 Hello everybody, thank you for joining a perfect, but I can't see it in your face is quite yet. So, you know, please as we go along, drop things in the chat and I really will help with that. And then we will certainly do time for Q&A at the end. But if you haven't already, we'd love to know a little bit more of a great fun to say about what you have in mind for the next year and absolutely if you have any specific questions, go ahead and pop those in and hopefully I'll cover them while we talk. But if for some reason I don't, we will grab them at the end. So welcome to the presentation events in the post quote unquote COVID era, live virtual or hybrid. As Irene said, my name is Amy Crowell and I have about what will be 15 years nearly of experience in the nonprofit world. I spent seven working for the national nonprofit chair of strength, no kid hungry doing everything from event management here in the Atlanta area to a, I had a graph three fundraising national position with them at the latter part of my time with them. And then for the last seven or so years, I've been just doing some fundraising consulting for typically small to medium sized nonprofits that are very often caught in that catch 22 of they want to raise more money so they can do more mission, but they don't have the money to pay the fundraiser. So sometimes I'm often unable to plug in myself and my colleague and just help build that bridge. And we always think we do our job right. Then we're either helping forward term with an event or something like that or we help you raise enough money so that you can hire someone full-time and kind of work ourselves out of a job. But early on in my consulting work, I did write a book about fundraising because there are all sorts of books I found about how to put on the event, the actual logistics of the event, but it didn't really talk much or there wasn't a lot out there at least at that time about how do you really maximize the event revenue and the opportunity to engage with new donors and that sort of thing. So that's what the majority of my book is about and I do have electronic copies of anyone wants when they can connect with me after. But today we're gonna talk a little bit about event ten rises. The main ones that I see out there are just sort of the RunWalk 5K type events, the golf tournaments as Irene just mentioned and the Galas with someone else just mentioned and just where are we in the world of live versus virtual versus hybrid? We'll talk a little bit more about hybrid, a little bit more about what to think about with COVID, even though in theory it's gone and then just some trends and then I've actually had some time for questions. So one of the things I'd like to touch on beginning is why to fundraise for this event. I went to a meeting several years ago and the person got up on stage and said, you never wanna do events, events are awful, they take all your time, they don't raise that much money and you should just not do events. And I'll be honest, I don't feel like that. I agree with everything that that person said, mine is to don't do them, but I think their events have a really good and often very important place in a nonprofit fundraising scheme. I think they are good because of the revenue they raise obviously and they're unrestricted dollars versus some organizations are very grant-focused so whatever you still need to earn the likes even though they might not fit into that exact grant proposal. I think they just really give nonprofits an opportunity to raise their awareness, to bring new people into this kind of sales funnel quote unquote. You can find new volunteers, new act, like it's a way to find new whatever you need. Board members, volunteers, advocates, donors of course. It's just a place that people can invite their friends to learn more about what they're passionate about. And if you're doing the event right with the admission portion, you will just find new people that will have a love and care for your organization. And I think equally it's an opportunity to think and engage and re-engage your youth supporters and just remind them why they gave or maybe remind them why they might want to give more. So in my world, I think there's a really important place for fundraisers despite the fact that they are very kind consuming and a lot of expensive often as well. So I kind of like to start with that. Do anybody again? And I may have made Dr. Comments. Irene, please don't wait to earn or not me because I can't see the chat so I can't help. I need to step back. But I just wanted to let you know your slides are not advancing. I'm still seeing the home slide and that may be perfectly fine, but there you go. Okay. Is that better? I figured you were on the Y fundraising events. Yeah, is that showing now? So ironically with online it's not even going on yours but that's okay, I'm glad you told me that. Okay, so that was my Y. So most common event, like I said, we're going to talk about the three most common, but again, I have some ideas at the end of some others. So we'll start with the one run or walk event, which is often a 5K, but it could also be a 10K. It could be a half marathon, a marathon. It could be a biking race. This is really more athletic events, but walk run seems to be the most common. In general, what I'm seeing is that walk and run events and really all athletic events are back on and they're back in person. What I'm also seeing is that they often are offering the virtual option still. So I think you'll see this as a theme for today's presentation that there's a lot of things that work through the pandemic that people are keeping. And one of these is I think in the old days, I am a super casual runner and I do some races and