 Alright, hello everyone. We're going to get started here in just a moment. Before we get started while people are still getting logged on, if you can hear me talking and see my screen, if you could just let me know by typing yes into the questions box of the GoToWebinar panel, that would be a huge help. Awesome, thank you guys so much. So we'll just give another few moments for everybody to get logged on and get started right at the top of the hour. Alright, so we'll just go ahead and get started. Hello and welcome to our first Giving Tuesday webinar of 2020, although I guess we did do Giving Tuesday now webinars back in May. But this is our first official Giving Tuesday 2020 webinar about engaging donors during a pandemic, a fun topic as always. My name is Linda Gerhardt and I'm the Senior Community Engagement Manager here at Mighty Cause and I've been with the company since 2016. I am a former nonprofit employee, so I have a lot of nonprofit experience. And before I came to Mighty Cause, the nonprofit sector is where I spent most of my career. And for that reason, a lot of what I do here at Mighty Cause is nonprofit education and working on fundraising with you, so that you can run better campaigns and raise more money for your causes. And if you're participating in Giving Tuesday this year and attend our free trainings, we'll be good friends because I'll be hosting a lot of those webinars and help participating in the training process as I have in previous years. Here is a quick look at today's agenda. We're going to keep this webinar very focused on the here and now in fundraising and how best to engage donors and spend a little bit of time discussing everyone's favorite topic, donor fatigue, and how to pull it all together with some donor engagement strategies and guidelines for the current fundraising climate. We will be doing a Q&A session at the end of the presentation. So if you think of something that you would like to ask while I'm presenting, please just type that into the questions box of your go-to webinar panel. And I'll make sure that we get to it once I've gotten through the full presentation. I also just want to mention because we have a lot of fall giving days outside of Giving Tuesday happening this year. Some of them are even happening on Giving Tuesday. But even though this webinar is for Giving Tuesday, and that's the framework we're using, the information contained is good for anybody who's participating in a different Giving Day. If you're participating in Georgia Gives on Giving Tuesday or Give to the Max Day or Live PC, Give PC, or any of our other events, this information will make sense for you, whether or not you're participating in our Giving Tuesday event. Alright, so since everything is upside down right now, I really wanted to start off by talking about the current fundraising landscape so we can sort of assess where we are right now. Giving Tuesday in 2020 is going to be different than other Giving Tuesdays for a bunch of reasons. First of all, 2020 is the first year that has had two Giving Tuesday events. As I mentioned a bit earlier, in May on May 5th, to be precise, there was an emergency COVID focused fundraiser called Giving Tuesday Now, which many of you may have participated in. So how will Giving Tuesday Now back in May affect Giving Tuesday this year in December? And the truth is we don't know yet. It may have no effect, or there may be some effect that we're not able to participate. And I've heard a lot of concerns from nonprofits about donor fatigue from having two Giving Tuesday events. So that's part of the reason we're having this webinar. People are sort of looking at what's already happened this year and how that will affect the remainder of the year. So also, in case you were not already aware, we're in the middle of a pandemic. And I know a lot of us, myself included, were really hoping that by summer and fall we might be in a better place. But unfortunately at this point in time in most areas we are not. Rates of the virus are rising in a lot of areas. So unfortunately it looks like the COVID effect will be a consideration for nonprofits through the end of 2020, if not beyond. Meaning that events are canceled or not able to be held or have to be moved online. So a lot of nonprofits have really had to scramble to adapt to this new circumstance. And we're also in the middle of a recession. And experts are saying that we've been in a recession since February. So unfortunately there are a lot of people who are in financial distress, collecting unemployment, which may be reduced or run out soon. And in general, financial relief for Americans is just slow. And there are a lot of people who are really hurting right now. If you work, you were working in the nonprofit space in like 2008 or so, you may remember that the great recession was a really tough time for nonprofits. So there is some anxiety around that how the recession will affect charitable giving. I don't want to spend a ton of time here but if you've been following the news, there's a lot going on. There's protests happening. There are lots of tough conversations that we're having as a country. And it's also an election year. So we have to consider that as well. And a lot of nonprofits are really struggling with capacity right now. Nonprofits are adjusting to working remotely or working reduced schedules or rotating schedules for the first time, or even trying to manage in-person operations with limited staff. So nonprofits who provide services to the community and really need to have people interfacing with the public are kind of having to change course. And a lot of nonprofits are fully remote and trying to adapt to that. So a lot of nonprofits are really, really struggling like a lot of industries are. Just to make do with limited resources and capacity and sort of thinking on our feet to try to adapt to these new circumstances. So all of these things, and this is a lot, all of these things are contributing together to making Giving Tuesday in 2020 very different than Giving Tuesdays in previous years. So I do really want to give you all some good news because there is a lot of anxiety, but we're not really seeing the horrible things that we're anticipating come to pass at this point. People are still giving to charitable causes and some causes are actually seeing a huge uptick in donations. But we've seen nonprofit giving going strong and steady this year from the beginning of the year till now. So that's important to know and keep reminding yourself of that, that people are giving right now. And this is actually consistent with what we see after disasters, after hurricanes and earthquakes, donors leap to respond. We see giving go up because people are anxious for ways to help, they want to get involved. And so while lots of nonprofits, individual donation and donation volume may vary at nonprofits, at least in general. So giving is actually fine and has been since the beginning of the year. So we haven't really seen any terrible consequence come to pass in terms of affecting charitable giving. So this year is a presidential election year and there's been a lot of talk about the election effect, which is when was when charitable giving went up significantly