 Hi everyone we'll get started in just a minute here but before we hit the top of the hour if you could just let me know that you can hear me and see my screen that would be really helpful. I'm just going to go through the first couple of slides now and if you can hear me okay and you were able to see me move through those slides if you could just type yes into the questions box on your go-to webinar panel that would just let me know that you are able to actually see and hear the presentation. Excellent thank you guys so much and we'll get started in just a minute. I'm going to go ahead and mute myself because like a lot of you I'm working from home and my dog and my cat are going at it like Tom and Jerry outside my office or I don't know if the mic is picking that up but we'll be ready to go just at the top of the hour. All right hello everyone and welcome to our webinar on how to fundraise for COVID-19 relief fast. My name is Linda Gerhardt and I am the community senior community engagement manager here at Mighty Cause. I've been with this company since 2016 and before that my career was in the nonprofit sector specifically in animal sheltering and animal advocacy and I was working in the nonprofit sector during the Great Recession and during a couple of natural disasters so I've seen some things and weathered some change and in addition to all of that experience I've helped nonprofits figure out how to fundraise during national disasters localized disasters and just emergency situations at their organizations so that is the perspective I'm hoping to bring to you today and if you ever wanted to reach out to me with a question about the presentation or fundraising strategy my email address is linda at mightycause.com and you can see that right here on the slide so feel free to reach out if you need to. Here's a quick look at today's presentation we've basically just got four easy steps to creating a COVID-19 relief fundraiser very quickly and if those steps are too much for you we're going to end things with the bare minimum that you can do to fundraise so there's options for everybody just as a little bit of housekeeping I will be taking questions but at the end of the presentation so if you think of something you want to ask while I'm presenting just type that into the questions box if you're go to webinar panel and I'll make sure to make to make time for those questions at the end of the presentation and just to answer this question ahead of time we are recording this webinar and you will have access to both the recording and the slides so we'll make sure that you have access to those after the presentation's over. All right so before we really dig into the steps that I talked about earlier I wanted to briefly go through what the fundraising landscape looks like right now because this is really uncharted territory in so many ways and there's a lot of anxiety around what the right thing to do is now so I wanted to start off by addressing that so we currently have some issues facing nonprofits that are mostly everyday challenges that organizations face except this pandemic has put all of those issues on steroids they're much bigger now and the biggest issue for many nonprofits that I've talked to is simply capacity which is always a concern with the nonprofits that might cause serves because we mostly work with small and mid-sized nonprofits but this issue is obviously just amped up considerably right now some nonprofits are struggling to stay above water with the demands of responding in their community and fundraising just seems impossible to them right now while other nonprofits literally can't do the work that they normally do or have had to scale back their operations considerably just as an example animal shelters can't let people into their adoption centers so they're having to figure that out churches can't gather congregants congregants organizations that are based on mission trips aren't able to go anywhere education nonprofits are in totally new waters because school has been moved online and organizations like food pantries and diaper banks and medical organizations are working overtime to help in their communities so how do you begin to fundraise given all of these things and all of these different situations lots of nonprofits are struggling to find the right messaging because even seasoned nonprofit professionals have often not really lived through something like this before haven't faced a pandemic unless you work for like doctors without borders so for a community-based organization this is a real humdinger of a thing to message this is hard and as an extension of that is you have concerns about the optics of asking how this looks is it okay to fundraise right now is it tone deaf to ask for money and unless you've been pointedly ignoring the news which I completely understand you know that unemployment is at a record high and a lot of Americans are just struggling to get by now and in many cases they're unable to work so how do you ask for money when you know people are hurting and finally physical limitations are really hurting a lot of nonprofits they can't let people into their lobbies they can't interact with people in their communities spring events are postponed or canceled or completely reimagined and for nonprofits whose fundraising strategies and work are really all about one-to-one interactions and getting out into the community you're really stuck and forced to find a new way to connect with this new social distancing protocol so those are some pretty big issues the sector is grappling with and organizations are trying to find their footing with as I mentioned the question of a lot of nonprofits mind right now is is it actually okay to fundraise and I wanted to give a simple answer to that and expand on that a little and the short answer as you may have guessed is yes it's absolutely okay to fundraise now and here is why um generally we know that charitable giving increases during and after a disaster and while this is definitely different than Hurricane Katrina or an earthquake or something along