 Okay. I'm going to go ahead and get started. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the fundraising strategies webinar for Give Back Tahoe Giving Season 2021. My name is Lisa Galperin. I'm the Community Agent Manager here at Mighty Cause. And today we're going to be going over some common fundraising strategies that you can utilize to make a successful campaign for the Give Back Tahoe Giving Season this year. Before we do so, we're going to be going over some platform basics, just some reminders, refreshers, especially for those of you who couldn't attend the first webinar we had this year that went over some of those technical tools and features. So before we jump into the actual dashboard and where you're going to be managing your organization on Mighty Cause, just some quick helpful reminders. This year's giving season is going to start on Giving Tuesday, November 30th until December 31st. Registration ends October and a couple of days actually, October 14th. So if you haven't done so, you want to make sure that you register as soon as possible so that we can approve your organization and you can be ready for this year's giving season. So as you are logged in as an administrator for your organization on the platform, you're going to have an organization dashboard available to you. So for returning organizations, you know this is where you can manage your organization, view your donor data. For new organizations, if this is your first year participating, this is where you're going to be able to see who donated to your organization. You can edit your organization page, your campaign, etc. And so your dashboard is divided into these key segments where you can find all of these tools and features. If you need more information on your dashboard, feel free to check out the first webinar we did where we delved a little bit more into each of these areas. So what we recommend completing if you are a new organization is the to-do list. The to-do list is a great way to get started and it provides you a guide on what features you should fill out or complete, such as uploading a logo, adding a description, building your thank you page, setting up direct deposit. For those organizations that are returning, this is also just a really great helpful reminder to review the content that you already have on your page and see what needs to be updated. Maybe you need to take a second glance at your thank you page and update that language from last year. As I mentioned, as a new organization, you're going to have an organization page where donors can come and donate to your organization. And some thing we'll talk about later on in the webinar is really the story that you're selling to your donors or that you're trying to share with your donors. And that's what the organization page is there for. If you're a returning organization, this is also a great place to revisit, look at and see what you can change and customize for this year. And again, we'll talk a little bit more about that later on in this webinar in more detail. Another thing to edit, as I mentioned, is your thank you page, but also your overall checkout flow, which is what are the suggested donation levels you're providing to donors. If you're subscribing those donation levels, maybe you want to add a custom thank you message. Those are all things that you can find on your dashboard through the checkout area of your organization dashboard. And one of the last sections that we'll be talking about from a technical aspect is the volunteer management tool that all organizations on Give Back Tahoe have access to. This is a really great opportunity to share with donor supporters what volunteer opportunities that you have available. So you can access that through the fundraising tool section on the dashboard, and you'll find volunteers there, and you can add whatever volunteer opportunity you have available. And that could be anything from just a one day one off volunteer opportunity, or maybe you are looking for someone to help with social media throughout the year. It really can be anything that you want and you'll have a lot of information that you can provide on the form if you need to, maybe if you want to add a form that they have to sign off you can add all of that through the tool. That can be found through the fundraising tool dashboard. Once you've added your volunteer opportunities, those will be listed on your organization page for donors and supporters to see, but also most importantly within the Give Back Tahoe search, there is a filter for donors to also pull up any organizations that have added a volunteer opportunity. So if you want to really share an opportunity and have people see it again it's a really great tool to spread word on something that you may need more help on. Okay, so now that we've gone through some of the technical refreshers of the platform, we're going to get more into the strategy component and how to create another successful Give Back Tahoe giving season campaign. The first thing is to make sure that you are setting yourself up with a goal for your overall Give Back Tahoe season. And it's important to set a goal that is achievable and meaningful for your organization. So that's why we always recommend organizations to set a smart goal which is specific measurable achievable realistic and time based. A goal in mind that really helps you to actually plan out your campaign and what specific strategic elements you want to utilize in order to achieve your goal. So a smart goal is something that as is mentioned is specific and something that is realistic. So for example, increase total amount raised by $5,000 or retain 40% of donors from 2019 or 2020 Give Back Tahoe season. If you have specific goals, then it's much easier as I mentioned to think about ways and