right after the 2016 election, which some in the media called the Trump bump after the election around the inauguration, we saw charitable giving actually go up, particularly with certain types of organizations like those that are helping immigrants and women. So correlation here is not causation I just want to make that perfectly clear election, the presidential election always happens around the busiest time for giving at the end of the year, but that is something that people are sort of looking at in terms of data and what effect this might possibly have. And there's also a concern that political giving donating to political campaigns can detract from giving to public charities, but we haven't actually seen evidence of that in years past. We don't really know that that what if any effect that the election will have on giving Tuesday and charitable giving, but it's worth keeping in mind that all of these things are happening at once and in the past. We haven't seen an effect from an election on charitable giving, but it's just another unknown factor that's kind of in play right now. Now one thing that you can do to gauge how your nonprofit might be affected is to take a look at your donation volume from 2016 and 2012 and even further back, and how the election may have impacted your organization what giving especially compared to years when there was not an election, but the unknown election effect is just another bit of chaos that we have to consider as we go into giving Tuesday and end of year this year. All right, so given all of the wild things happening in the world right now and all the crises and personal hardships people are facing. A lot of nonprofits are really struggling with the question, is it okay for us to ask for donations. And the answer is obviously yes. A lot of nonprofits have told me that they feel really unsure about asking, but there's a problem with thinking about whether or not our donors are in a position to give to charity and that's what we and we can't know what's best for our donors. Our donors are the best judge of whether or not they can give. So if you send them an ask and they're not in a position to give it that time. They just won't give in response to that ask, but it does not mean that you can't ask. And as I've mentioned before, a lot of people are actively looking for ways to get help to help and get involved so that they can feel useful and find some sort of meaning in all of this chaos. So people are giving people are donating, failing to ask or asking very sheepishly and tentatively means that they will most likely be giving to some other organization, namely one that asked them or made a better case for their cause. So I just wanted to address that and we're going to come back to this idea of how to ask and whether or not it's okay to ask. And just to get everybody on the same page about giving Tuesday. This year it is on December 1 and registration is open now at giving Tuesday dot mighty cause calm. So if you would like to participate or and you're not participating in one of our other fall giving events that are more local. You can go there right now and register to participate. You just press the big blue button that says register and by registering you'll have months of free training webinars like this one to look forward to and a toolkit that you can use to get your campaign together. It has templates and timelines and logos. And you'll also get an early notification about any upcoming training or announcements that we have for you. So if you are planning on participating and giving Tuesday now is the time to to get registered so that you take that first step to plan your campaign. All right, so now we're going to move on to one of my favorite topics I love talking about this topic. The dreaded donor fatigue. So first before we really dig into this we need to understand what donor fatigue is. And I thought I'd start with the definition that a lot of nonprofits seem to follow. Nonprofit organizations tend to regard donor fatigue as a mysterious condition that causes donors to pull away and stop giving to causes that they were previously engaged in and gave to regularly. It's sort of described by many nonprofits as an amorphous creeping terror that can strike at any time, like a monster or a plague. And the most common strategy for nonprofits to avoid it or combat it is by not asking for donations, because donors can't experience fatigue if they aren't being asked to donate right. And nonprofits also tend to discuss and ask about donor fatigue as if it's something they have little control over. It's a donor based condition and they feel like they can't predict it or stop it or manage it. I've been getting a lot of questions about donor fatigue lately, especially in light of COVID and everything else happening in the world right now. And generally speaking, I find that this is pretty much how nonprofits tend to define donor fatigue and think about this issue. So what donor fatigue means and how it actually works is quite different than how a lot of nonprofit professionals conceptualize it. Donor fatigue is actually a condition that is created in donors by nonprofits, most often individually, but sometimes collectively, which is something that you tend to see at the end of the year when donors are being blitzed by solicitations, and can't even watch their favorite TV show without an ad from a nonprofit that's asking them for money. So it can be something that a nonprofit causes in their donors, but it's also something that can happen collectively as nonprofits are making a lot of asks. Donor fatigue is actually just a sign that a nonprofit is doing something wrong and needs to change up their strategy. It can also mean you're not checking in with your donors enough and we'll talk about what that means in the next few slides. But the good news is that it's preventable with a good fundraising and marketing strategy, and it can actually be carried with some simple steps to take better care of your donors and communicate with them a little bit better. So I wanted to go through some of the common causes of donor fatigue and talk about what those things look like. One of the biggest causes I find for donor fatigue is bombarding supporters with too many urgent requests. We've probably all encountered at least one person in our lives who likes to send emails that are marked urgent or have urgent and emergency and all caps in the subject line. And then you open the email thinking that there's some kind of emergency you need to assist with. And it turns out that the urgent matter is that one of the printers is out of toner or they need to get somebody's phone number. So a lot of people deal with that in a professional context. But if you've had this done to you, you know how annoying it can be and how it'll cause you to not take future urgent emails from that person too seriously. And nonprofits are guilty of doing this to some degree. I actually get these emails from nonprofits on a fairly frequent basis. And the end result is donor fatigue because you're the nonprofit who cried wolf. So what that can look like and it can be one or all of these are a combination of these. But things like using caps lock, lots of exclamation exclamation