there was always like a ghost runner option in the old days where maybe they really just paid the money and maybe you got the teacher. But now, I think what we're seeing is it's just a little bit more robust. And so you're offering to get up and go to the race at seven and be out there on the course with the other runners and walkers or other athletic people and then to do it in a group or you can go out and run your normal 5K in your neighborhood and make the donation and get the teacher and do it on your own time. I was listening to a talk with it. There's a woman who ran the Atlanta Track Club 5K recently and I say ran loosely. She just broke the world record for the 80 plus division and she said how she went into that race that day. But in general, she just signs up for the virtual option because she doesn't drive when it's dark and she just does it in her neighborhood. So I think keeping that open and that available to people is smart and a good thing to do. You'll see all these events or slides and we're gonna talk about that. I'm gonna say be sure to tie in your mission moments from the start, promotion through post event. I have been to events that are great, I love and I knew what organizations they benefited and I didn't know anything else. I knew the name. Like I said earlier, I think it's easy when you're doing events and I haven't been guilty of this myself to really focus on the logistics of the event like where are the cones gonna be and where are the pleats and where is the security and where is check-in and just really forget or not forget but maybe not focus as much as you should on really the mission. Like every single person who runs your race should know what you do, your name, how to get, find you online, how to make a donation and like the main mission of what you do and hopefully more you maybe have a testimonial opportunity or something of that nature but it's a very least those things. So couple ideas about maximizing revenue is really trying to happen to your local expertise. So whether that's a running story or you have a special announcer or a guest speaker, somebody does the warm up, that fun and compelling. This is a place where potentially there's some influencers in your community that can help you raise awareness of the event or fit more people there, that kind of thing. Other ideas are the IT package where maybe it's $30 to run normally but for 50 you get a little special hat or you have a little meet and greet with the CEO post event or however you wanna do it but sometimes there's a way to have an incremental registration amount that can maybe give them a little bit more which will can raise your revenue overall a little bit. Obviously you're selling your sponsorships, it's my goal and any event I do is that I have covered all of my hard costs for the event with my sponsor sales that can be hard to do the year one but the goal will be moving forward so that whatever else you do and effectively with a right, they really need that you're probably gonna get some day of people registering but at the same time if it rains you may not so you wanna make sure you have all those covered and then really I think at the place of the runs it's a little bit harder and I say runs that you mean all that's gonna be a way to have an option to make a donation as you're registering and after the event say give them an opportunity to again make it a donation if this was fun you had a great time, you care about what we do here's how you could help when it can do for our audience. That is the main step about run walk. Next type of event is what Irene just mentioned which is the gold tournament. Again, gold tournaments are mostly back in person without restrictions I've seen that even since last fall it's been a while that the golf tournaments are still happening in person. Again, outdoors is easier and still safer even when things are a little bit more hairy than they might be right now. I think the downside of the golf tournaments is there's not as much of a hybrid event you could still do some of what you did which is let there be virtual golfers and make up on their own place or time and stuff but I think it's a little more challenging and being at outdoors and people are feeling a little more comfortable and not seeing a lot of golf tournament hybrid and just being in person. Again, keep your mission front and center whether it's whole signs that talk about what you're doing in your mission obviously signs at the entry area. There's still I think again in the realm of what to keep there's still a lot of opportunity to do some of that technology that made it a little bit more COVID friendly in the past where maybe you're not doing the long queue of people at registration anymore they're just registering online and you're using technology more and more to keep people a little more separated or not in these like lines of people. Again, one of those situations where keeping some of what you had could be a positive thing. As far as maximizing revenue similar really basically the same ideas tapping into that local expertise thinking about the VIP packages or something you couldn't add on. Maybe it's a swag bag maybe it's a special breakfast or a lunch after something of that nature dinner depending on the time of day sponsorship. Again, one of the things I didn't mention around sponsorships is I always do the typical platinum gold silver bronze sponsors but I usually will do some what I call marketing oriented sponsorships where most of you I'm sure know that funds can come from a corporation from their philanthropic side sometimes they come from marketing so the idea of being the electronic four guard card sponsor so your logo is on everybody's phone while