how to achieve it. When it's something broad like raise money or engage people. It's really harder to think about what steps you need to take in order to achieve that because it's not something that's really measurable. So as I mentioned in the last slide is that it's really important to make sure that your the goal that you're setting is realistic. I showed you an example of maybe for one organization, it's increasing total dollars raised by $5,000 by $5,000 and maybe for one organization that is completely realistic and achievable but for another organization. It might be a totally far off goal that is not possible for them at this time. So think about what is realistic for your organization to achieve. And one way of thinking about what is realistic is if you are returning organization. So go to nation's report on Give Back Tahoe.org and look at your report and see how many total dollars raised you've received how many donors did you receive how many recurring donors did you receive. Look at all of those statistics to think about what are practical goals for your organization and what you want to achieve this year. If you are a brand new organization. You have your current metrics of fundraising this year or last year, and that will help you provide the ability to set a realistic goal for this year. But one thing to also keep in mind is that goals don't have to be monetary. I've mentioned increased dollars raised. That's a very common goal a lot of organizations have and that may be your goal for this year. However, from some for some organizations, they have goals that aren't necessarily not necessarily monetary. It could be you want to engage with your board members more this year. You want to increase the number of recurring donors or you want to increase the one time gift size or your average donation amount, or people who volunteer for organization. These are non monetary goals that you can set for your organization that again will help provide you a guide as to what kind of strategy that you want to set up for give back Tahoe this year. So once you have your overarching goal. You can then set many goals throughout your entire campaign to help out and reach your overall goal and especially with a giving challenge or giving season like give back Tahoe where it's multi week. It's actually really perfect and helping map out a larger goal because you can dissect each week with many goals and when you also have many goals. It's also a really great marketing strategy to share with your current donors as you as the campaign goes by. So if your overarching goal is to increase donations by $5000 share that with donors and as you, you know start reaching your goal share with them how close you are to it. It's again a non monetary goal of increasing your average gift size share that with your donors as well throughout your campaign or how close you are to achieving that goal and that really helps build excitement momentum and gets people really excited for the overall campaign. So something that's actually very commonly overlooked that will talk also a little bit more later on the in the webinar where we're talking about email marketing is donor retention because donors who have donated previously to your organization. You're actually more likely to donate to your organization again. So donor retention is a really great goal to have and it's a really good metric to review and think about as you're thinking about your campaign. So if you're a returning organization, we actually have a donor retention report available to you through the dashboard that gives you a snapshot on how your organization is retaining donors year over year, or from last year's event to this year's event. So when you're thinking about who you want to reach out to this is a really great reference to utilize on you can pull up a list and you can see all the donors that you have not retained yet this year, and that's a really great list of people to reach out to. If you're a brand new organization, this tool be really helpful for next year and something to consider as you participate next year and give back Tahoe. If you are also new. If you do have a list of donors that have participate or that have donated to your organization last year, you may want to consider creating your own list and seeing who hasn't donated to your organization this year from last year. Right, so we're going to get into matching grants, one of the most common fundraising strategies that organizations utilize for giving challenges. So for those of you who are brand new to matching grants matching grants is a marketing tool that helps motivate donor donors to give immediately. Because they really feel the impact of their donation they feel the opportunity that they can double their donation and make an even larger impact with their donation. So it's really great to use strategically to help with all of those goals that you just set up. So, as I just mentioned, one of the benefits of a matching grant is that it acts as a buy one get one free and it inspires people to not only donate, but perhaps even donate more than they would have without a match since they know their dollars are going to go even further. Another reason why matching grants is a useful tool is it's a really great way to build a different relationship and build stewardship within your organization afford new donors or donors that typically give a large amount to your organization, or any businesses that you work with. It's a way for someone to participate and work with your organization maybe in a different capacity or in a different way than they had before. So it's a different ask that you are asking someone to do. And of course, with matching grants since it really inspires and motivates people to give it really helps build momentum. And