those lines it's definitely a disaster situation and we have a lot of data that shows that charitable giving goes up because people want to help they're really driven to find some way to get involved and make the world a better place and often that's through charitable giving and supporting organizations doing work to assist communities in crisis they actively look for ways to get involved and be in service after a disaster and it's helpful to give people direction and let them know how they can help because when you don't people just kind of make it up and that's how you have situations that we often call the second disaster where everyone sends in kind donations to a disaster situation and then the Red Cross or whoever is on the scene needs an entire team of people just to sort through trucks and storage containers of donated supplies after a disaster that they can't utilize or had already taken care of so it's really helpful for nonprofits to let people know how to help them so they have some direction and don't just kind of make up how to help and for right now specifically in this situation people are giving to charitable causes we're seeing it on Mighty Cause they're starting fundraisers for individuals they know in their lives they're starting fundraisers for causes there's relief funds for families for artists for restaurant workers for all sorts of causes that people have just taken the initiative to start on their own which is a really cool thing to see and finally we've also got some national and local organizing happening to sort of harness that this moment of people wanting to help on a local and national level so we're going to talk a little bit more about that but yes 100 it is okay to fundraise right now so there are some important things to remember here and yes this is a bit of a pep talk because this is a really uncertain time and I think everyone needs a pep talk right now jobs are hard our daily lives are harder than they've often ever been so I want to give you a little bit of a pep talk that these things are also true one people who support your organization are going to continue to support you they want to know how they can best help you during this time and for organizations that are not providing direct coronavirus relief at this time that's absolutely fine the supporters of a performing arts organization know that you can't hold performances right now but they're still going to want to help you out because they care about your mission and they care about your cause so they know that already and they often want to help because they support your overall cause so have faith in your supporters second the work that you provide in your community is important even if you're not providing direct aid or relief right now the work you do matters and your organization deserves funding so you can continue to do that work once things are back to normal or at least we find a new normal some organizations may be more visible right now but that does that doesn't mean that they are the only ones deserving of funding and finally like I mentioned in the previous slide people are giving right now so if your non your nonprofit isn't in the mix that money is going to go to another nonprofit and your nonprofit has every right to be considered as a worthy cause and a place to send donations during this period so your work is important and it deserves to be supported one of those events that's happening that I talked about a little bit earlier is giving Tuesday now which is happening on May 5th some of you may have already heard about this event it's organized by the folks at giving Tuesday.org as a supplement to the national or the annual event that's held the Tuesday after Thanksgiving and Mighty Cause is participating primarily by providing resources such as a nonprofit toolkit where you can find a recording of the previous webinar we did about fundraising during this pandemic and where you'll be able to find this webinar recording we've also got blog articles and things that will help you navigate this new strange fundraising territory and that's located at givingTuesday.mightycause.com there are also several local Giving Tuesday Now events happening or ones that are happening at the same time to sort of coincide with Giving Tuesday Now the team at Give Minnesota which is one of the bigger giving events in the country is doing a giving event at the beginning of May as well so you may be able to find a local event that's happening near you so as you think about fundraising and whether or not it's okay or appropriate remember that on May 5th people will be giving to charities on this day so it's worth doing as much as you're able to just to keep your nonprofit in the mix and on Mighty Cause there's really no need to register for an event or anything like that our search will include all nonprofits on our platform and we actually just now released some really cool tools to our search that will allow people to find nonprofits based on their location a little bit more finely tuned rather than just finding locations by state which is what we had before so all donors who are on our platform and looking for nonprofits to support can find your nonprofit on our search all you really need to do is update your profile with COVID-19 relief information or to indicate that you're participating in Giving Tuesday now or you can even create a separate fundraising page or ask people to fundraise for you these are all things we're going to get into in just a minute but we're keeping the bar really low for participation because times are hard for you they're hard for everyone and you all have enough to worry about so we wanted to make sure that participating in Giving Tuesday now was as easy as it could possibly be for you okay so now we're going to go through as the steps to actually getting your fundraiser for COVID-19 relief in Giving Tuesday now off the ground and step one is determining your needs and your capacity this is basically just goal setting you'll want to meet with your team remotely to talk about what is most helpful to your