 All right, it looks like we've got some people already here. Hello, if you've joined us a few minutes early, I'm just going to get my bearings before we get started. And if you could let me know whether you can hear me speaking and see my screen, that would be a hugely appreciated. If you could just go into the chat or the Q&A box and just let me know, that would be a huge help to me so I can make sure that you all can hear me. Excellent. Thank you, Maura. Thank you, Tom. Perfect. While everybody is waiting for us to get started, I would love to find out more about who is here and what nonprofit you're from. So if you don't mind using the chat to just let me know which organization you're representing, that would be fantastic. All right, awesome. We've got Altrusa, Catholic Charities, Breast Cancer Fund, fantastic. Welcome, guys. I'm so happy to have you here. Mansfield Area Y, nice to have you. Linden Road Presbyterian, fantastic. And I'd love to hear more. Is this your first year with Richling Gives? If it is your first year, just give me a shout out in the chat. I would love to know who here is new. But I'm presuming we have a lot of Richling Gives veterans on the webinar. So I'd love to know if anybody is new. Excellent. Pat Cracker is new. So hopefully we'll have a lot of great information for anybody who is new to Richling Gives. We've got a fourth year veteran from Lucas Community Center. Altrusa is not new. I definitely recognize your name. All right. So it's just about two o'clock Eastern time. So we'll go ahead and get started and feel free to use the chat. But welcome, everybody, to our first webinar for Richling Gives. This one is really all about getting started. And because we do have a lot of people as indicated in the chat who've been here for a couple of years and have done Richling Gives in the past, we are going to shake it up with some new content this year. My name is Linden Gerhart. I'm the Senior Community Engagement Manager here at Mighty Cause. And Mighty Cause, if you are new, is the platform partner for Richling Gives. And we've been proud to be the platform partner for this event since 2015. And I'm also joined by Maura Tainer from the Richling County Foundation. Hi, Maura. Hi, how are you? Thank you. I'm great. How are you? I'm wonderful on this rainy day in Mansfield. I just wanted to take the time to thank not only you, Linda, but all the nonprofits for joining this webinar today. I know it's a lot of work for you to participate in Richling Gives. And I want you to know that the foundation staff and board of trustees appreciates all the hard work that you put into this. And we're looking forward to another great event this year. Thank you so much, Maura. And yeah, definitely there's a lot of work that goes into Richling Gives. But hopefully you'll all find that it's well worth it, which is why so many nonprofits come back year after year to participate in this fantastic event. So just to give you all a look at what today's webinar is going to look like, we're just going to do a quick introduction. And then we're going to go into getting started on the platform, which is more of a technical training so that you can get the lay of the land and learn anything new on Mighty Cause this year. And then the new content that I was talking about is our marketing tips. So we're going to dive right into marketing in the first webinar. So hopefully you'll pick up some interesting new information there. And then we'll be doing a question and answer session at the end of the presentation. So please feel free to use the questions box or the chat. If you have something that you'd like to know more about, or would like to ask while I'm presenting, we'll make sure that we have time to go through any questions at the end of the webinar. And just to let you know a little bit about Mighty Cause, we are a nonprofit fundraising platform. You can fundraise on Mighty Cause year round. We are an all in one platform. We're specifically for nonprofits. So we're built to serve the organizations who are on this webinar. We offer peer to peer fundraising, team and event campaigns, donation tools like widgets and a customizable donation page, and much, much more, including a CRM. So if you haven't used Mighty Cause outside of Richland Gives, since you're already set up by virtue of your participation in the event, make sure that you take a look at what we have to offer because we may be able to support you through other campaigns that you're running each year as well. And just to give you an idea of everything that we have to offer you, you have all of the bells and whistles that you're used to as part of your Richland Gives campaigning, peer to peer, teams and events. We have safe, secure donation processing with everything that you need to grow. Mighty Cause is really built to support you as your nonprofit grows. So even if you're small, as you expand, Mighty Cause is built to accommodate you as you get more donors and you have more fundraising needs. We do have software integrations with Salesforce, MailChimp, Constant Contact and Eventbrite, as well as other applications. And we also have a CRM, Detailed Fundraising Analytics. And there's really a lot that Mighty Cause has to offer a lot of organizations who participate in events like Richland Gives only use us once a year. But we really do have a lot to offer your nonprofit, including all of the tools listed here. And we also offer free resources and training for nonprofits. So if you'd like to get a demo of any tools or talk to us about what your fundraising needs are, you can feel free to reach out to out to me, in particular, Linda at Mighty Cause.com. And you can also go to Mighty Cause.com and click the contact form that's there. All right. And so moving on from that on to Richland Gives. Richland Gives is on Giving Tuesday every year. So this year it is November 30th. And giving actually begins on November 15th. So early giving starts on November 15th at 7 a.m. And then the event goes through November 30th until 7 p.m. It's of course hosted by the Richland County Foundation. And as I mentioned, Richland Gives has been on Mighty Cause since 2015. So we have quite a track record with this event. And the event on November 30th is from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. But as I mentioned, you can start getting donations at 7 a.m. on November 15th, which is coming up very, very quickly. And the whole goal of Richland Gives is to help nonprofits in Richland County grow, build capacity, acquire new supporters and donors, and strengthen the Richland County community. Hopefully you all have visited it at this point. Let the website is RichlandGives.org. All right. So the first part of the webinar is going to be a little bit more technical and dry. Hopefully we'll make it a little bit fun and interesting. But this will help you as you're getting acclimated to the Mighty Cause platform and gearing up for Richland Gives this year. So the first thing that you want to do if you're participating in Richland Gives is register your nonprofit, even if you've been participating since 2015. Every year we need to know that you're, you know, eager to participate. And then we'll also add you to the event by virtue of you filling out the registration form. So it's a very short, easy form. We just collect a little bit of information about your nonprofit. If you have participated in the past, all you need to do is log into your account and choose your nonprofit and answer a few short questions. And you should get your approval very quickly, no more than 24 hours. But deadline to register is on Halloween on October 31, which is coming up very fast. And once you're registered, you can go in and add more administrators to your page and take care of the housekeeping from year in and year out. But if you haven't registered yet for this year, please feel free to open up a tab on your browser and register for Richland Gives. It only takes a minute and it is the first step in the process to participate. So once you're registered to participate in Richland Gives, the first thing that you'll probably want to do is navigate to your nonprofits dashboard. And what I mean by your dashboard is when