they're keeping score meet up more of a marketing oriented sponsorship and I try to include those it could be a photo booth and for the gala there's lots of things there's wine glasses and things of that nature but I've found that having at least a couple of those like two to five depending on the overall level of your event but like another good one for a run or walk or even for the golf is like a water bottle so you have their logo on the water bottle and you just wanna make sure when you're pricing those that you cover your expense for that extra and whatever it is and then obviously more so that you're still netting the only exception to that rule is if it's something that you were gonna buy anyway like for example, you had to buy wine glasses it's just a little bit more to have living grades with the sponsor and hopefully your logo as well then you maybe don't make as much if you cover the cost that you had to have anyway. Moving on to the gala. Amy, I was gonna ask you a question if- Yeah. How? And I don't know if this varies by community but how open are golf courses to posting tournaments? Usually those are probably like on Mondays a slow day or something like that. Yeah, I have several clients that I've done them in fact, my clients just did one in Nashville like two or three weeks ago but yeah, honestly even during more of the height of COVID the golf courses did want those events. Sometimes they were doing them over two days instead of one day they'll space people out a little bit more but I'm finding they're very up for it because they're trying to fill their slow days just as you mentioned. They are Mondays and Tuesdays or one of the ones we do is the Friday before Thanksgiving. But yeah, I'm finding a positive even they were one of the earlier ones I think it took about back because of it being outside. Excellent, thanks. Gaila's and when I think Gaila's it could be a seat at dinner it could be a tasting event it could be something more sceney like a casino night or something of that nature. Again, I'm saying those are back in person too. I've had two weeks ago I had 150 person seat at dinner two nights ago we had a big tasting event there were probably 1500 people total in three venues is very spread out but I'm seeing their backs I'm seeing their backs without masks people could do what they want, of course but I think at the event there's Sunday night that I went to I really don't think I saw 10 people wearing a mask. So people are ready, I think as much as possible or at least those that maybe don't you know, feel comfortable they don't have something that's folding them back from the health perspective are back and they want to do them I'm finding that people are just frankly like really excited to see each other and spend time and talking and they're very clustered together reconnecting with people they maybe haven't seen in a while. That is what I'm seeing I think again we could work and talk about this a little bit more some of these events are a little bit more COVID friendly than another seat at dinner you're sitting down for certainly more than the 15 to 20 minute recommended next to people it's fine if it's your spouse and your household or whoever lives with you already but maybe you're less comfortable being across the dinner table from strangers or other households I'll put it that way for that couple hours that it takes to manage that. The really good thing about these galings there's really a good sponsor hybrid opportunity for those so for example you could do the program but live stream parts of it or some of it may be pre-recorded so you can work on that so I think among all these types of events the gala or some kind of evening or afternoon event has the best hybrid opportunity but there's some pitfalls with that that we'll talk about in a second but again tying your mission in from the start like I've said in all the other emails sorry I got that same one in there twice for your revenue side your primary thing's going to come from the same four areas that it always does there's sponsorship ticket sales auctions and then the final laser donations and then the e-journal could be some ads that you're selling so again I think all those are fine and great and can continue in a way that they had did either if it's live or if it's in virtual atmosphere around VIP packages again I definitely recommend those when you're doing a gala type event where you have a ticket that maybe sells for a little bit more maybe it means they have premier seating maybe they get in a little earlier especially with the pacing event maybe they get special valet parking or a gift bag or those kind of things but those are a great way to up your revenue especially in an event where you have a finite and a more people that can be there which I know all have finite but like a seated dinner it's a little more finite than a tasting again I think these like marketing and gathering moments are appreciated right well time's there for a second to see if anybody has any questions about those three types of events and if there's anything specific around that you want to ask please feel free to drop any questions or thoughts or comments in the chat we'll get that answered and Amy while we're waiting for questions when you think about the different the four main areas for a gala that you mentioned is there any ideal in terms of say your goal is $100,000 is it typical to have it come in evenly from those four areas your sponsorships your auction or it really just depends on the organization and the contacts and the board members they have yeah it does I think typically what I see is the sponsors could simply burden that's been around a little bit or more established organizations you'll