points, asking people to help right now imposing a time limit you're desperate, you really need them to step up. And then when people open the email and they start reading the request, it's just a standard donation request you don't have any actual emergency. Now one thing that's important to understand is that this technique causes actual physical responses and a lot of people, they get an email from someone or a nonprofit with that emergency framing on it. And a physical response can kick in that gets their heart rate up affects their breathing and makes them feel like there's an actual emergency that they need to help with. And if you do this over and over again to them, you are literally giving them fatigue because this is mentally and physically exhausting. For instance, if you're an animal shelter or rescue, and you're sending out one or two emails per week, telling your donors that there are animals in peril and they need to donate now to save them. You're going to have some really tired fatigued donors on your hands because not only is this something that's really upsetting to them, thinking about animals in peril. It's very hard to deal with lots of these kinds of requests and to constantly be responding to what feels like an emergency. So eventually they may just stop opening your emails because they can't handle the emotional roller coaster anymore. They may mute you on social media so they don't have to see too many sad things and feel like they can't help. So the answer here is that you can have emergencies as a nonprofit and definitely COVID has been an emergency for a lot of nonprofits. But you just need to be cautious when using this language and phrasing and make sure that you reserve it for actual emergencies and also be careful and conscientious with countdowns. If you have a countdown every few weeks and you're constantly imposing deadlines and we need to raise this much by the end of the week, you're probably stressing your donors out. So dial it back a notch and you'll probably watch them be more receptive to your requests. So another common cause of donor fatigue is failing to close the loop. And what I mean by that is that your nonprofit can basically become like a friend or relative who is constantly hitting you up for money. They come to you and they ask you for 25 bucks and you give it to them and that next week they're back and they want $25 more. And you go, but wait, I just gave you $25 last week. What did you do with it? And they're like, Oh, well it's gone now. I spent it. So let's talk about the $25 I need this week. And hopefully there aren't a ton of you who have someone like that in your lives. But if you've ever experienced that kind of relationship, you'll know that it's exhausting constantly giving and not knowing what happened to that cash that you gave and then being hit up for more cash. Nonprofits can actually end up doing this to people by hitting them up with ask after ask after ask without offering an end. For instance, if you were fundraising to replace your roof that you're on your nonprofits building and people gave to you and you finally had enough money to replace the roof, you've successfully crowdfunded your new roof, but you never followed up with those donors. You never showed them the upgrade. You never showed them the roof that was finished and explained how great it is that you can work safely because your roof is not falling apart or leaking. And then instead you just hit them with another ask like the roof fundraiser never happened. You're creating a very jarring and unfulfilling experience for these donors. And there's likely going to be donor fatigue. So that's why it's really important to show them how you're using the money they give show them your impact show where the money goes. That can be done really easily with a quarterly roundup of what you're doing and what you've achieved using because of donors like you messaging frequently or actually literally showing them something that they helped make happen like the new roof. Or if you are an animal rescue and you rescued a sad puppy show them the puppy that he's doing fine now he's in foster care he was rescued and he got what he needed so that they have an ending to that story. And so if you haven't fully wrapped up a Giving Tuesday Now campaign, you'll want to do that ASAP or just weave that into laying the groundwork for your campaign this year. And actually if you did have a successful Giving Tuesday Now fundraiser, I would suggest using that as a segue into this year's Giving Tuesday event. You need to close the loop with your donors and the story you were telling them or they're going to be unsatisfied with donating to your organization because they didn't get closure or the satisfaction of knowing that their money made a difference. So make sure you follow up and reference your Giving Tuesday Now campaign or your last fundraiser when you're reaching out about Giving Tuesday this year. You know, just do a callback to your last campaign so that you, you know, discuss what happened with it. If you haven't done a formal closing the loop on that campaign. So another cause of donor fatigue is poor donor management. And what I mean by that is not keeping track of who your donors are as individuals, just blasting the same email out to everybody, not personalizing your emails not doing any segmentation. So that you're taking into account who donors are when you email them and what their relationship is with your nonprofit, how they interact with you. For instance, if your board members and volunteers are getting the same emails and treatment as people who ended up on your donor list but have never made a donation, you may be guilty of this. It's not a crime obviously but it is a common pitfall when we just sort of blast emails out to everybody and we treat all donors as if they are the same. And it can cause donor fatigue because it's like having a friend who only talks to you about themselves who doesn't listen to you, doesn't seem to hear you when you talk and doesn't really seem to care about who you are. If that were a friend that you had in your life, you would probably pull away from them and donors are definitely going to pull away from a nonprofit who treats them like that. Thankfully, this is a pretty easy one to remedy by simply managing your donor data, doing some personal outreach to check in with your top donors, making sure you take good notes and using segmentation when you email so you can talk to different groups of donors, more specifically and personally. And the final cause of donor fatigue that I'll talk about here is not changing up your ask, by which I mean you're only ever contacting donors when you want money, and the only thing you're ever asking them to do is donate. It can wear them out and it can make them pull away because they become bored and they become frustrated. And basically what this is is a failure to steward your donors. These donors are not getting enmeshed in your organization, they're not getting further involved, and you will lose them if you do this, if you are not stewarding your donors. So to avoid this and prevent donor fatigue, you can ask them to be a volunteer for your organization. Let them know if you have