you go to your nonprofits profile, you'll have a dashboard on the left hand side of the page with some menus where you can navigate between different tools and different features of the Mighty Cos platform. So I'm going to take you through that menu just from top to bottom to get you acclimated for this year. So at the very top, and this is the page where you will be dropped as soon as you access your nonprofits profile, is your overview screen. And this is where you can quickly catch up on your key metrics, analyze your year over year data and customize some reports. So if you haven't taken the time to customize your overview screen, I highly recommend doing that, especially if you've been participating in Richland Gives for a couple of years, you can really track your data year over year and measure how you're doing this year against last year and previous years. So it's really worth taking the time to customize those and track things like your donor retention rate just to see how you're doing at a quick glance. Below your overview screen, you have your fundraising tools, which are exactly what they sound like. Under your fundraising tools, you can edit your profile, manage and access your campaigns, add matching grants and more. Basically, if you're wondering where is this fundraising tool, it's under the fundraising tools menu. Underneath that, you have reports. So if you have an administrative function at your nonprofit like reconciling your accounts, this is where you'll probably spend a lot of time. This is where you can access your donations report, you can access your disbursement report and anything that you would need to export and send to an accounting department, you can find in reports. And one thing that is new this year is I wanted to call out the checkout item on the menu. So this used to be, I think, under fundraising tools, but this year it is actually pulled out and has its own spot on the admin dashboard. And now you can customize your donation flow, update your thank you page and your custom receipt message, and it's much easier to find this year. And then finally, you have your settings, which is where you would take care of any housekeeping that you need to look into year after year, like changing admins, adding or removing anybody who is new to your nonprofit or has left your nonprofit, checking your EFT to make sure that it's still connected to the correct account and updating your legal information. So that's kind of the boring housekeeping section, but it is all very important stuff. So once you've gotten the lay of the land and you've sort of gotten familiar with your dashboard, the first thing that you'll want to do, even if you've participated in the past is take a look at your profile page, because this is the main page that you'll be sharing with your supporters during Richling gift. So it represents your nonprofit, and it's a really key piece of your fundraising. So the URL for your organization profile is the one you'll want to share with your donors during Richling gives, as soon as early giving begins. And you can also toggle between the live site and editing the site, which is a really cool feature that we added, I think, a year ago. So you can see how it looks to people who are visiting your page, but you can also, when you're in editing mode, click onto the page to change things that you'd like to update. You can customize the look and feel, make it match your nonprofits brand. And you can use this area to tell a powerful story about why donors should consider giving to your nonprofit during Richling gives. So the story section, we'll talk a little bit more about it later, but it's really the place to make your fundraising appeal. And one thing that I would highly recommend if you have participated in Richling gives in previous years is just make sure that you don't have any old information on your profile page. Sometimes, especially in stories, there will be some old information. And you just want to make sure that you audit your page and update it for 2021, so that when people go to your page, they know that it's current and they can trust that they are giving in the right place. And it doesn't cause any confusion because you're referencing past years or old campaigns. So if you're participating this year, you don't necessarily need to reinvent the wheel, but just do a quick audit and make sure that you have current and up to date information on your profile. So your theme is really the look and feel of your page. And it is really what people see first when they come to your page. So you want to make sure that it's representing you well. And there's a few couple, there's a few simple things that you can do to your theme that will make your page look fresh and new from year to year. The most central part of your page is really your logo, because your logo is what will represent you throughout Richland Gives. People will see it in the search and they'll also see it in the leaderboards on the live event site. So the logo is just a one to one square image. So you can upload it there. And sometimes it's fun just to update that they get Richland Gives specific. And that's a really great way to signify to people that you're participating in Richland Gives. And it's also a way to refresh your page. Your banner image is one of the first things people will see on your page. So it's worth taking a look at that, maybe updating it if you've had the same one for a year or two now. We also have a gallery of stock images that you can use if you don't have an image that works in that area. But it's right at the top of the page. So it's worth taking a look at and maybe seeing if you can upload something fresh for 2021. You can also do some things with colors to make it match your nonprofit's branding. So if your organization has a branding kit, you can make sure that your page is in line with that. And you can also just pull colors from your logo and make sure that your page matches the look and feel of your logo. You can also set a filter for the background image. If you wanted to make that fade a little bit more into the background or boost certain colors, there's some tools there that you can use to make your theme match your nonprofit's branding so that when people come to your page, they really see who your nonprofit is and it matches the rest of your organization's branding and it looks and feels like your organization. Your story is really kind of the centerpiece of your page. This is where you will tell your campaign story. There's an easy inline editor that's there to help you tell the story. It's very simple to use. If you can use Microsoft Word, you can use this inline text editor. You can add formatting. You can add headers, lists, and more to make the key messages of your campaign stand out. Definitely breaking up the text with some images, some headers, some lists, makes it a little bit more interesting to look at. Most people are a little bit intimidated by a large wall of text. So using some of that formatting can really help make your page easier to skim and more interesting to look at. You can add images, which I highly recommend doing. People who have pages with images in their story tend to keep people on their page a little bit longer, and the longer they spend on your page, the more likely they are to make a donation. And you can also embed video into your story. So if you have a campaign video, which we're going to talk about a little bit later on, you can embed that into your story so that people can watch it there. Just as a note, you do need to upload it first to YouTube or Vimeo in order to embed it because, unfortunately, our platform does a lot, but we're not able to act as a video hosting platform as well. But you can embed videos there so that everybody who comes to your page can view them. You can also add a custom tab to your story. So if there's some secondary information that you wanted to make available but not make it central in your story, you can add a custom tab. So for instance, if you had operating hours or an event that you were promoting, you could put that information in a custom tab, you can really do anything you want with that custom tab. And this is where you'll