nonprofit right now what your needs are do you have financial needs that you need to meet immediately what's more important to you are you looking for one-time donations and a large donation volume or you may be looking to run a recurring giving campaign instead of goal we recommend keeping it really flexible it does not have to be a monetary goal it could be getting more recurring donations acquiring some new donors or engaging in existing donors or whatever you would like it to be whatever you and your team decide is most meaningful to your nonprofit at this point now is the time for flexibility so while you'll need to sit down and determine your goals and needs this is really not a great time to set rigid or really ambitious goals unless you have a critical fundraising need that your funding need that you need to meet it's okay to have a goal like participate in Giving Tuesday now and acquire some new donors that is a simple goal and we're going to be talking a lot about keeping things simple so just determine what your needs are what is most immediately meaningful to your nonprofit and come up with some sort of goal that you can work toward with this fundraiser you'll also need to take stock of what you have available to you how much time you have how many staff or volunteers you have to assist you with this campaign and what kind of time they have available to them and make a call about what you can realistically accomplish with all that you have available to you right now it may be helpful to think about what your limits are what's the most you can do and what is the least you can do and sort of aim high but not too high and determine what your bare minimum effort is to generate some funding for Giving Tuesday now or for COVID-19 relief so really just take stock of your capacity and figure out what you can do what you could do if everything was going perfectly and what's the bare minimum that you can do to participate and raise some funds excuse me and really during this time period you'll want to likely scale down in several ways first try not to let perfect be the enemy of good when you're planning this fundraiser doing something to fundraise is better than doing nothing at all things are not normal right now so it's more important to get something going than it is for your fundraiser to be perfect or your best fundraiser ever with your most compelling storytelling and your greatest graphic design moving fast is really what's important here as with any disaster or emergency fundraising so just get something off the ground even if it's not perfect even if it's not how you normally do things and then you can build on that based on the availability and capacity that you have as you go forward and you'll also want to keep expectations realistic for yourself for how much you're able to raise and for your staff and volunteers and again keep it simple editing is something we're going to be talking about a lot but seriously you do not need a high concept fundraiser you don't need something complex and that's not going to help you get a fundraiser together quickly so don't create more work for yourself don't create complications creating a simple and honest fundraiser is going to be the key to getting your effort together in a short period of time so step two is finding the right messaging which is the $64,000 question right now but it's really not that hard based on what we know about what works into emergency and disaster fundraising so hopefully this section will help you easily sort out how to communicate with your constituency about your fundraising effort so the number one thing here is being direct get to the point quickly what do you need and how can your supporters help if you normally spend a lot of time crafting stories and building fundraising appeals this is probably a little uncomfortable but transparency is really key you'll want to communicate what is happening at your nonprofit are you all worn down and busy providing essential services to the community are you closed right now and worried about making payroll and paying your rent are you scaled back be really honest about how this virus has impacted your organization that is the story here and if you have any related stories by all means tell them but the main story is just your nonprofit and how it is impacted by this virus how it's affecting you and what you need to get through this difficult time so that you can keep doing your important work in the community because the main story here is your nonprofit you'll want to hammer home and reaffirm your organization's mission and your place in the community so talk about your work talk about your impact and this is especially important for orgs that are not providing direct aid or have had to shutter or scale back their operations temporarily focusing on your importance to the community that you have your round and the impact you have on an everyday basis when things are not in the midst of a pandemic is going to be the key to making a compelling appeal to donors and if you're working extra hard to meet needs in your community and you're actively working to help with COVID-19 relief in some way this is the time to highlight that work and really talk about all you're doing to serve the people this is your main story for your fundraiser so really just hammer home that you're important in your community and remind people of the important work that you do something that we do recommend doing during this time is focusing on recurring giving as a way to help and there are a few reasons for this especially if you don't have a an immediate or critical funding need you're asking for a long-term investment in your nonprofit's mission which is a great way to ask for donations especially if you're not currently able to operate at full capacity setting up a donation now will help your organization during this time and help you get back to doing what you do as soon as you're able to you're basically asking people to pledge their support to you the other thing focusing on recurring giving does is offer the ability to help it offers