any volunteer opportunities coming up, especially as nonprofits are kind of mitigating their capacity issues right now. You might have some remote opportunities that volunteers could step up to fill for you, and a lot of people have more time on their hands. We're not going out to brunch as much anymore. So they might have more time to devote to your cause. You can ask them to fundraise for your organization with peer to peer fundraising, which we're going to talk more about in a moment. You can ask them to attend an event, which at this point should be a virtual event, and ask them to give you feedback in a survey. Some nonprofits will also offer some education opportunities like webinars or information sessions or classes or brown bag lunches with people from your nonprofit who are experts on a particular topic. As a way of people getting more involved in you doing education in your community related to your cause. And one thing people overlook is asking people to get involved on your board of directors, especially if they have strong ties to your community. There are rock stars who show up time and time again for your organization. So small nonprofits should especially be thinking about people who they can sort of cultivate to become leaders at your organization. So keep an eye on who's giving and your relationship with them. A few simple changes can really prevent this type of donor fatigue that happens when you're only ever hitting them up for money. You typically want more. And you just need to focus on building a relationship with those donors because ultimately that's what nonprofit fundraising is all about its relationship building. So when it comes to giving Tuesday or any other giving events this fall, there are a few simple things that you can do to make sure donor fatigue is not a problem for you. First, remember that these circumstances are really weird and people are already on high alert and overload with the news and their worlds and their routines being turned upside down. So try your best not to add to that stress with urgent messages and alarmist language. It's definitely important to be assertive when you talk to donors, but don't take it too far and be the org that cried wolf. Finding a way to talk about your campaign and work that's fun, that provides some hope or inspiration or reminder that there is still good in this world is a great way to make donors feel energized and hopeful instead of drained and frustrated. As we discussed, manage your donor list carefully. And this can be really simple like just singling out your volunteers and recurring donors and major donors from one time donors and whatnot so just who are your main groups of donors that you're talking to and how are you talking to them. Make a plan for personal outreach in addition to email and social media marketing to make it personal and think about the ways to engage donors that fosters a connection to your organization your cause and your community. And finally, we're going to talk about this more in the next session section, but plan to mix things up with some different fundraising techniques. All right, so now we're going to dive into some specific strategies to get donors engaged in your Giving Tuesday campaign. Give me just a moment. I just wanted to check on my audio here. All right. I just heard a noise. I just want to make sure I hadn't lost audio, but it seems to be working okay. So peer to peer fundraising is a really great way to get donors engaged because instead of just asking them to donate you're asking them to actually step up and be fundraisers for your organization. They would ask their family and friends to donate to your cause and explain why it's important to them so it's a social activity for donors. And especially if you haven't done or actively recruited people for peer to peer before this can be a really fresh new ask that doesn't actually require a whole lot of new or extra effort from your organization. And just as a note, because this is sometimes a concern, most people who create a fundraiser for a nonprofit do donate to their own page sometimes several times. So you're not missing out on their donations. You're just getting more on top of what they would normally give. And why this can be especially effective now is that it's a social activity. It's an excuse to socialize and talk to their friends and family and tell them about a cause that's important to them and reach out for connection, which is really important in our current circumstances. A lot of people are really struggling with loneliness and maintaining connections socially. So this is a way for them to do that. And it's also a great way to bring in more donors and new donors. One thing that we do know about nonprofit fundraising in general is that most people give to a nonprofit for the first time, because someone they know personally ask them to. So these people who step up to fundraise for you are going to be bringing in new people to your organization and they are actually better at doing that than you. So that's an important thing to keep in mind is that peer-to-peer fundraising is great for donor acquisition because you're more likely to listen to a message from your peer than an organization that you don't know. Asking people to fundraise for you is really not all that complicated. You can and should try some personal outreach to your top supporters and pitch peer-to-peer as a way to do more and get involved in a deeper level. That's actually really easy for fundraiser because it doesn't require much from them. It's super easy. It can be done from home, from a phone. It doesn't take much time. It usually just requires setting up some page, spending a little bit of time doing that, and then making some social media posts and maybe sending some emails to their friends and family, and then also promise to support them as they take on the task of fundraising for you. We'll also have a toolkit available on the Giving Tuesday site that has some resources for people who are looking to fundraise as well. And some nonprofits have had luck with adding a small incentive, like a free piece of swag from your nonprofit or a piece of merchandise to everyone who signs up and raises some money as a peer-to-peer fundraiser. And these don't have to be extravagant. They can be buttons, stickers, t-shirts, anything you might have lying around in a box that you can leverage to give away to people to fundraise for you. So they don't have to be custom-made t-shirts. If you have some extra buttons that you couldn't give away at your last in-person event, those can be all it takes or some bumper stickers, whatever you've got on hand. People are really responsive to incentives, so be creative in what incentives you can offer. So if your nonprofit is already doing peer-to-peer fundraising and you're doing a fantastic job at that, you're a pro at that, one way to kick it up a notch is to try creating an event. Events on Mighty Cause are organized peer-to-peer campaigns where individuals and teams of individuals can fundraise together toward a common goal with a little bit of light competition. It's friendly competition, usually. And each team and individual fundraiser alone, they fundraise alone or as part of a