make your fundraising appeal. So if you're telling a particular story for Richling Gives, this is where you would want to put it. If you're just making a general appeal, you can put some information there about your organization in 2021. But this is really your space to talk to your donors about what you do and why you do it. Adding images and integrating your social media is a really great way to make your page feel fresh to make it pop and make it a little bit more dynamic. Again, people spend longer on your page when they seem more there to interact with. So adding your media gallery is a really great way to make sure that you are engaging people who visit your page. You can upload from Facebook, Instagram, and directly from your computer so that image gallery is there for you to use and to augment your story. You can also connect your Instagram account to import your Instagram feed. So if you're using Instagram to connect with your supporters, you can link your accounts and we'll just pull in whatever you post on Instagram so that you don't have to do it in two places, which makes your life a little bit more easy. And then you can also optimize your social sharing settings. That is in your settings on your admin dashboard. And this can be really important because that is what is actually displaying on social media. So if you share your link and there's a reference to 2020 or another year or old information in your settings, you can adjust that so that you have control over what is displaying on social media. You can also add a custom image so that it's optimized for sharing on Facebook or wherever you choose to share your link to your page. So your campaigns tool is something that's very important that I wanted to point out, especially if you've done peer-to-peer fundraising in the past. This is under your fundraising tools. And from this screen, you can take a look at all of the pages that are connected to your nonprofit on Mighty Cause. So you can view the pages, you can edit them, you can hide them, and you can also delete them. Now you won't lose any of the donor info if you delete a page that is out of date because that is stored through your nonprofit profile. So you don't need to worry about losing any information. But if there's a page from 2016 that you just don't need anymore, you can actually hide it or fully delete it through the campaign screen, which is a really important bit of housekeeping to do from year in, year in and year out because sometimes people will contact support and say, hey, this old fundraiser is showing in the search and I don't know why, but you actually have control over that in your campaign screen. So it's really important to take a look and see what is displaying and maybe hide any old campaigns that you don't want showing in the search. If you are using peer-to-peer for this year, you can also track your fundraiser's progress. You can see who created the page, how much they've raised, whether or not it's live, and you can actually email them through the Mighty Cause platform, which is really exciting. So when somebody starts a fundraiser for your organization, you'll get an email notification if you are an administrator for your Mighty Cause page, and you can actually email them through your campaign screen to make things a little bit easier for you. You can just click that email icon, and that will allow you to send a message to the person who created a peer-to-peer page for you. So this is always a big question, resetting your metrics. This is something that you can do immediately, and I recommend taking care of it as soon as you're getting up and started for Richland-Gives. Your metrics are what displays on your organization's profile. So X number of dollars raised by X number of donors. So you can choose what to show. So if you want to show the amount, but not the number of donors, if you don't want to include offline donations or you do, you get to set those terms. And it's very simple to find it. Just go to your nonprofit profile when you are in edit mode, and you can just click the little pencil, and it'll take you to the window where you can edit that information. And the date that you want to calculate from is November 15, 2021, at 7 a.m., because that's when early giving opens. So if you have donations from last year's event that you kind of want to reset to zero, how you'll do that is by opening that window that you see in the slide, and then when it says choose a start, choose a date, that's what the date you'll be choosing is so that you're only counting donations that count for this year's Richland-Gives event. And I also recommend setting a new fundraising goal. If you don't wish to share a fundraising goal with your donors, you don't have to, but you can certainly reset it. And the good thing about Mighty Cause is that you can always change it. So you're not locked into that goal. You get to keep whatever you earn or whatever is donated to you, regardless of whether you hit your goal, you can reset it to make it larger or smaller. It's totally within your control. But I definitely recommend setting a financial goal, how much are you looking to raise, and then entering that into your metrics so that you're displaying that on your page and your donors know how much you're looking to raise. So under your reports, you'll find donations and disbursements. And I'm sorry, there's not a whole lot I can do to make this particularly entertaining or interesting, but it is important nonetheless. So every time you get a donation on Mighty Cause, everybody who is listed as an administrator for your nonprofit will receive an email notification. And you can access that donor data in real time through your donation report on your nonprofit profile. Now, I do want to mention that the view on the actual page that says donation report is a limited view because we only have so much information that we can share there and still make it readable. But if you would like to download a comprehensive report with basically everything we know about that donation, you can go ahead and export that from the donation report page. You can also find your funds disbursement reports there, which is really important because when you get those deposits, you want to make sure that you understand what is included. If you have any more, that's supposed to be coming in. And if you have a EFT setup, our direct deposit option, you will get a disbursement twice monthly if you're getting a check that will be sent out around the 10th of each month. But you'll be able to see the breakdown of every donation that's included. You can export a report with the details of that. And you'll also be able to see the breakdown of any fees that were withheld from your disbursement. So if you're wondering how much am I paying in fees, your disbursement report will give you that information very easily. And yeah, you can access all of that information under the report section. Definitely it's not the most exciting section, but it is really important for your back office administrative needs. So offline gifts can be added to your Richland Gives fundraising because we want to allow you to be able to reflect the totality of your fundraising efforts for this event. You can add offline gifts. You have a section on your menu when you go to reports where you can add an offline donation. And those will also be logged in a separate report for you if you'd like to export that. Now, one thing I do want to point out is that offline gifts do not count toward leaderboard totals or any prizes during Richland Gives. So as much as possible, you do want to encourage people to make donations through the Mighty Cause platform because that is beneficial to you. It puts you in the running for cash prizes for your nonprofit, which is one of the huge benefits of participating in Richland Gives. But some donors just prefer to give via check or cash, and we want to be able to give you a way to log that information so you can use the offline donation tool under reports to log those offline gifts. Your donor retention report is a really cool, interesting tool that I hope that you'll be able to use this year, especially if this is not your first year with Richland