see a higher percentage coming from sponsorships but it's interesting I have had certain events that the auction will raise half of it and then others in the paddle raise and others who are blessed so again I think too if you're looking at a feed at dinner you have a little bit more of a captured audience so that auction and paddle raise is a little harder for people to escape it now that being said you only need two people who want the same item two of them rise the price but it doesn't have to be a ton of people because there's always the thought there's like no one who's in the auction and I'm like who cares we just need the right 20 people to listen yeah they're saying to that kind yeah hard to do but yeah so there's definitely some massive work in that and a lot of it really depends on the history of the event who's a headache yeah but yeah like I said my goal of thumb is I really want to cover all my thoughts before I walk through because I don't want to think I also think it's nice to say every donate to tonight 100% goes through this that is too yeah so we do have a couple of questions in the chat like one wants to know are you seeing people want to limit the people able to attend and then Leslie I think you say both venues are just organizations in general I think organizations in general Amy are you seeing that they want to limit attendance at these things or again it just really depends yeah I think it depends I think some of the tips I'm going to stay later talk about like spacing and what's more friendly than not so we'll cover a lot of that but what I'm more finding and that people are picking bigger venues for the same amount of people if you were going to not to call out somebody Montana holds about 200 people maybe you have it a period of mail the foundry because it holds for your people and it's just a lot area so to speak oh no there's I think more that's more what I'm seeing than eliminating potential gaps okay Eli's asking what are the main considerations when planning a hybrid event that includes both online and in-person and you might be about to answer that question so if you are we can say yeah but and but I don't know if you're getting ready to answer this question what about separate sponsorships for the in-person versus online elements of an event is that something yeah I think seeing I have not seen that I think you could do that it's going to be hard to separate when I would say if maybe I would add second sponsorship or an additional sponsorship stuff such that online people would see but still depending on the price so not have company agents and virtual company do this be do the in-person but more the virtual hype the virtual person maybe get the little extra logo love on the screen that kind of thing and maybe charge a little extra for that or maybe they're a silver sponsor but if they put in another X amount they get that too I just think when you're doing your marketing you're going to market it all together with the two options so if you have you don't want to have to create two separate marketing channels for those things but adding it on as an extra I think is a great idea okay yet yet another reason to work with somebody like you who has experience and that's a lot to to think through all right now I think we're about to answer Eli's question about the main considerations when planning a hybrid event yeah so these are things that consider if you're trying to decide 30 large, 30 virtual, 30 hybrid what to think about so I think the type of event is huge again the golf tournament the athletic event more friendly than it used to be I went to a run I think it would have been January 2021 where there were dots on the there were waves of people starting there was not the green start there were literally waves and you had a dot to stand on and then you would go you know that's all gone now some people ask they will wear masks well when they're in the crowd often times we're outside and we're gonna hope for the best right so the kind of event type of event is important time of the year again if you are doing an indoor event but you can do an outdoor cocktail hour that is more COVID friendly that if you're all inside and packed together indoor versus outdoor talk about and I think it's who attended is really important if you have a a group of people who are attending who are potentially more at risk you really have to consider like you don't want to do something that's potentially going to make your target audience of people you're trying to help and for example I have a friend that was a head of a cancer foundation organization and like it didn't make sense to have something that would potentially put some of these people at risk that are you know more of an average you have to think about that and again you're organizing your audience and you're organizing an appetite for risk and what I mean for that is not so much what kind of event to have but are you going to be comfortable with coming to delay it or cancel it if things ever flow by the event that I talked about a couple days ago was supposed to be in in early February and nobody wanted to delay it but it absolutely was the right decision but very hard to make and I'll talk about that a little bit too but if you are just kind of not just thinking about all this uncertainty which the reality is still exist maybe a line of that isn't your direction to go and then the availability of workers and volunteers and this is huge one I think there's a set of people who don't want to volunteer because they just don't want to be in these group settings and then there's also the truth that some people can we had somebody the other night that was with Orc registration that had some positive