team, and they have their own page. So they can customize their own page. It can be as custom or as generic as they want it to be. And it's really great for larger-scale efforts. If you know that your nonprofit can easily get like 15 to 20 people to fundraise for you on Giving Tuesday, an event would be perfect for you. A really important thing to note here is that, on average, on our platform, events raise more than most nonprofits or individual campaigns raise on their own. So these are usually awesome at bringing in funds because you have a lot of feet on the ground, a lot of boots on the ground, and people fundraising for you. And the events product just adds structure to a large-scale peer-to-peer campaign. You can create fundraiser templates and use it to complement and augment your overall Giving Tuesday campaign message. So it doesn't have to be in place of your campaign if you still would like to do some direct outreach to your donors, which we definitely recommend. But your event that you organize can sort of be working alongside of that. So you're just adding a new element that's bringing in funding and reinforcing your message. And you also have more tools to manage an event than you would with an individual fundraiser. So somebody who creates a fundraiser for you, you can kind of see what they're doing. But they're kind of on their own, to some degree, on the platform. But there are more tools built in if you'd like to communicate with them through the platform, provide templates for them, and see what they're doing in depth, built into the events product. So it's set up for you to do that. And most importantly, an event can provide a sense of community and belonging. And that's really important and meaningful right now. So this is a really great technique to keep to get donors engaged and keep them interested in your campaign. I did want to provide some ideas you can use if you're sort of wondering, okay, I'm on board with an event, but what would we actually do? Well, one of my favorite things to see I love to see this is a board of directors fundraising challenge. Fundraising and the financial well being of your organization is part of your board members commitment to your nonprofit. And this is a really fun way for your board to publicly show their support. And pulling together annual donations from your board as a matching grant, or actually having them use their dues as a matching grant as a group or individually is a great way to take a donation that you already know you're going to get and use that to turn it into more donations. And you could also do something similar with volunteers and staff, or even coordinate I've seen this before and it's really fun, coordinate a showdown between your staff and your volunteers and see who raises the most money. It could be that the winners get a pizza party, or something like that just so that you can give them a reward for fundraising really well and sort of give them something to compete for. Funds are a perennial favorite and providing a suggested reading list that will help people learn more about your cause could be a cool spin on it so for instance if you're a food bank and you have some some books that you know do a really good job of explaining food justice issues. You can suggest those books to people to read and maybe and have a couple of different levels of readers. If people wanted to get their kids involved is there a book that's really great for kids to learn about hunger. And these issues so you can get really creative and you can really tie it into your cause as a whole. You could also have a virtual gala. I hate to say it we're not going to be having any in person galas anytime in 2020. It's just not safe so you can sell tickets through our event bright integration. Get some peer to peer fundraising going you could also do that in lieu of selling tickets and think of some fun ways to make it a good time through streaming. I like having guest speakers, musicians and that sort of thing you can do it on zoom of Facebook live. There's a lot of options for how to have a virtual gala. And something that I think is really cool that we've actually seen a lot of lately on my ecause is art contests and photo contests. That's something that I don't always think of but they're always really cool when they happen. One organization had a contest for artwork that was going to go on a new t shirt for them. And we've also seen a couple of pet photo contests, where the winner of the contest is the pet that raises the most money. So people are voting for their favorite pet in the contest by making a donation to their page. So there's a lot of really cool stuff you can do with events. I hope these ideas at least help give you a running start, as you think of how you could make an event work for giving Tuesday, or if another giving event that you're participating in this fall. All right, so getting people interested in an event requires a little bit more than just asking to fundraise on their own. Typically you're also building a page where you're coordinating this event. But it's really totally doable and now is around the time that you'd want to start planning out what you would like to do. So hosting an info session or virtual happy hour where you launch your event and you talk to your supporters about your campaign and how to get involved is a really great way to generate interest. I've seen a couple of events actually do a virtual happy hour to kick off their events in the fall. So this is something that you can consider to give people a sense of community a sense of belonging a sense that this is a group happening and get them excited about your event. And you could also just send out an email to your tried and true supporters and ask them to sign up. You can use social media creating a graphic with the URL and a quick explainer of what you're doing and why you're doing it and how it works is really simple and easy and can generate interest. And again, incentives work. I've seen them work a lot. Any swag that you have sitting around will do bumper stickers, hats, t shirts, anything that you want to get rid of. Those can really tip the scales in terms of people choosing to participate, you know, competing for a hat doesn't seem like much but for some reason it really does work so generating interest can be as simple as trying to off as finding some incentives that generate interest. And you can also get creative here as well like for staff and volunteer challenges if you're emailing or talking specifically to that group of people, maybe a prime parking spot at your building for 2021 is an incentive that you can offer that would be really meaningful for them. That doesn't cost your organization anything. So, there's really easy to get people interested just need to be creative and think outside the box. Okay, and last but not least, focusing on recurring giving can be a really great giving Tuesday angle, especially at this particular moment in time, because it allows donors to make smaller monthly donations that represent a long term investment and commitment to your cause. So, these are more approachable amounts so if you're concerned about asking for people asking people to give too much, asking for $10 a month