Gives. What this tool does is it gives you a report that you can filter to include whoever you would like, and it tells you who hasn't given this year that has given in the past. It helps you identify those donors who've given to Richland Gives in the past and need to be recaptured this year. So it's very handy when you're putting together your outreach plan for Richland Gives. So make sure that you take a look at the donor retention report. It'll also tell you how many donors you've retained, which is really handy, especially if you're getting some high-level reports together for your board or your executive director. And you can also export the report, get some emails ready. We're going to talk a little bit about email marketing in a minute, but it allows you to do the outreach to recapture these donors. If you've been participating in Richland Gives for years, you can even attempt to recapture donors from several years ago. So there's a lot you can do with this report. And we've made it really easy for you to access the Richland Gives specific report, so you don't have to look at the dates and figure out when Richland Gives was in 2019. You can easily pull that report, because we've added that for you since we know that you've participated in that event. So your donor retention report, especially if this is not your first rodeo, is a really important tool that you can use to recapture those donors who've given in the past. So your checkout flow. This is what I was telling you was pulled out of the menu and has its own menu item now. This is where you can tell us what donor data you'd like to collect. So if making phone calls is really important for saying thank you for you, you can collect phone numbers here. If you want to collect addresses, you can make sure that you're collecting addresses. That is all within your control. So you have the option to choose what you'd like to collect from donors when they're checking out. One thing that is really important and I recommend checking out is your custom donation suggestions and descriptions. So those are kind of where old information tends to go to die. So take a look and make sure that those are up to date for your 2021 campaign that you don't have references to old campaigns. And certainly taking those descriptions and those amounts and customizing them for your campaign this year is something that we really recommend doing, especially if you can tie them to a real-world item or service that your nonprofit provides. A trend in giving that has existed really since the beginning of time is that people like to give things. They like to give objects rather than giving money even though your nonprofit can do a lot more with the money than they can the objects. But you can sort of get around that and appeal to that part of donors that wants to give a thing to your nonprofit by making your custom donation suggestions and descriptions reflect real-world items and services that it will, that amount will allow your organization to provide. You can also preview the checkout process. You don't have to make a test donation. You can go through the whole process in your checkout section of your admin dashboard. And you can also enable dedications and designations. So if you tend to post in honor of dedications in your newsletter, you can enable that so that you're collecting that information and you can do that with the people who donate during Richland Gives. And if you have any restricted funds that you would like to make available to people to donate to, you can enable that as well. And just as a note about that, they can't enter their own designation. You set that information and they have to choose from what you've told them. So you can't have donors making up their own funds. You can allow them to choose from several funds that you would like to allow them to designate their donation for. So post checkout is really important because it is, I think it's within 24 hours, you want to be able to thank your donors. And this allows you to automate some of that process for you. So again, we've pulled it out so it's easier to find in your checkout option on the menu. And you can find your post checkout information. So what I'm talking about with post checkout is a thank you page and a receipt message. So the thank you page displays as soon as somebody completes their donation. It'll display your thank you message for them. And it's completely custom so you can enter whatever you'd like there. You can make a little video and embed it there and allow people to watch it on that page. You also have the ability to throw in some links, a CTA button. There's a lot you can do with that page to sort of begin the stewarding process as soon as somebody begins or somebody completes their donation to you. And then every time somebody makes a donation on Mighty Cause for Richland Games, we will send them a receipt. And you have the ability to enter a custom donation or a custom message into that receipt so that as we're sending them their tax receipt, you can have a thank you that goes to them and buys you a little bit of time so you can do a more intensive follow up at a later date. But how quickly you say thank you is very important in how likely donors are to come back and make subsequent donations. So this just allows you to start that process early and buys you a little bit of time so that you can do more in depth outreach and thank yous after the event is over. So matching grants, we're going to be talking a lot about those in the second webinar, but matching grants are on under your fundraising tools. And if you're not familiar with matching grants, matching grants are a tool that is available. It's kind of a marketing tool where you secure a large donation and you offer that up to your donors as a match. So they get something and by making their donation during a time that's advantageous to you as an organization, they get to give more through the match. So that is a tool that we offer. It's a pretty complex tool so there's a lot you can do with it. If you're wondering what I'm talking about, I would really recommend just going into the tool and taking a look at the options that are available there because you can do a dollar for dollar match and you can also do a cumulative match that allows the match to kick in after you've reached a certain fundraising goal or benchmark. So there's a lot of really interesting fundraising techniques that you can use through matching grants. And we're going to talk in a little bit about how to secure a matching grant. But basically what that does for you is that it puts your organization in a few different places. So you have a special search on the Richland Give site which is not active yet because we're not accepting donations yet for Richland Gives. But there is a search where people can specifically find organizations that have matches available because a lot of donors are very smart and they like to give intelligently and make sure that they're getting the most for their buck they possibly can. So they will be able to find your organization through that search and that can also help you pick up some new donors. It also puts a sticker on your donate button so that everybody who donates to your organization knows that you have a match available. And it also displays in the search filter. There's people can filter for matched donations in the Richland Give search. So there's a lot of benefits to entering your matching grant aside from just the fundraising benefit. Just a few technical notes about matching grants. You have the option to count them in your total or not. So if you have a matching grant that you're receiving offline, if somebody is sending you a check or paying through some other means, you can have that match automatically added to your total so you don't have to enter a separate offline donation. If you are able to and your donor is willing to pay online, it's definitely advantageous to you because it counts for leaderboard totals and it counts for prizes. So if you can get them to pay through the platform, I would recommend doing that. And in that case, you don't want to opt to count it in your totals because that will basically amount to it being counted