the ability to help with smaller and more approachable amounts people can give in smaller monthly amounts which can feel more appealing to people when there's some economic anxiety and on mighty cause it's worth mentioning that donors have absolute control over their recurring donation so they can update them at any time they can give more or they can give less they can switch their donation to another card or change the date comes out of their account and so on so that degree of control they have is really important they can make changes if they need to but asking people to pledge their ongoing support to your organization can be a really powerful message and help carry you through this period especially if there's not an immediate need you're trying to reach from a messaging standpoint something that's also really helpful here is including some alternative asks that don't involve giving money people are experiencing a lot of economic anxiety right now and helplessness so those two things in combination might make a small number of people feel bad if they're not able to give or if they're not able to give as much as they want so having some options that are actually helpful to your nonprofits so that's important it does need to actually be helpful to your organization can help it feel more approachable to help to people who may not be able to give financially and this is a good way to sort of skate that line with your messaging so some ideas for what you can suggest are peer to peer fundraising which we're going to talk about in a bit which is free for anyone to do on mighty cause you're basically just asking them to set up a fundraiser for your nonprofit and ask their friends and family to donate which again is something that we're seeing a lot happen or we're seeing happen organically right now people are motivated to start fundraisers volunteering remotely is another non-monetary ask that can be mutually beneficial a lot of people are at home or out of work and looking for ways to feel productive and nonprofits that have scaled down operations may need some volunteer help so think through you know if you have any volunteer needs that can be asked for in your your campaign ask and things like sharing social media posts sharing pictures or participating in an online conversation or signing up for your email list are things that are really small they're easy for people to do they're free and they can help soften the monetary ask for people who might be feeling sensitive about being asked for money right now so people are really burned out with bad news right now I am personally and I'm sure you are as well everything just feels very heavy and serious and nonprofits are really well positioned to deliver a message of hope and inspiration as opposed to death and horror so first off we recommend starting from a place of solidarity acknowledge that things are hard right now that you're right there with your supporters that you understand that they are affected by this virus a little understanding goes a long way so you want to start out by acknowledging that things are hard and as much as you are able to focus on community being connected to each other you'll see a lot of examples of this with for-profit marketing right now actually sort of reminders of our shared humanity and the fact that we we share this country and this earth with each other and we need to take care of each other and thankfully most nonprofits are much better messengers for this than say Comcast so you're at an advantage over them in terms of how genuine that message comes across and showing appreciation for your supporters your community your donors pretty much anywhere and everywhere is key right now because of you messaging is especially important right now and can be a really powerful place to start and ask for instance it's only because of you that we're able to do this work and right now we need your support more than ever messaging like that is really helpful right now it makes people feel important when they feel small and it's also true the donors do fund your work and they allow you to continue doing what you're doing so that's sort of because of you messaging that that framework is really helpful for messaging during this pandemic and I just wanted to take a moment to specifically talk to nonprofits that are not providing direct aid right now because that's I'm getting a lot of questions from nonprofits who are in that situation really just unsure of where the lines are and if they're allowed to fundraise so I just wanted to take a moment and talk specifically to you first focus on your existing supporters other causes and other organizations may be more visible right now and ultimately what that might mean for you is that you'll probably see fewer new donors coming to your organization for the first time but people who have supported your work in the past aren't going to decide to abandon your cause if you ask that for money for donations to help you get through this period and this is a really great time to engage those people who repeatedly show up to support your work and let them know how important they are to your operations and we're going to talk about how your you're going to want to talk about how your operations are impacted nobody is really business as usual right now I don't know of any organization or any company really that has not been affected so be honest and transparent with your supporters what's going on at your nonprofit and if you've had to scale back or discontinue certain things that's not a reason that you need to stop fundraising just work that in to the story of how this virus has impacted your nonprofit and why you need support and this is a recurring theme it won't be the last time I mentioned it but again focus on recurring giving monthly donations perhaps thinking think about setting your main giving Tuesday now ask up to be setting up a small recurring donation because these are long-term investments in your work in a way people can pledge their support and help you get through this crisis and get back to work as soon