prepositions the day before and can't come so you just have to be aware that even though we always know volunteers drop off there's even a heightened amount of that happening so for live events and I'm going to do live with hybrid and virtual only so we'll chat through all that if you're thinking she's still not answering my question so for a lot of events you really need to decide on your COVID protocols I think early on so do people have to show a vaccine card do they have to show a negative test if that negative test is being shown how long how old can it be and it be a quick test from home or does it have to be more involved are you going to take temperature and I think this is important because even this event I had a couple weeks ago when we planned things are really bad and we had all these things in mind but then now as soon as it got better there were staff members just saying I don't think we need to do this anymore the numbers are down but the reality is we already advertised the people that we were going to do it that way and I think some people make a decision to buy a ticket based on those protocols so I suggest you pick them and knowing it may be a little uncomfortable at the time if things change but I recommend you pick some profiles and stick with them and then really promoting those protocols if you're going to ask people to show their COVID vaccine card or take a pass I think it's what to know before you go three, four, five days before it's a reminder the day prior it's another text the day of especially if it's like an event where you come after work and you would have to have brought it from home ahead of time more and more people have them on their phones now because this is becoming more and more common and I think as time goes on it gets even more common it's not as much of an issue but there's still going to be somebody who forget and then so what happens will somebody forget are you going to provide on-site quick tests are you going to know that those people are going to be super annoyed they probably are but that's where you can be like we always send multiple messages we're still trying to be it's consciously can for people's health if you decide you do not want to do all those things which is legit what I would recommend is there's three or four things that you should send to people a list of three or four things you should send to people prior that said don't come if you don't feel well don't come if you've tested positive don't come if you've been in contact with somebody to decide and then you just need to decide are you going to reap on those people's money are you just and you're not saying you need to do that but just have all the decisions made ahead of time when they're out of the emotion of the moment and also what are your vendor protocols going to be if you're doing a catered catering staff need to wear masks do they need to be vaccinated which I will tell you it's hard to make happen because again with the labor supported that would be something you would want to communicate very early on to your caterer or other vendors that you're working with if they need to do that other COVID considerations is like I mentioned before faith is really your friend larger venues that need it I think are positive gives you places especially if you're doing something seated but even if you're not it gives you just more room for people to mill around we did it and then recently and we seated let's people at each table then is the typical those tables are always super tight people were probably just really happy about that to be honest other thing to think about is cancellation are very common again because someone might test positive or whatever so if you have your octaneer or testimonial that's key or whatever it is committee member that managing the stage whatever that may be it's good to have a backup plan and it's possible have somebody that's sort of shadowed the person so for some reason literally that morning that person can't come even though they've been re-attentioned of the date before that you have a backup plan for that the other thing I really recommend is that again early on when things are fine or not you have a go no go strategy as well as a date if you have an able to see the event and you owe your catering numbers by April 1st that may be on March 25th you really look at the atmosphere you may just not need to think about some of these everything's fine but if things are not looking as good then I recommend you decided what these these go no go things are early so yeah you're like less emotional and then there's always going to be some of that says oh you should have done and there's some of that says you shouldn't have done it you said only about two of these things these are the things we're looking at so what some of my other clients have looked at is what's going on in the city and county are they mandating math are they limiting group gatherings that one could be immediately if you can't gather for more than 100 people and you've got 200 people legally that then you probably won't even let you have it so you might have it you can look at how the leads rate if you look at cases again looking for your audiences and then decide it about you know what you're going to do around cancellation or postpone and if needed hopefully you just postpone and not cancel that is mostly what I'm seeing or you can pivot something virtual too so those are the live considerations for hybrid events and this will answer the question from I think it was Eli it's interesting and I think this is true too and I heard it from something I saw recently is that I think people almost expect I for just turn it extent maybe not too much on a gala dinner if you're