it's a really great marketing strategy that you can utilize in your email communication and social media communication. So we get this question a lot of, well, who do I ask for a matching grant, I really want one but who would be willing to provide me one. Well, a matching grant can come from anywhere sometimes organization gets get get really fixated that it has to come from one donor it has to come from a business. But that's not always the case. matching grants can maybe come from a board member, but they could also come from a collective all your board members coming together and pulling funds together to provide a board match. That's actually really common on match that you've seen on the platform previously. It could be a large donor, as I mentioned if there's a large donor that you've worked with before who's given to your organization. This is a different opportunity for them to make a really big impact for your organization. So it's not just a one time donation they could be really helping you raise a lot more money with, you know, a donation that they would have made in the past. It could be a sponsor or local business or corporation that you've worked with. And it could be as I mentioned as your board is pulling money together could be staff, could be any group of people that want to support your organization and want to pull funds together to create a match for your organization. So much can come from anywhere and anyone. So, once you figured out kind of who you want to contact, how do you actually secure a matching grant. Well, obviously the first step is to prospect like we mentioned is trying to find out who those people are, who is most likely to provide a match, reaching them, sending out personal one on one outreach to touch base with these people. For some they may not even know what a match is or understand what a match does. So you may have to explain to them the impact that a match can make for your organization. And again when you have those goals that you created in the first couple of slides that we talked about, you can help how that will impact your organization and meeting those goals that you're trying to set. And of course making the ask of, you know, asking them to provide you a match with all the information that I just shared. So once you have a match on the platform, you're going to want to go ahead and actually add it. So we have a tool available on the dashboard. It can be found within the fundraising tool section of your dashboard, and it's located within matching grants. So you go ahead and create a match and when you open up create a match you'll be able to add all of the necessary information about your match in there. If you are working with a local business or company you can add their logo in there, but you would add the match value, the date and time that you want it to start and when do you want it to end, and also the match type. So what's really great about our match tool is that we actually have a lot of different options available. Obviously the most common type of match that we see is a one to one match. If one donates $5 your organization gets $10, but we also have different match types available. For example, maybe you want to set up a match where if you get 20 donors, then you will receive $1,000. So the match that you've created with your grantor you can create number of donors number of donations. So there's a lot of different opportunities to also think of a creative match or work with the grantor to come up with what you think will be best for your organization or the goals that you've created. So when your match is live so when that start date that you've entered happens and it's live you'll see a sticker on your organization page donate button that lets everyone know that you have a match currently live on the platform. There will be a filter in the search so as I mentioned mentioned we have a filter for donors to find volunteers. We also have a filter for donors to find any organizations that have a match if they want to, you know, really make an impact with their donation. It's really available on your organization dashboard and in the search and also within your organization dashboard there's going to be a tile that shares all the information that you've provided about your match so that donors know this is how much they have left. This is the type of match they have if the donor of the grantor wants to have their name publicly they'll be able to see who provided the grant. So they'll be able to see all of that information on there. These are the common questions that we get about matching grants. Does the matching grant have to be processed online. So, technically, no donations may through the mighty cost platform count towards leaderboards and prizes. So, technically, it is better if the grantor makes their donation online for your organization because then it can then it can count for any prizes that give back Tahoe will be giving out during the giving season, but it is not required you know if your donor wants to make their donation via check, they can it just won't be included in your leaderboards. So that's just something to consider, not necessarily a right or wrong but one, but then giving online is more beneficial for your organization. The donations made to peer to peer or fundraising pages count towards the match. Yes, and it's a little bit of your choice as well, and how you set up your page. But if you set up a match through your organization dashboard, then you can have it set so that any fundraising page for your organization will have that match included on it. So one matching grant active at the same time. Yes, you can have multiple matching grants active at the same time. If you don't want them all at the same time, you can also cue them to go one after the other