as you're able to be at normal capacity so it's okay to fundraise if you're not providing direct aid it's okay to fundraise on May 5th it's okay to run a campaign right now and I just want to make sure that you know that it's okay and if you follow these guidelines you will be able to message that correctly and you may just want to rethink what you're asking of people and who you're talking to all right so now we're going to get a little bit more technical and talk about actually setting up your campaign and this is going to be specific to the mighty cause platform because that's where I work and that's the only thing I can really talk you through at this point and basically on mighty cause there are three options for you and you can choose whatever makes the most sense for your nonprofit a very easy thing you can do this is easy mode for sure is just use your mighty cause profile this is your organization's main page it already exists you literally don't need to create anything unless you're not currently using mighty cause then you'll just need to take a few steps to get set up but it's already there you don't need to use this profile as your fundraising page but we recommend editing your about section to be relevant to COVID-19 and taking a look at your custom donation amounts and descriptions and tying them into your campaign especially if you're running a recurring giving focused campaign those are really easy things that you can do to customize your page but you just use your mighty cause profile it's already there it's already built you can make a few small tweaks if you have the capacity to it's not required but there are some really easy wins in customizing things on your page that will allow you to get the word out to your followers and your supporters much more quickly the other option is creating a separate fundraising page on mighty cause specific to COVID-19 relief this is connected to your organization profile and you can create this in a few minutes I promise I've created a million fundraisers they're super easy because it's a template you basically just need to create the page and fill in the blank information like it's mad libs you get started from your campaign screen on your profile or you just click fundraise from your profile there's a big button next to the donate button that says fundraise if you click that you will start a fundraiser if you're an admin it'll look like a project page from your nonprofit so there's really not that many steps involved with that and the even easier option here is just to reuse your giving Tuesday fundraising page from 2019 if you have one you can reset your metrics and make a few small edits but you can use the exact same page so you don't have to create anything new and again to move really quickly we're just encouraging you to work with what you've already got and what's already built so you can make this as simple as possible for yourself if you have a little bit of extra time and capacity and want to organize peer-to-peer fundraisers for giving Tuesday now starting an event or a team is the is a route that you can go though to be clear anyone can fundraise for your nonprofit whether you have a team or event page or not again that button is right there next to the donate button all people need to do is click it to start a fundraiser but if you want to get a little bit more complex and do a little bit more organizing of peer-to-peer fundraising efforts a team or event will give you a leaderboard and give you some additional tools that you can use to invite people to your page and also manage your fundraisers if you're able to do that right now and the difference between teams and events is basically just that a team is a bunch of individuals who are raising money together for the team and an event is a bunch of individuals and groups of people called teams fundraising for a shared goal so an event can have teams within it so an event is a little bit bigger a team is a little bit smaller and it's just a group of individuals and again this is intermediate we have lots of resources about starting teams and events in our support library at support at mighty support mighty cause support dot mighty cause dot com if this might be the avenue you want to try for giving Tuesday now and we do actually have a technical walkthrough of teams and events coming up on Friday this week that you should all be getting an invite for soon if that's the route that you want to go and you have a little bit of extra time and capacity now so on your mighty cause profile there's really just a key handful of updates that you'll want to make to use this as your profile as I mentioned previously your about section is something that you'll probably want to update even if it's just adding a sentence about giving Tuesday now or COVID-19 or removing old information you'll want to update your thank you page and receipt especially at the last time you looked at it was 2019's giving Tuesday event you can either add some COVID specific language in there or just make sure that you've got up-to-date language and you're not referencing any old campaigns take a look at your suggested donation amounts and their descriptions these are really easy things to tie into your campaign messaging especially for recurring giving and they are seen by donors at a really critical point when they have clicked the donate button and are deciding how much to give and whether or not they want to make it monthly so this is a really critical point and these are important tools that you can use to make your last ditch case to them that they should donate more or they should make it monthly so this literally takes a minute and it can make a huge difference it's probably the lowest hanging fruit in terms of easy edits and the impact that they can have and finally and if you have a financial goal you'll just want to update that part of your profile or your fundraising page or at least ensure that you don't have an old goal that you hit from your last campaign on your page because if people go to your page and they see that you have already