doing an association meeting or whatever I think people just think okay we can go in person or we can just dial in if we want think about that or think about if your audience is going to expect that if you are having a hybrid option you know sometimes it will add a sentence sometimes it won't literally you're just going to pop it up on Zoom but if you're doing a gala or something live where there's many speakers you probably are going to add at least some incremental expenses and I would recommend that if you're not tech savvy in that type of atmosphere that you hire somebody to do that I have a colleague that does a great job I admired her for my event because she like making sure everything is smooth from an AV perspective can be challenging on a normal day and then tie in a virtual audience and the timings and all that and it could really be helpful to have somebody else working on that or maybe you have a committee member that's free without that I would recommend it not be the main and then planner because you're going to be pulled a lot of ways and that's a big component you do I do think you want to make it more than just like a virtual stream for the attendees and Lent is just like a speaker think that's okay if you're doing a gala that people are coming for dinner maybe there's a way to just enhance it for the person that's coming I went to a related community foundation had an event and you could go live or virtual and they sent little curcuitary boxes ahead of time I gave it was an option like they just did little things to make it seem a little more special and frankly I think really tie people to come and actually attend because if you've gotten a gift ahead of time you're not like ah it's the clock I don't like like getting on zoom one more hour today that can really recommit you to come in when the zoom and gala virtual gala were really popular there was a huge dropout break between people who registered versus attended especially if it was free which a lot of them were and that's always going to happen but trying to minimize that is good know that you will need a little extra staffer volunteers this is what's for those virtual get you know hopefully mostly gone on the days of people who can't figure out how to log on and stuff like that but usually you need at least somebody who's dedicated so if somebody needs assistance they have it you really we're all a little tired of being on zoom so thanks today for being with us so trying to fight that fatigue by doing something cool or different I think it's important and if you are doing something where you're going to do some online fundraising where people can donate right then and there it really needs to be easy technologically and not a big hassle to to do that donate in order to to lose people the other thing is that your timeline going to really need to be tight if you're doing the hybrid so if you're telling people the event starts at five thirty and we're going to cocktail and at six is when we're doing a program you really got to be ready at five fifty nine because you're going to have this whole audience of how however many people ready to log in and if dinner is running a little late or whatever like you're still going to have to roll with it so you just have to be aware of that or have built in some waiting time music or something that lets people know that it's still going to start more or less than what it's supposed to I think one of the I'm moving on to some of the trends because I think those are the big things about the hybrid but now we're just seeing hybrids not unusual and back when nobody would have done it now it's very common and I think there's some really positive things about it and I'll talk a little bit more about it and even just virtual only in a minute it opens your events up to anyone and it allows for better data collection because both people have to log in some way and they came and you're not somebody's friend that came along and never really had a name on their ticket we're seeing it's some other trends that more and more organizations are doing a bunch of smaller events instead of the big large one I think that's probably hissing a little bit because things with COVID are better and I do see big events coming back there's something to be put about the smaller more intimate events if you've got a thousand people in the room there's no way you can still wear a thousand people even if you have a fairly large staff so you know that helps to have a smaller event these events can definitely be part of your PR strategy because again you don't have to be in town to go to the event at the History Center you can log online for more ever whenever and so that you know really opens some other possibilities to you and then we're just seeing more distance off the down profit side but just more internal events for remote people working I talked to someone the other day that said that their company did like a escape room a virtual escape room and they had teams and was like a really cool team building that all everybody's sitting their own home office so you know it makes the other thing and maybe that's your fundraiser you want to do a escape room for your board it's like a team building thing for your board of directors in education and conferences you're seeing much more hybrid where you can go in person and be at the event or you can just log in for these great educational sessions whether it be a college class or an academic conference or conference in your your area your non-profit area or a non-profit overall I know that the uh uh facilities to fund your professionals think it was last month and both in person and hybrid as an option and you've seen more and more trade exos that have