twice. So the general rule of thumb is that if somebody is paying online, don't count it in your totals because when they make their donation that will come through and display in the total. But if you are accepting it via check or some other process that is not happening on Mighty Cause, you can actually just click a box and it will do the math for you and we will add it to your total as people make donations. So yeah, that's matching grants. We're going to be talking a lot more about matching grants, but that's a really complex tool that does a lot for you. So I would definitely recommend taking a look at the tool and just seeing what the options are. So your settings are important. They're not the most exciting part of your profile by far, but it is really important. Definitely year after year, if you've had some turnover, you want to take a look at who has administrative access to your page. If someone has moved on from your organization, you'll want to remove them. And if you have some new people on board that are going to be helping with your campaign, you can add them through your settings page. You can also check your legal address if anything has changed since 2020. Sometimes your address change or something small changes, you can actually update that there where you can do the display and but if you wanted to change your legal information, there's a process for submitting the documentation so that we go through the proper due process to get it changed on the back end. Here's also where you can set up your EFT, which I recommend doing if you haven't already done that allows you to receive your funds through direct deposit and you'll get them more frequently. So checks we send once per month and it takes a little while because of the mail. It just takes a little bit to get to you, but with EFT, it ends up directly in your account. It's deposited right away and you'll get it twice per month. So you get to make use of those funds that are donated to you much sooner. So I recommend making sure that your EFT is set up for the correct account because we have no way of knowing it might cause if that account is no longer accurate. So if you haven't checked in since 2020, definitely take a look at your EFT and just visually verify that that is connected to the correct account. And if you haven't set up EFT, I definitely recommend taking the steps to do that. And you can also customize your URL. So if you have a long legal name, you can shorten that using the URL customization tool. And this is also where you'll change your social sharing settings. So if you go to share something on Facebook and it's referencing an old campaign, this is where you can change that through your settings. All right. So with all of the dry technical information out of the way, we're going to move on to some marketing tips. So one of the biggest things that I can recommend to you, if you are starting to get together your marketing plan and think about what you'll do for Richland Gives, make use of the non-profit toolkit that's on the Richland Gives site. You can find webinars to sign up for. That's where the recording of this webinar will go once we're done. And you can also sign up for future trainings. We have tips, FAQs there. So if you're wondering how does this work on Richland Gives, check the FAQs. We have it all there for you. And really the coolest thing and the thing that will be probably the most helpful to you is the email and social media templates. So if you're getting a little bit of writer's block and you're not quite sure what to post on social media or what emails you should send, you can actually find templates that you can copy, paste, and customize. And it makes it very easy for you to market your Richland Gives campaign. And you can also find some logos there that will make marketing your campaign a lot easier. So take a look at the non-profit toolkit resources and make use of those as you're getting your marketing plan together. So one of the best things that you can do is really take advantage of the early giving period. So Richland Gives, the big day is on November 30th on Giving Tuesday, but you do have time to raise money before then. Early giving begins on November 15th at 7 a.m. And you can start collecting donations then and sort of get some money in the bank for the big day. And it's a really important opportunity to engage donors early and give yourself more time to fundraise. So all of those donations are processed immediately. They count towards your leaderboard totals. And I just want to make clear that these are immediate donations. They are not pledges that will process at a leader time. When your donors make the donation, it'll come out of their account and you will see it in your donation report immediately. And one thing that people often get concerned about, especially with a giving event that is really focused on a particular day like Richland Gives, is will people just give early and then not give on the big day? But overwhelmingly, what we see with giving events is that when organizations take advantage of early giving and they get donors to come and make a donation before the big day, the donors actually give more than once. So you're going to be getting them to give more than once. They're going to give during early giving. And then most likely, they will also give again on November 30th. So you're actually increasing the amount that you raise overall because you're bringing donors back to give multiple times, and you're increasing the overall amount that you raise. So you get basically, instead of engaging those donors once, you're engaging them more than once. And it's a really great way to get built some momentum for yourself, get your marketing off the ground, and really engage donors in the campaign that you're running. And what I really recommend doing is targeting people who are tried and true supporters of your organization. So people who show up to support you year after year, past Richland Gives donors, your board members, your volunteers. There's a lot of overlap between volunteers and donors. Anybody who gives to you on a monthly basis, get them involved in early giving, because that's a really great way to raise more money during Richland Gives and to really engage the people who are there for your nonprofit and get them giving more than once for the same campaign, which is really the dream, isn't it? So I was talking about matching grants a bit earlier, and I wanted to go into what matching grants are and how they work a little bit more in detail. So matching grants are essentially a marketing tool. If you think about a retail business and a sale, they're giving you something for going in and making a purchase during a specific period of time where they want you to make a purchase. And a matching grant kind of does the same thing, but in a nonprofit setting. So you're getting a large donation, a board member or a sponsor that you have a relationship with, are great places to ask for a matching grant. And you're marketing that to your supporters so that instead of just giving, they're also getting something in return. So if they only have $40 to give, if you have a one-to-one match, they can turn that into an $80 donation. And that's very appealing to donors. So it's essentially a marketing tool. You're giving them a reason to come donate now. It's very easy for donors to scroll past an email or a social media post and say, oh, well, I'll do that later. This gives them an incentive to give right now because they can take advantage of a matching grants. And one thing I did want to mention is that you can actually have multiple matching grants for Richland Gifts. There are organizations who might have matching grants happening at all times during the event. There are some that may have one main match that they are promoting, but it's a really great strategy to get people interested. So when it comes to securing a matching grant, there's basically three steps. And it's very similar to major gift, securing a major gift. So the first stage is prospecting. And as I mentioned, your board is a really great resource. Sometimes your board can pull together funds and give a match as a whole. Or sometimes individual