achieved your goal they might be disinclined to donate so just make sure that you reset your goal with the new profile it's very easy you just click a button a little pencil icon and you edit that that section out so it's very easy and these are really quick edits that you can make to your page to prepare it to prepare to use it as your fundraising page for your GivingTuesdayNow or COVID Relief page all right so in terms of building out your fundraiser here are some best practices number one and I cannot emphasize this enough is use what you already have this is going to be critical in getting something off the ground quickly you do not have to reinvent the wheel use images and videos and other assets like your mighty cause profile that you already have at your disposal if you do want to use some GivingTuesdayNow logos we have some in our non-profit toolkit that you can easily plop into your about section or add them to an image in a program like Canva if you have some additional capacity right now and you wanted to do a little bit of GivingTuesdayNow branding but you really want to focus on tweaking what you have and then building up from there based on what you're able to do right now I mentioned this before and this is definitely a change from what I normally say on webinars but storytelling is really not what's most important here it's talking directly to your supporters telling them what you need how they can help and sending a direct clear message you don't need a campaign story beyond that so don't waste your time reaching one if you don't have one that's readily apparent and easily put together and finally edit yourself if something is not necessary don't do it now is not the time for a complex fundraising campaign it's not the time to add complications or complexity it's the time to be simple and direct so edit yourself and step back and ask yourself do I really need this and will this result in more donations and you can also apply that framework to things that your colleagues might suggest does this help us get more donations and if the answer is no you probably don't need to do it so just try to edit yourself as much as possible you want to move quickly it does not need to be a particularly beautiful campaign you just want to get something off the ground quickly that's functional and simple and direct so once you have the previous steps done and you know what you're going to say to people and where you're sending them to donate the next step is really just letting people know that your fundraiser is out there and getting the message out to your followers so I hate to sound like a broken record but I really wanted to revisit the question of is it okay to ask people for money right now because that's what we're going to be talking about is sending them emails and posting on social media asking them for money and yes 100 it's okay to ask people for money I've seen a lot of chatter about like is it tone deaf to ask people for money and I've been asked that directly by nonprofits and the thing is that the question kind of answers itself right there's a right and a wrong way to ask people almost anything and being tone deaf is 100% about the tone you use so if you follow what we've already talked about in terms of messaging you will not be perceived as tone deaf and again this bears repeating people are really looking to learn how they can help right now people have a lot of time on their hands it's very different than many other disasters where people are going about their normal lives our normal lives have kind of stopped for the moment so people are looking for ways that they can support you so it's 100% appropriate to tell them how they can help and again peppering your monetary asks with alternative asks can soften those asks to your wider audience so it's really a general message about how to help and we'll get more into this in a minute but email segmentation can help you send a stronger ask to people who are more likely to donate okay so i'm an email marketing nerd that is part of what i do for mighty cause so this is totally contrary to pretty much anything i've ever said in regards to email marketing on a webinar but email blasts are 100% fine if you can segment your emails to be more specific to your audiences that is ideal but this is all about easy and moving quickly and getting the message out so by all means send one blast out announcing your fundraiser to everyone on your list and ask them to donate for a blast keeping the cta the call to action strong and direct without asking for a specific number so we're talking language like give now help now donate now and so on keep the email blasts punchy and direct you do not need to write a novel in your email make a few points like what we've talked about based on what you've decided your messaging is for your fundraiser and put a cta button in there that's linked to wherever you're sending them and a really great way to grab more attention and get a few more opens is to have the email come from someone at your organization who's a little bit higher up and i'm using air quotes that you can't see for from because you can make an email that's a form email look like it's from your executive director or your board chair or somebody in leadership in most email marketing programs most people are more likely to open an email when they see that it's from somebody important or when it has a name attached to it so that's a trick you can use to get some more opens for your email blast you just want to be careful and make sure that the bounce backs and auto replies don't go directly to your executive director so just check the support library and make sure you're setting it up correctly if you're making it look like it's coming from someone at your organization but send an email blast i'm usually all about segmentation but email blasts are 100 fine this is all about easy and simple and quick and direct now if you can segment save it for the groups that are most important to you people who donate to who donate to your nonprofit regularly people who donated to your most