so that you have a match happening all throughout the day or all throughout, you know, every week, etc. Oh no I entered my matching grant wrong. What do I do so one thing to know about the matching grant tool is that it is a display and internal reporting tool. So it's not real money necessarily that your that we're collecting obviously what the donor is giving is real but the actual match value that we may be adding to your metric that is just, you know, we're just adding not real money on to your metric. If something goes wrong, please reach out to mighty cost support and we're more than happy to work with you and handle the issue. We can always, you know, delete the match and start over again will work with you to make sure that everything is correct and on the platform. One of the most important things just to remind yourself is that it's really just a display and reporting tool and for donors to see that their donation makes an impact for your organization with a match. So, after you've created your match, you have your match in your system, you want to make sure that you're letting people know that you have a match, or that you're going to have a match. I'm during the give back to hope giving season. So make sure that you're including in your emails and your social media as I mentioned it's a really great marketing tool to let people know that this is a great opportunity to donate, and it's a great call to action. Make sure that you let them know when your match is active but also notify them when, when it's currently active when it starts. Okay, so that's a little bit about matching grants. Now let's move on to peer to peer fundraising also a very common fundraising strategy that lots of organizations utilize for giving challenges. What exactly is peer to peer fundraising. Well peer to peer fundraising is a technique where a nonprofit leverages existing supporters to bring in new supporters by asking them to create a fundraiser and ask their social network for donations. And then your community your network of people, they are fundraising on behalf of your organization, they're using their, their network of people so their family, their coworkers, their colleagues their peers to make a donation to your organization. So why would someone be interested in peer to peer fundraising. Well, as I mentioned with matching grants one of the benefits of that it's a different stewardship or stewarding process and same thing for peer to peer fundraising. It's a different ask that you are asking someone you're not asking them to make a donation you're asking them to fundraise for your organization. And it's also just a different and fun way that actually volunteers can support your organization and if you're not asking for like I mentioned a donation, it's a different sort of ask that you are sharing. It gives people an opportunity to tell their story about why they work with why they are want to support your organization why your organization is important for them, etc. So that's why peer to peer fundraising. I think a lot of people are actually more than happy to participate because they tend to do something fun and share why they love your organization. So peer to peer fundraising, some common people that typically peer to peer fundraising, our board members volunteer staff, if you are a program program alumni. We see a lot of the top four types of people that typically peer to peer fundraise. We see a lot around giving challenges of board members coming together and creating a team and fundraising independently but together towards a collective goal. But also same thing with matching grants anyone can participate and be on fundraise for your organization. So anyone in your nonprofits inner circle. Fundraising doesn't have to be tedious. It doesn't have to be really difficult. We provide a template through our peer to peer fundraising pages. So it can be really easy for people to create their pages. We have a lot of resources and FAQs and how to guides. So it can be really easy for someone to set up and create. And if you really needed to you could also create those pages for the participants themselves. And as I mentioned peer to peer fundraising is so powerful because it because it also gives people the opportunity to share why they would want to fundraise for your organization. And it provides them the space to do so. As I mentioned we do have a peer to peer fundraising tool called our team fundraising pages. This is really great for people that want to work together but independently towards a collective goal. So as you see on the right hand side. This is the board fundraising page for the animal humane society. So this is everyone, all the board members that are participating. And then as you see in the image there's a leader board that links to everyone's independent page. So everyone's working together but they also have independent pages so that they can motivate each other. And you know try to raise money for the animal humane society so it's really great for groups of people it doesn't have to be board members it can be just maybe it's a company that you guys often work with that wants to support your organization or volunteers or staff. It's really just really great for any type of group effort. And as I mentioned within the leader board, a link to everyone's individual page where they can share their own story or add in their own images that they want to share about your organization. So that's a little bit about peer to peer fundraising. Now that we've gone over to the most common fundraising strategies that organizations utilize when it comes to giving challenges we're going to talk a little bit about marketing and promotion tips. Because this is also a really important aspect of any giving challenge. So in the beginning of the webinar