board members are happy to give one individually and sponsor a matching grant and give you the funds for that. Since it's the end of the year, if you have board members who need to pay dues, sometimes you can use their dues for that purpose and use them as a matching grant for Richland Gifts. And if you don't have any interest from your board in actually providing the money for a match, they can also just be a really great resource for introductions and people in the community, any businesses that might be interested in providing a match for you. So tap your board for help. But you also want to take a look at any major gift donors, any sponsors that you've worked with, and you actually don't need that much money. So a $500 match for a smaller organization can really go a long way. And if you have it for a shorter period of time during, you know, say an hour, that can make a huge difference for your fundraising and give you a really great marketing tool that you can use to appeal to donors. So start with prospecting, making a list of people that you can ask for a matching grant who are likely warm to that kind of relationship with your nonprofit. And definitely if somebody has given a matching grant to you in the past, it's worth approaching them again. So keep them on your list. The next step is cultivation, which is basically starting the conversation with them talking to them about what you're doing, finding out where they are. So for instance, if you have a sponsor that was really hard hit by COVID and is kind of struggling, it's maybe not a great time to ask them. So you're kind of getting a little bit more information. It's the discovery process. Where are they and are they likely to be warm to this sort of thing? And then once you've got a good sense of where you are with this particular prospect, you would make your ask. So that's pretty simple. You know, you ask them for the matching grant, explain how they work and what you have in mind. I recommend being a little bit open, not going in with a particular dollar amount in mind, and just sort of maybe thinking about a range or whatever they are open to, talking to them about how involved they would want to be, how they would like to be recognized, whether or not they would like to be anonymous. Some grand tours prefer to be anonymous, but a business might really love the opportunity for you to call them out as a sponsor of your organization so that they can use that to show the public how philanthropic they are in your community. And now is the perfect time to get started. We're just at the end of September. So you've got more than a month to get all of this in motion. So it's a really perfect time to start this process of securing matching grants. And then once you've got the matching grants, you can just enter them on Mighty Cause and start promoting it on all of your marketing channels. And if you have any questions about entering a match, because sometimes it gets a little tricky, it's a very intuitive and easy to use tool, but sometimes, especially if you have multiple matches, it can get a little bit tricky. Our support team is here to help you through that process. So you can email support at mightycause.com if you run into any questions or pickles while you're entering matches. So when we're talking about marketing, one of the most important things to do is find your key messages. So your key messages are things that you will be hitting over and over again during your campaign. Because people ultimately, they don't give because of what you do, they give because of why you do it. So these are sort of high level ideas that you're using to connect with donors. So why do you do what you do? Why is your nonprofit so important to the Richland County community? Are there any timely things that they need to know for organizations who are hard hit by COVID and are still kind of struggling to recover? For instance, arts and culture organizations who lost a lot of ground in 2020 because of the pandemic, adding some timely messaging in as well that sort of give people a quick overview of where your organization is at and why it's important for them to give now are really important. So I recommend three. And this is the basic structure. Why do you do what you do? Why is it important in Richland County? And what do donors need to know about your nonprofit right now? And you want to keep these simple because you're going to be integrating these key messages into every part of your campaign. So including it in your mighty cause story, keeping it in your emails, making it the center of your social media posts and so on. These are kind of the threads that are going to connect all of your marketing efforts for Richland Gives. So if you're not quite sure where to start, sitting down and kind of sketching out these three key messages is a really great way to sort of get your mojo when you're thinking about planning marketing for Richland Gives. So always go back to those key messages, having them written down so that everybody's on the same page is one of the first things I recommend doing and it'll really help you especially if you're like, I've written 20 social media posts and I don't know what to write anymore. You can go back to those and find inspiration from them. So in terms of content, there are some pieces of content that we highly recommend having to market your campaign. The first is a campaign video. These are really versatile resources that you can use in multiple different places. You can put it on your website. You can put it in your mighty cause story. You can use it on social media. You get a lot of mileage out of a campaign video. And if that sounds intimidating, I do want to let you know that you do not need to be Steven Spielberg to make a great campaign video. Campaign videos are usually very short. A minute or less is usually what you're aiming for and you're just kind of talking about your campaign, what you're doing and sharing some video footage you can even use still footage. And you don't have to have a videographer. Certainly if you have a volunteer who is experienced with shooting videos or editing them, I recommend pulling them in and getting started on that. But you don't have to have any of those resources. Everybody has a really powerful camera and editing tool in their pockets or their purse and it is their smartphones. So you can make use of what you have available to you. And there are some editing tools like Canva and a Moto and YouTube that you can use to really put together a slick campaign video for almost no money or no money at all and without any editing experience. So I really recommend having a campaign video. And again, now is the perfect time to start thinking about that since they can take a little bit of time to get off the ground, especially if you're working with any volunteers. Having photos that you'll use on social media and your mighty cause story that support your campaign is really important to have. You want to have assets and things like emails and social media posts. You're going to need photos. So I recommend getting a little folder of photos together that you can pull from when you're building emails and social media posts and so on and so forth. Social media graphics and I've actually seen a lot of people do this. I think this is really cool. They'll have graphics that they make in and they'll put them in their story. So they'll break down their donation levels, they'll break down what their nonprofit does in a really interesting visually appealing graphic. And that is really handy to have on hand a tool that I recommend and I have absolutely no affiliation with this company aside from the fact that I love them is Canva. So Canva is a really great tool. You don't need any design experience, but you can make really interesting slick graphics in Canva. You can also make videos in Canva and they do have a discount for their pro services for nonprofits. So it's worth if you want to use Canva, trying to get a nonprofit account so you have access to all of their pro features, which includes stock photos, stock videos and so on. It can be a really great tool. And having those graphics in your pocket that you can use in emails on social