or $15 a month or whatever the amount may be is a much smaller ask. And for people who might be experiencing some experiencing financial anxiety, it seems like a much more approachable ask recurring donations are easy to set up and manage through mighty cause everybody who checks out is able to choose whether they would like to make their a monthly donation. And they can manage it through the platform as well they can update their credit card change the date their donation is processed, change the amount and cancel if they want to do that through the platform. And just as a note, you can also set up a recurring donation through our widget. So if you have our widget on your website, they can also set up recurring donations there. And also this is just a fresh ask. If you haven't run a recurring giving campaign before or you don't have a recurring giving program. You're asking for their ongoing support and explaining why that is so meaningful. And it can just be a way to shake things up and make a new type of ask. And we will most likely be giving a webinar, totally devoted to this topic of recurring giving. So stay tuned for that. And you can also find an older webinar that we did I think. Late last year about starting a recurring giving campaign the information is still good. And that is in our webinar library. So if you go to mighty cause calm slash guide. You can find that webinar there and watch that if you wanted to watch an hour of information about starting a recurring giving program and building a campaign around it. All right, so we're kind of wrapping everything up here and we're going to talk about the rules of donor engagement. What's the most important we started off the webinar with this message and we want to end with it is don't be afraid to ask the vast majority of your donors and supporters. They give to your nonprofit because they know that you need their support so they're not going to take it personally. If you ask them and they can't personally give. Sometimes nonprofits can be really reactive to one or two donors who say, Hey, I just lost my job. Why are you asking me for money. I know that that's a very small piece of your donor base. So if one or two people might respond negatively to you emailing them or asking them for money. Just keep the big picture in mind most nonprofit donors are perfectly aware that your nonprofit relies upon their support for for you to continue providing services to your community and working towards your mission. Don't ask you won't won't receive people are giving right now so if you're not asking for donations most likely they are going to just find somewhere else to give who asked them. And yeah just keep in mind donors are still giving to causes they're giving in large numbers, and it is okay to ask your nonprofit deserves to be in the mix and considered if somebody's looking to make a donation, even if you're not providing direct assistance with anything related that to what's going on in the world right now. Be empathetic to their situation. Use urgency sparingly as we talked about, you know definitely using a sort of language is helpful like you don't want your, your CTA button in your email to say, please give you want it to say give now donate now, but you don't need your whole email to say that it doesn't need exclamation points and it doesn't need to be framed as an emergency if it's not a true emergency. Sometimes just building in a little bit of empathy and acknowledging the circumstances and difficulties that we're all facing is enough to make donors feel heard and seen. Provide alternate ways for people to help besides donating and we've talked about some of these peer to peer volunteering etc. So that way if I can't give financially to your organization right now because I'm experiencing some financial distress, I might be able to do data entry for you for a few hours from my home. So there's other avenues for me to feel useful and helpful, because ultimately that's what people are looking to do when they make a donation to a charity is they want to feel useful. And then be cautious of what emails you send to which donors. For instance, if you had a program at your animal shelter to provide low cost services to pet owners who need those services at a lower cost, you may want to exclude them from some emails. You doesn't mean you can't ask them but if for instance you know that somebody's using those services, because they have financial difficulties, maybe those are not the best donors to ask right now. So you might want to exclude them from some emails asking them for money, you can use your best judgment there but just be conscious of who you are asking to make a financial contribution at this time. You can easily exclude a list of donors that you don't want to contact when you're sending an email and constant contact or MailChimp or whatever program you use. Provide hope and inspiration. So this is one thing that nonprofits can do that is a real service to people's mental health during challenging times. You can operate from a place from place of hope nonprofits are the helpers. You guys are the problem solvers who are taking on difficult issues in the world and you're finding solutions, and you are providing hope so operate from that place of hope. Focus on stories and messaging that give people a break the 24 hour news cycle is intense people are doom scrolling. That's what they're calling it when you get sucked into your phone and are just scrolling the news constantly and it's one bad thing after another. You can provide a break from that you give people hope you're solving problems. So show them what you're doing to make the world a better place show them how they can get involved and weave in that message of hope when you're sharing stories about your work. Even if you're telling a hard story about a difficult situation, you can still tell that story from a place of hope. So messages of change collective impact improving communities and the world for future generations those are things that are going to resonate in 2020. Now if you have a small nonprofit that's doing something very particular you obviously don't need to come in like you're going to save the world, but definitely talk about how you're changing lives how you're helping and that you're doing your part so that's one thing nonprofits really should be focusing on right now is their role as the helpers. We've all seen the Mr. Rogers name that says look for the helpers that is you guys so make sure that you're operating from that place when you're you're asking donors for donations. They want to help they want hope they want inspiration, and you guys can help them find meeting and inspiration so just try to consider that as you're putting together your campaign and you're messaging around that campaign. All right and finally follow up and give thanks. So as you're planning your campaign, you should also in tandem be planning on your and following up with your donors. When people make a donation how are you thinking them. Where do you go after they've already given their donation do you have something in place for them that will help steward them and help get them in meshed in your organization. So you do have some tools available on mighty