a virtual component too so again you could either be a virtual sponsor where you had a little booth or you can be there in person a little bit of little there's a lot of companies out there I kind of put together a list and I can actually add to these questions the more one on one if anybody has them about who's doing what in this space there's so many some of them have bolded some of them have changed names so just do your homework ask friends I've nerded a couple today that I never even heard of on a call I was on earlier so just but look for help I do think if you're doing a seated dinner hiring one of those companies that up to a table management and let you do the paddle raise much more differently are are worth the money so for virtual only event I think a lot of people are still continuing some of the stuff they did when they could only do virtual so really think about what did you do in the last couple years if you did something virtual that was successful and are you missing anything by not gathering in person is it worth it to have the wider audience if if any of those seem like the right move just continue with it virtually and there's I think that gave you some ideas of where I think those make sense but one thing it's so easy and I've done this myself to just sort of you have it up and you've mixed see you're working out a project and you're really not listening so do what you can to make it interactive keep people involved ask intentional questions get taxed doing be sure to send some follow-up afterward if you've talked about a report or something that gives you potential to interact with people again talk about your mission make sure that people know what what it's about and just think about if there's any way to make it a little more special and again if you're just doing a lunch and learn it's not a big deal you guys probably wouldn't have come or not come if I offered you lunch maybe you would have come more but I don't mean what people would have done but you know you have to based on the level of what you're doing how much you want to do but if they did your big event in the year then those may be something worth thinking about where I have seen the virtual event are successful our board meetings and most the board meetings that I did a part of these days are hybrid so you'll have a group of people in the room but for somebody who's traveling or whatever you'll see that those are popular and that way you get more people and even if they're not there the lunch and learns like we're doing today I think you can do some cultivating and then for education all that's well to just be virtual not meeting an in-person component and seeing a little less workload to get it up and going and still having a lot of success so that ends my formal presentation and it gives us about 15 minutes to answer any questions I think I answered all the ones that were thrown out Irene but let me know if I didn't I think so but folks please let us know by dropping in the chat if Amy did not answer your question or if you have some new questions or thoughts or comments based upon what she shared in the second part of the presentation Amy I was just going to share when you talk about board meetings I know for the COB collaboratives our board meeting attendance has been higher and we start and finish on time when we meet virtually but the the downside is since we are cross-sector and bringing people in from across the county and across the different sectors we I don't know that we have that same esprit de corps that we used to so you have to try to you know work with your board chair to build that yes I agree there's no denying I've been working remote for I leave partially for almost 19 years I am very familiar with the pros and cons of being in the office and not being in the office and the reality is you can't completely escape the water cooler culture but it is bad when you're only virtual and I think for certain people myself being one if you're a super like half four years to get it done with the next thing then you don't really always have that team building or idea sharing in the same way I think if you've been involved I think the board meeting is actually a decent one at least maybe one or two of your four maybe that you have to do hybrids because you may get some people will come and you'll get a little bit of that but then you'll also capture the people that couldn't make that time in place for some reason yeah anybody have event coming up that you would like to share with us or have some questions we're part of a our early learning initiatives we have these I think it's every other month so by monthly convenings and their virtual it's curriculum or program across the country and the man from Harvard Dr. Ferguson he calls you out if you have your screen saver on that's how he keeps everybody engaged and he will just call you out if you are like in your car you'll get a pass but you need to show your face and explain and get out of them okay you can be off camera until you get to your destination so pretty funny but yeah that is great my name and number is up there my email's up there if anybody wants a copy of that book electronically I'm happy to send it if you have questions I'm always happy to jump on the phone and help you out obviously if you need more help my company is happy to do that as well but I'm always willing to just share some information if you have a question I can't find a menu for 2,000 people or whatever or I have a quandary with it or will you look at my product books or whatever happy to do that kind of thing so um actually I have a little more information on this tape about all of us and uh yes where we are so but I appreciate everybody coming today