media and even embed into your mighty cause story will really help you market your campaign and give your campaign a cohesive feel. So social media has always been a really important part of Giving Tuesday. Obviously, the name of Giving Tuesday is a hashtag and it was really sort of built around social media and it's definitely important during Bridgeline Gives. However, there has been a trend really since 2016 or so where business pages and nonprofit pages are having a hard time being seen on social media. So I want to be honest about that and talk about some ways that you can sort of work with that. So the biggest challenge is that feeds are no longer chronological. People don't see your posts when you post them. In most cases, they might see them days later because it's using an algorithm to decide what to put in front of a particular user at a particular moment. And it can make it a little hard for business pages and nonprofit pages. And on Giving Tuesday, November 30th in particular, there's going to be a lot of activity on social media. So it's really important to consider that people are not going to see your posts right when you post it in most cases. So that means that we have to get a little bit creative to get around that. So using other outreach techniques like contacting donors directly via phone, using your email marketing to get around that, and then also making a budget for boosted posts and ads. So on Facebook and Instagram, they are both owned by Facebook. You can easily put together ads and they really, really don't need to have much money behind them. $15 and targeting the people who follow you will mean that more people will see your posts. So your key posts, you might want to put some money behind those and budget for that. Again, it really doesn't have to be much. You can use the Rich Link Gives hashtag as Mara just mentioned in the chat to be seen and join it on the Rich Link Gives conversation because people make they can follow that hashtag and they can find organizations who are participating in Rich Link Gives. And if they're participating in other Rich Link Gives posts or interacting with those posts, it makes them more likely to see your posts. And one of the features that is still chronological on Facebook and Instagram is stories. So stories are chronological. They're kind of the same function as Snapchat. They're short stories like they can be video, they can be photo, they can be text. And those are 24-hour stories. You can archive them, but they are shown in chronological order. So they will be seen by people as you post them. So making use of the story feature is a really great way to be seen on Facebook and Instagram in particular. And things like live streams can also be really advantageous. People have had a lot of success with them, especially during the pandemic when people were not able to gather in person. So planning on a live stream on November 30th will be a really great way to get people involved and get them looking at your content and get them in front of you on social media where unfortunately business pages can be buried sometimes. So email is a really important tool. It's really kind of your most important tool during Rich Link Gives because it's a direct line to your supporters. There's no algorithm to fight. There's no strategy that you need to use aside from sending emails to your donors. What I recommend is during the early giving period from November 15th to November 29th, that's a really great period where you can sort of do some testing to optimize your posts or your emails rather for the big day. So A-B testing, if you're not familiar with it, is where you're testing variables in your emails. So for instance, you may want to test different subject lines. You may be wanting to test some button placement because sometimes where the button is and what color it is can make a huge difference in how people respond to it. I do recommend sticking to one variable per email because if you're testing too many things, then you won't really know what made the difference. But trying different subject line techniques like adding an emoji, for some reason that works like a charm to get people to open emails versus one without an emoji. One tactic I've seen more people use is sort of starting a subject line for a marketing email with RE colon and then whatever the subject is, just to make it look like it's a response to an email they sent. So you can test those various tactics to get people to open your emails because that's really the key. You want them to open it and you want them to click that button to donate. Another tactic that I really recommend is segmenting your list. And what I mean by that is that everybody has an email list and how big it is depends on how many donors your nonprofit has. There is certainly a place for email blasts to everyone, but where possible I recommend trying to split that list up into affinity groups, groups that have something in common. And you're not reinventing an email for them, you're not building a totally new email, you're just slightly editing parts of it to make it more specific to the person who is receiving it because that makes it more likely that they will A, open it and B, be responsive to what is in the email. So if you're asking them to donate and you're talking specifically to who they are and the relationship they have with your nonprofit, they're more likely to donate and take the action that you're asking of them. So some groups that I can think of that almost everybody has right off the bat are recurring donors, people who give to your organization on a monthly basis, past Richling Gibbs donors, one-time donors, volunteers. Again, there's a lot of overlap between volunteers and donors at most nonprofits. So those are some groups that you want to take a look at and think about segmenting certain emails to them because these are groups that you would probably want to talk to a little bit differently. You wouldn't want to talk to a volunteer who comes to your organization once a week and helps you out a lot in the same way you would somebody who donated $10 once a year ago. So that's the benefit of using segmentation, is talking more specifically to who people are and how they interact with your nonprofit. And lastly, a lot of people and most people I should say skim emails rather than reading them. So I would try to stay away from emails with lots of text using headers, using images, and so on so that people can easily skim your email and kind of get the point and get what you're talking about because most people don't read them word for word. They just kind of quickly skim them. So if somebody gets an email with a giant wall of text and many, many paragraphs, they're probably not going to read the whole thing. So you want to make it easy for them to find the most important pieces of information. And you can do that by pulling that out into headers within the email and also the use of images. And you can also try strategies like different CTA buttons, one at the top and one at the bottom, making sure that all of your images are linked to your donation page. For some reason, people love to click the first image in an email. So make sure that that is linked to go to your Rich Link Gives page. So donor retention should be really important, especially if you've participated in the past. You have your donor retention report that is available for you to use so that you can easily identify previous Rich Link Gives donors who need to come back and make another donation. And basically, these donors are low hanging fruit. They have already bought it and they've already heard your message and decided they want to support you. So it would really be a tragedy if you don't reach out to them specifically to ask them to come back and make another donation. And again, we've provided the donor retention report so that it's extremely easy for you to pinpoint who these donors are. So what I would recommend is also thinking beyond emails and social media for this group, especially those who've given at a higher level. You may want to take some extra care with those groups of donors. So things like sending them save the date cards in the mail with a little