recent giving Tuesday campaign if you participate in giving Tuesday every year you're recurring donors and donors that have a robust giving history if you're sending a blast segmented emails are a good way to follow up after your blast to be more specific with these donors and ask them again and with segmentation you can drill down and get more specific you can suggest specific amounts and you can get a little bit more bold about asking specifically for money without having to sandwich that between asking for volunteers and whatever else you may be asking for as your non-monetary asks and add some personalization with this group anything you can do to make it more personalized and look like it's coming from a staff member will pay off but again email segmentation is something that can be really powerful if you have the capacity to do it and already have some segmentation infrastructure in place so that you're not starting from scratch and not trying to figure out how to do this on the fly if segmentation is not familiar to you and it's not something you use in your normal strategy you don't need to worry about this a blast email is fine but if you have the capacity and the time and the resources to do some segmented emails to specific groups of people you'll that'll be worth your while to do but don't think that you need to learn this right now if you already do this then doing it in a strategic way here will be helpful to you all right so onto social media it's really simple schedule some posts announcing your fundraiser and remember to link to wherever you are sending them to donate that's really important I see people forget it all the time always include a link social media is a great place for those alternative asks and those smaller asks so schedule some posts in for those as well like asking people to sign up for your newsletter asking people to share posts and boost your campaign and making it interactive is really important on social media so ask questions get into conversations respond to comments not only because people are really looking for engagement and connection with other people right now but because social media algorithms are really looking for engagement especially early engagement on a post so when you post something on Facebook or Instagram for instance and people comment and they like it and they do things with that post really quickly that is making it more likely that other people will see that post in their feed because unfortunately even Twitter uses an algorithm now it's not a real-time feed so any early engagement or any engagement that you can encourage with your followers will help you get your message out to more people so as an example something as simple as an animal rescue saying hey leave a comment with a picture of your your best friend your furry friend work while you work from home show us show us your pets can you really powerful and getting that message across to more people because you're getting that engagement use the giving to say now hashtag to join the larger conversation about this event and again try to be responsive as much as you can thank people for shares and retweets and engage as much as you can if you don't have the capacity to sort of babysit social media right now this can be a really great volunteer opportunity they can do this from home they can do it remotely and a lot of people who may do social media management in their day-to-day lives might be available to volunteer for you in this capacity so if you don't have someone who can do this for you right now ask you may be able to get a really skilled volunteer who can help you engage so if you have the time some targeted personal outreach can be a huge help in building support and gaining traction for your campaign and when I say personal outreach I'm talking about a really quick personal email saying essentially hey I hope you're safe you're well and safe and everything's great with you we really value your ongoing support of our work you're so essential to helping us do what we do in the community I wanted to let you know about how COVID-19 is affecting our nonprofit and what you can do to support us here's a link have a great day by really that's all it has to be a few lines this can be a great way to get board members involved remotely and would be especially powerful coming from your executive director since personal outreach can be a little time consuming if you can do it put together a list of your major donors donors with robust giving history and really narrow it down to a list of people who are essential to your nonprofit and scale any personal outreach to your capacity you really want to save this approach for the donors I mean all donors are important but the ones who've really shown up again and again to support your nonprofit's work and one thing that can be a huge help when you have a list of people you want to do personal outreach to is to have a script a little an example of the email that has all of the important parts already plugged in and they can personalize it add things if they want to but that way you don't have to type in an email out a million times you don't have to type sincerely to 30 different people you have a little bit of structure and you can move through that personal outreach a little bit more quickly you'll also want to think about how you can streamline your thank yous and follow-ups and anything you can do to automate streamline and simplify here number one as I've mentioned before we have tools on Mighty Cause that will automate a thank you message for each donor and that is your thank you page that's what people see as soon as they complete a donation on our platform and your email receipt message as soon as somebody makes a donation on Mighty Cause they get a tax receipt from Mighty Cause it's generated by our system and you can plug in a message there that thanks the donors for their their donation on behalf of your organization so as you're automating tax receding you can also plug in a personalized message thanking them for their donation from your organization which buys you