cause that will kind of get you over the initial hump, like your thank you page that is what what they see when they check out. So they'll be able to see your thank you page so make sure that you have that filled out that's in your checkout flow on your dashboard and you also have your custom thank you message on your receipt so on mighty cause when a donation is made. They are automatically emailed a tax receipt which is pretty technical and not very fun but you can add your own message in there that makes it personal so it kind of automates the thank you process for your nonprofit. Studies have shown that the speed with which nonprofits. And their thanks basically makes a big difference and whether or not donors choose to come back and make another donation so these tools. They seem small but they're very important because they help you. Thank your donors quickly. And then you also want to think about things like thank you cards, letters phone calls so these are things that you can enlist volunteers with which feeds into some of the things that we were talking about earlier about alternate asks. Coming up with a plan to thank them in a more personal way, and you can get volunteers involved in that as well. One easy thing that you can do is if somebody makes a donation for the first time, if you are using something like Mailchimp, you can create an onboarding journey for new donors basically. So when they make their donation, thank them, go have them go through the standard process, but then start stewarding them start telling them more about your organization and how they can get involved. And learn about your cause and what you do in your community. So just something as simple as a series of emails for new donors can make a huge difference in what you're actually able to do with those donors. And then remember to follow up. So if you are fundraising for something specific or even if you're just fundraising in general, just let your supporters know the impact of the money that you raised on giving Tuesday 2020. So let them know what you are able to do, whether that's just an update just for them or whether it's personalized email system of your bigger donors. Make sure that you are closing the loop, because you're going to be going right into end of year, and then a new year so make sure that you are putting an end in your story. You don't want to just keep asking them because that can sort of be the process of giving Tuesday, and you can also just use giving Tuesday as your end of year campaign that's absolutely fine to do, but just make sure that your story has an end. All right, so thank you guys for sticking with me I'm going to be taking some questions so just give me a second to go through all of this. Okay, oh, I'm sorry it looked like a couple of you did lose audio, and I'm really sorry for that we are recording and hopefully that was picked up through go to webinar and we will make the recording available for everybody. And just, yes, we will be distributing slides you will have access to the recording as well. And we'll see if there's lost audio we'll see what we can do to recover it. But I'm sorry about that I heard a noise and I wasn't sure what that was but apparently we lost audio for a minute. So thank you pledges for miles walked and such. So that's a really great question. And there are some platforms that have historically done that. Basically, it would just be a straight donation so if you wanted to do like a walk a font, or read a font. It's, it's just a straight donation so if I'm you know pledging to walk 20 miles over the course of a month. I would just be asking for support so if you want to pledge $20 you can pledge $20. We don't really have a mechanism to do like, you know, okay I'm going to pledge $20 per mile and then hit somebody with that full amount. They're just making a simple donation they're showing their support so we don't really have a tool for that. And it's a lot simpler just to say hey pleasure support to me make a donation and $20, but we don't have a pledge system they're just straight donations that process immediately. So I hope that helps. We do have a lot of walkathons and we haven't really found that that is a feature that our users have missed. They still do quite well on our platform and people are just pledging their general support by making a donation and contributing to their overall fundraising goal so that's typically how it's handled on mighty cause. How important our statistics to telling stories I found that many journalists are asking for numbers on clients served and food distributed. That's a really great question. It depends. Sometimes I haven't found in my career and I worked in marketing and communications at nonprofits. So that statistics were really all that important certainly when you're talking about things like annual reports. Those are really important things to disclose to your donors. So that's when you want to get the graphs out that's when you want bar charts and pie charts and explain to them by the numbers, what you're actually doing and where their money is going as part of an accountability process with your donors and the public in general. So that's where I think it's really important. It can be really helpful if you have a certain statistic that you want to build out. So let's say, you know, we just in terms of like food and hunger organizations like the percentage of families that you're trying to serve like whatever you your what statistic you're focusing around tell a story around that because your donors don't necessarily need to know like the down and dirty details of what you do. They just want to feel the impact. So definitely statistics can help. And in an annual report that's something that's very important and you want to build out as part of accountability but when you're building a campaign and you're building a message. If you have if you're sharing a statistic, have a story behind that what story what does that statistics. Statistic tell like how does that fit in in a human sense. So a list of statistics and infographic. Those are not really super compelling unless there's a really compelling emotional story behind those things. That's generally how donors think you do have some donors. Excuse me I just wanted to get drink a water real quick. Sorry about that. You do have some donors who are very focused and fixated on statistics and they should be available you know you should be accountable to your donors. But in general when you're marketing a campaign, if you're going to share statistics have a story to tell along with it what does that tell about your nonprofit and the people you serve and the work you do. So as long as you use that framing they're really important. Having some, especially if you find that reporters are asking you, don't turn away the media, like have the find those statistics, get those together, if you can, and just have you know maybe a document with some statistics that you can quickly quickly pull out. But with donors there, they kind of are hit or miss. Sometimes they can be overwhelming for donors. They don't want to think about math or they don't want to think about the size of a problem. They just want the inspiration they want the feeling