handwritten note saying, hey, you've donated to Rich Link Gives in the past. You're so important to us. And we really hope that you can come back and give again in 2021. That can go a long way. Not a lot of nonprofits do that anymore. So that can be a really nice personal touch. Calling them on the phone. We kind of forget about the phone sometimes too in the digital age, but it is a really powerful tool that you can use to connect directly with somebody. And that's also a really great task for volunteers. If you have a small staff and you don't have the time to make phone calls, you can get volunteers involved. And that's something they can easily do from their own home. And you can also consider in-person events. If it's safe for you to do so, you can plan in-person events for past donors and maybe see about bringing them back and getting to know them face to face and really working on building that relationship with those past donors. Certainly using email is a really great tactic for them. But I really want at this point nonprofits to think beyond that because we all get tons of emails but not a lot of us get personal correspondence with a nonprofit anymore. So that can really make the difference in whether or not these donors come back and make another donation. So I've already talked about this a little bit, but getting your board involved is a really great way to help strengthen your campaign. They can get involved in so many ways. There's so much they can do for you. They can provide a matching grant as we talked about. They can be a resource for you and provide introductions to sponsors and businesses and other people in the area who are philanthropically minded. They can also do some peer-to-peer fundraising for you and actually get directly involved in raising money. So like a board member could create their own fundraiser where they talk about their involvement in your nonprofit that is available to everybody participating in Richland Gives. And you could also consider doing something a little bit more advanced like a team fundraising board challenge, like setting up a challenge where your board members are competing against each other to raise the most money for your nonprofit, particularly if your nonprofit has a fundraising requirement for board members. This is a really great idea for them because they can easily get involved with an event where people will be giving and meet their fundraising requirement that way. And they can also tap into their network just to boost your campaign. So a lot of board members are very well connected in the community. So sharing a link to your page on their social media, their LinkedIn, wherever they are active can really do a lot to bring people to your page. And they are public representatives of your organization. So they should be more than happy to help you with this. So see if you can get Richland Gives added to the agenda of your next board meeting and have your executive director or maybe somebody from your development department talk to them about the event and what it's all about and how they can get involved. I've mentioned this before as well, loop-in volunteers. So a lot of nonprofits are very small and nonprofits are not any different than a lot of companies in the world right now in that they're having a hard time finding adequate staffing. And this is a perfect opportunity for you to loop in some volunteers who have skills to bring to the table and can really help you with your campaign. So for instance, helping with a video can be a really fantastic way for a volunteer to get involved. And it's also a great opportunity for them to sort of build a portfolio. They can help with graphic design. A lot of nonprofits don't think about volunteers in that capacity, but they can really help with marketing and you may have some very talented people in your volunteer base who simply need to be asked. If you're not super handy with social media management and you don't have anybody on staff who is, you may be able to find a volunteer who maybe does this for a living or has experience with it who can help you out. Things like donor outreach with phone calls, with handwritten cards, thank you calls and cards. Those are all things that are great for volunteers to participate in. And you can also just ask your volunteers like to share the link to your page with their social network. So think about that as well, maybe sending them an email saying, hey, it would really help us out if you could share a link to this page on social media. Use the Richland Gives hashtag and get volunteers involved in boosting your campaign and helping with your marketing. So one thing I do want to make clear is that Mighty Cause is here to support you. So reach out to our team if you need anything from us, whether it's help navigating your profile, doing something specific or even help with a donor who might need a receipt, you can email us at support at mightycause.com. We are a Monday through Friday operation, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. And we also provide support for your donors. So if somebody has a question about a donation or they need a refund or something like that, a receipt, we're here to help them. You don't have to field those emails yourself. You can always send them to our support team or copy our support team if you need our assistance. You can give us a call if you're a phone person at 202-800-1618. And we also have a comprehensive support library at support.mightycause.com where you can find how-tos, walk-throughs, and videos, and other content that will help you as you get ready for Richland Gives. All right. So I'm just under, I'm actually at 3 o'clock right now. So if you have to leave, I completely understand. And we'll make sure that you get a recording of this presentation. But if you have a question, Mora and I are both here and available to answer any questions that you might have about Richland Gives. So please don't be shy. If you have a question, operate, oh, put it into the Q&A box in your Zoom panel. And we will make sure that we get to it. Mora, did you have anything that you wanted to add to the presentation or anything that you wanted to chat more about? No. You were very thorough. I took about two pages of notes, Linda. So some things that I can do on our page as well. Fantastic. That's always good to hear. And so we've got 19 attendees here right now. You have a captive audience with me and Mora. I'll give you another minute or so to enter any questions that you have, that you'd like us to talk more about. But yeah, so yeah, go ahead, Mora. I do want to let everyone know at this point in time we are planning to have the in-person leaderboard watch party from 5 until 7 p.m. on November 30. Go to the rules and prize section on richlandgives.org for the prizes that we will be giving out on November 30. And the ones leading up to November 30, the board has doubled the amount of grand prize incentives this year. And I thank the board and our donors for making that available to the nonprofits that are participating in richlandgives this year. Yeah, and that's a really great point is that Mora and the Richland County Foundation was like super on the ball this year and got the prizes together very quickly. So those are already available for you on the RichlandGives site. So if you want to see the schedule and get an idea for like when you should be sending out emails and what's available, you can take a look at the RichlandGives website richlandgives.org and see the whole prize schedule and make sure that you understand what prizes are available and when they are awarded. So it's 3-0-2. I don't see any questions coming in. So I'll go ahead and end the webinar here. If you have anything you'd like to ask me, you can always reach out to me, linda at mightycause.com. You can also reach out to Mora. And if you have any technical questions, our support team is here to help you. So don't be shy about reaching out to them if you need help with something. But with that, I will go ahead and say farewell. Thank you all so much for attending. And we will get this recording up on the RichlandGives website as soon as possible. And thank you so much for your time today, Mora.