we spoke a little bit about the story that you're going to be sharing with donors and making sure that your organization page shares your story and what you want donors to see so think about this year. What is the story that you want to share with donors in 2021. You want to make sure that it's personal visual that it's something that can be easily shared on social media. There's a specific ask and you're sharing donor specifically the impact that they can make about your organization. So a helpful tip I always think about is, how would you explain your organization to a child, and how would you explain the impact or the ask that you're asking a donor to a child, because the simpler you can think about it the easier it's going to sound to donors. So make sure that it's it's simple and easy for them to understand. So once you think about what is the story that you want to share this year. You want to also think about the email marketing that you're doing. So same thing about the story emails are great when they're short and sweet, and they have a strong call to action so you always want to make sure that you are including words such as donate now help us today. Things that within one second donors can see what are you asking them to support and how to support your organization. So I just recommend to test emails out and make sure that they're mobile friendly. Most donors donate via their mobile device. So you want to make sure that they look good on your phone. And it's really important to also segment your emails. So you may want to differentiate your ask depending on who you're reaching out to. So some common segments of people are your past donors, volunteers and board members, maybe donors that have given the most to your organization in the past. So you want to make sure that you figure out who are the groups of people that you want to be reaching out to this year. I talked about donor retention I mentioned that this is a great pool of people to reach out to reach out to and I highly recommend pulling up that list of unretained donors because this is a great segment of people to reach out to, and you can utilize language like give that we know we can count on you, you can share with them the impact that they made with last year's campaign and what impact they can make with this year and what you're asking them from them this year. Of course for any larger donations or large donors that gave previously, we definitely recommend sending personal email do personal outreach for those donors. So when it comes to social media marketing. Make sure to utilize the hashtag give back to hashtag give back Tahoe and engage in the conversation online will be sharing images or images will be available on give back Tahoe homepage when the site is live. So utilize that hashtag and any social media marketing you're doing. If social media is not your strongest suits. If you don't have the capacity to do social media for many organizations that's something that is not of priority from for them. There's someone on your team that you could appoint to do social media, so that they can keep track of who's commenting, who is thanking people if they've retweeted your, your posts, or have shared your posts. If you still have someone to appoint, think about also asking for a volunteer, you can utilize the mighty cause volunteer tool, or you can utilize a volunteer site like volunteer match dot org, and look for a volunteer there. I'm surprised a lot of people look for volunteer opportunities in the area, and someone maybe who's in college or in high school maybe wanting want to support your organization and volunteer at this time. And of course, we always recommend to stay in your comfort zone and utilize the social media platforms where your donors are, especially during this time of the year, it can be really overwhelming and really busy. You don't have to be on all social media platforms. If your donors are not on Instagram or tick tock, then you don't need to focus your time and energy on those spaces. You know, you want to make sure that you are really efficient and effective with your time. So if all of your donors are on Facebook, then focus on the Facebook marketing that you're doing. So think about where your donors engage with your organization the most and prioritize your time there. General just information in regards to social media content that is really effective. So videos right now are actually really effective for, I would say most social media platforms. A lot of social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram really actually boost videos to the top of people's timelines. So if you are able to create a video about your organization for this year's giving season, we really recommend that for social media marketing, and you can create short videos on Instagram reels are really popular. And they, as I mentioned, Instagram will boost reels to the top of people's timelines, Instagram stories, and same thing with Facebook. With images that you're sharing on social media. Your images don't necessarily need to be professional images. If it's an image that share something about your organization that is made from your phone that is perfectly a okay they do not need to be professional. As long as it gets the point across of what your, your mission is and the impact that you guys are doing that's really most important. If you do want a professional image, consider looking at unsplash.com. It's a really great resource if you do want high quality professional images that you can reuse for commercial reasons. Okay, so one of the last things that we'll be talking about in regards to strategies is following up. Now this may be some time away, since this will be by the time you get to this, the step it might be January but it is a really important