of helping. So that's generally how I find they're helpful is just to sort of either tell a story or augment a story but a list of statistics is not super compelling to donors. If there's not a story that goes along with it so I hope that helps. Let's see. To clarify I will make this available to everybody so you'll have the recording and the slides that there were a couple of questions about that so I just want to make it clear. I will get it uploaded and sent to you as soon as I can. Okay, so the last question I have here. Please give an example of ending the story while starting a new campaign. That's a really great question. So, for instance, there was a, I was very affected by the story there was a dog for that a nonprofit that uses mighty cause was helping and unfortunately this poor dog was the victim of sexual abuse. And it was a horrifying story and they told it very sensitively they told it very well, and they managed to actually they followed up they so once this dog had been helped. They raised the money that they were looking to raise for this dog. And they got her the medical care and treatment that she needed it was a hard thing to read about but they were very firm in their messaging we are helping her. This is what we do. This is the work that we face and this is what your money helps us do. They followed up about that dog and they did do some callbacks to this particular dog. You know remember huggles she's in a really great home. And, you know, like all of these other dogs that we help she's in our foster care program. This is how you can support that program. And so you know you don't need to call back every story you've told, but they closed the loop on that dog and they did present some callbacks when they were collecting more money. Eventually donors don't have that long of a memory. This particular story was a very hard story so it stuck with me, but they did call back to it a few times. They mentioned this dog and subsequent emails when they were fundraising and gave people updates about how she was doing, because this dog, you know, stuck with a lot of people. So these kinds of callbacks, they don't have to be extensive. But once you end the story and say, Hey, here's the happy ending is this dog is adopted. We helped her she's got a loving home now. They did call back to her. And that's my background is an animal welfare and sheltering we also had. When I was working for an animal shelter we had a set of three puppies who were really badly abused, unfortunately, and they came to us in pretty poor shape they need a lot of special medical care. And they were fundraised specifically for that medical care for these puppies because it came out of a restricted fund. So what we actually did at the end of the year the timing just kind of worked out was we actually we had already closed the loop those dogs had found their homes. But at the end of the year we had one of our volunteer photographers come to our shelter and take a picture of the we reunited the puppies. They were dogs at this point so they were no longer puppies. We took video of them meeting for the first time after so long in their new homes, and took a nice holiday picture of the dogs together, which you know God bless that photographer she was really talented, because they were, you know, kind of teenage dogs at that point they were around one or two years old. And that was part of our end of year appeal is, here's the story of these these dogs that we've helped look how great and healthy they are. Here's a cute picture of them because you guys were really invested in the story. And so that was kind of how we called back to something that had really resonated with our donors in the past, and sort of made sure that people understood that this is this has this work has impact that goes beyond, you know you making the donation because of you, these dogs have loving homes and look at how great they're doing now. So something like that can be really effective it obviously depends on, you know, what you do as an organization what kinds of stories you're telling, and what kind of access you might have to people whose stories that you're telling. So that's just sort of one a couple of examples that I've seen and been involved in, but you don't have to do extensive callbacks, but just closing the loops that there's an ending to the story. And then if it's someone that really resonates with people doing a call back to it say hey, you know we raised this much money for this particular fun, and it allowed us to do this. So we're asking you again basically the Bernie Sanders once again I am asking you for a donation, kind of deal so there's a lot of creative ways. If you have a favorite example I would love to see it because I love when nonprofits do this. They tell a good story and they close it so that it's satisfying for the donors. See. I apologize if you were taken off guard by the story of the dog I, you know I worked in that field so I'm very sorry if that was something that was sensitive to you. I, I'm really sorry if you had your daughter in the room and I apologize. So that was just this that was the first example that came to mind for me. Okay, so what if as a covert appeal our need is ongoing because of the pandemic and therefore our need hasn't ended. This isn't one time work our clients return weekly. As the pandemic dictates their close to close the loop so basically what do you do if you haven't reached the end of your story. That's a really great question. You don't need to necessarily end the story if you're continuing to fundraise for covert relief. You don't need to stop doing that or pretend that covert isn't happening and that you're not doing this ongoing work. But maybe talk about, you know, here's an update on what we've been able to do related to covert relief since we started fundraising for it. You know we've helped X number of people we've been able to deliver X number of meals or provide this service, providing a little bit of information, maybe some photographs of you know what's what you've been able to do just an update that lets people know that you're you're doing the work. It's more the problem and the donor fee donor fatigue comes into play when you ask them for money and they give you money and then you just ask them for money again. You can get a newsletter type email about or out or just an update or something that here's what we've been up to. Here's what we've been doing here's you know, a video of our staff you know, masks and gloves, you know, delivering meals or whatever it is that you do, just show them that you're doing the work it doesn't have to be an ended story. If it's ongoing but just let them know, hey we're doing this and we're doing we're able to do this, all because of you. That kind of thing can be really fulfilling so you don't have to end it if it's not over just give them an update, especially before you go into another ask. All right, excellent so that is all of the questions I have for today. If you think of anything after the webinar that you wanted to ask me feel free to email me my email is Linda at mighty cause calm that's Linda with an eye. So go ahead and end it here. Thank you all so much for joining me today and happy fundraising.