesitate to reach out to us. Yeah, absolutely. And since we're just about over time here, I'll go ahead and end the webinar. But please don't hesitate to reach out to me if you have anything that you want to discuss. Support is your best place to go if you have technical questions, just because they are faster than me and they spend more time doing them. And you're welcome, Piper. You're welcome, Francisco. Nice to meet both of you. And yeah, so just reach out to support if you have technical questions, I can help you with anything that's kind of strategy or platform related, like if you have questions about rules or how to do a certain thing. And Jackie's definitely your go to resource, if anything, you know, she's running the show as far as the event goes. So that's how to get the best answer about like, can I do this? You want to talk to Jackie. But if you need help with the platform, reach out to me or reach out to support. But I'll go ahead and end the webinar here. Thank you all so much for spending time with me. I'm really looking forward to seeing what everybody has cooking for this year. And we will make sure that this recording is available to you as soon as possible. So thank you so much.