step to think about when it comes to give back to her giving season, because how quickly and genuinely you think your donors is really going to determine how they donate with if they donate to your organization again, or how they participate with your organization in the, in the future. So when you follow up that's really the start of your stewarding process and how you build long lasting relationships, because the donors that give this year they may become a future volunteer, future board member, future peer to peer fundraiser, etc. And they overall just receive, you know, they'll have a positive experience with your organization and give back Tahoe. So, with every donation on mighty cause in emailed receipt is sent out to donors, and you can include a custom message on the receipt. So that will automatically be sent to donors, but we do recommend sending personal emails if possible, about like 24 hours after a donor gives your organization. If you don't have the capacity to reach out to all your donors, selecting a couple of donors to personally reach out to maybe large donors or donors that haven't donated in a while to your organization. It's always great to do personal outreach if possible. And for those large donors for the select few, you also may want to consider giving them a call and just thanking them for supporting your organization and making a large impact. So, when it comes so after the give back Tahoe giving season, as you are following up. This is also really great opportunity to kind of close the loop on any prizes that you've won on during give back Tahoe, or also letting them know what your overall results results are. If you had a goal that you were sharing on social media or your marketing let them know how close you were to Jimmy your goal or what you were able. If you were able to meet your goal. So this is a really great content that you can utilize after the giving season away to let people know again impact that they need, and it also allows you to close the loop on any storytelling that you did. For example, if you're an animal organization and, you know, part of your give back Tahoe giving season campaign, you were sharing a story about an animal that you rescued and you went through the story of rescuing them rehabilitating them and them being adopted. Maybe you want to close the loop and share an update on that animal, just finishing out that storytelling that you were doing throughout the campaign. And again that helps people really understand the impact of your organization and really understands in the future if they give what your organization does and not a clear picture. And of course it's also a really great opportunity to share what your overall plans are for 2020 2022. And let them know you know if there's going to be any fundraising plans that you have in 2022 coming up or any projects or programs that you have plans. Okay, so some key resources that we have available on the site. Of course we have our toolkit where we have links to templates, social media templates, email templates, logos images FAQs. We have a lot of great resources available there. This webinar will be available and will be added to all the toolkit afterwards. We have a slide deck and a video of this webinar available. So if anyone from your team needs it you'll have access to it. And of course please reach out to mighty cause support. We are always here to help your organization whatever capacity we can provide support. So if you have questions on matching grants or peer to peer fundraising, or your dashboard just let us know and you have a successful give back to giving season. Okay, so I want to leave the last, you know, minutes or so on questions that anyone has. So we have questions and answers section on the zoom dashboard. I'm sorry to utilize that for any questions that you have so we already have a couple on here so let's see. So do peer to peer fundraising donations count towards the orgs matching grants. Yes, it somewhat depends on how you set up your matching grant. But yes peer to peer, any donation that you receive on the platform could count towards a matching grant if you set it up that way on your dashboard. If you wanted a matching grant to count towards any donation your organization receives anywhere on the platform, then you would want to set that matching grant through your organization page dashboard. So there is a tool when you set up your match that says to count it towards any fundraisers. And just to also clarify, if you want a match to only count for a specific fundraiser, then you would want to add that match on the dashboard associated to that fundraising page. But if anyone has any questions about that just let us know. So do peer to peer donations count towards the leaderboard awards. Yeah, so once your organization is registered, any and all donations online donations that you receive on the platform count on the leaderboard. So, if it comes from three different pages and they're all online donations and your organization is registered then you're going to see all of those donations count on your leaderboard. Does anyone have any further questions, if not, you can always reach out to us and support and we can help answer questions there. If you haven't done so please make sure that your organization is registered for give back Tahoe. That is really the first step that you should do to get started for this year. As I mentioned, we'll add this webinar to the toolkit so if you need any of this information will be added there. Okay, I don't see any questions coming through. So I will close out the webinar here. Thank you everyone for participating. I hope this was helpful and a great refresher. And yes, please let us know if you have any questions. Thank you so much for attending and have a great day. Bye.