a little bit of time and immediately acknowledges their gift so just make an update to your thank you page very simple that's in the checkout flow section of your dashboard and customize your receipt message at the very least make sure that there's nothing outdated there and that it's saying what you want it to say especially if you haven't looked at your page since last year when you participated in GivingTuesday and then you just want to sketch out a very simple follow-up plan send out a blast after May 5th thank everybody for their support post on social media to say thanks again tell everyone how you did and you can keep it vague if you want to you don't have to say hey we've raised exactly this amount of money you can keep it pretty simple and vague but you basically just want to wrap things up and if you wanted to go above and beyond looping in volunteers to do things like calling donors to thank them sending emails writing thank you cards and so on are things that are perfect for volunteers right now they can do that easily at home so if you have the ability to ask volunteers to help you with thank yous that's a great use of volunteers for this campaign so some best practices here first move quickly ask as soon as you can and as soon as you have something set up and know what and how you're asking and where you're sending people send out an email blast and post on social media as soon as you're ready and here quality is really more important than quantity you don't need to be aggressive and relentless like you might be with a normal campaign when you're at normal capacity you just need to communicate thoughtfully and meaningfully and again you do not have to do all of these things don't overextend yourself or your non-profit staff or your volunteers take what is useful to you from these tips and apply them in whatever way in whatever combination makes sense for your non-profit situation resources and capacity right now whatever you can do to fundraise is enough again doing something is better than doing nothing when it comes to fundraising during this crisis and for Giving Tuesday now so last but not least before we go here is the absolute bare minimum you can do to raise money for Giving Tuesday now so if you're really pressed for time and you're low on resources this is going to be the least that you can do and I say this not to encourage you to do less but to make it clear that doing something is really not that hard and it's better than not doing anything to fundraise for Giving Tuesday now or for COVID relief first use your mighty cost profile since it's already there we've talked about that just scan it for old information and make sure it's not talking about an old campaign or sharing outdated information schedule one to two social media posts with a link to your mighty cost page for May 5th that's a Tuesday and if you use Facebook Twitter and Instagram but you have 5,000 followers on Facebook and 50 on Instagram just post on Facebook don't even worry about Instagram go where you have the most followers and where you can reach the most people and then just plan one blast for May 5th letting them know that they can help by donating to your page for Giving Tuesday now and that is it that is the bare minimum you need to do to ensure that some of the donations that will be happening for Giving Tuesday now on May 5th will at least go to your nonprofit this is the the least that you can do I won't take long to set any of this up a lot of it is just using things that are already available to you so this is the absolute least you can do to get a campaign up very very quickly all right so thanks for listening everyone I wanted to make some time for questions so if you have a question for me just type it into the questions box of your go-to webinar panel and excuse me while I scan for what might already be there oh okay this is an interesting question so we have some people on the webinar who are participating in Georgia gives which is a Georgia based Giving Tuesday event and they are participating in Giving Tuesday now so yeah there's going to be Georgia gives and if you're participating in that you already should know all about that but there is a national and I believe a global effort on behalf of the Giving Tuesday organization the people who organize the global event every year so Georgia gives is an organization they're doing their own thing related to this but it is part of that global event that's happening the general Giving Tuesday is not really an organized event they're not offered they're not really offering prizes they're more facilitating so Georgia gives is its own thing but yes it's definitely part of Giving Tuesday now just as a reminder the recording will be made available to you you'll be able to find it in perpetuity in the non-profit tool kit on our Giving Tuesday now site which is givingtuesday.mightycause.com so if you give me a little bit of time to update upload it to YouTube it takes a minute but it'll be there as soon as possible okay if this is a good question this is more of a technical question if you reset your goal is your old goal saved somewhere so at this point no the goals are kind of a fluid thing so if you erase an old goal that you had set up through the platform then it's not going to be logged anywhere just because we find that that's not data people look to access a whole lot so you may just want to jot it down if you had an old goal like you know for your last Giving Tuesday campaign just jot it down somewhere if you wanted to save it but unfortunately that is not saved anywhere because we just we have to be careful with what we put in our database and make available to you we don't want to overwhelm you with all of the data so it's not saved but you can easily reset it so that you're ready for your next campaign okay interesting this is a good question um we are a brand new organization supporting homeless k through 12 students we do not have a previous donor history what message do we send well your services are so essential right now so you have a really great message just based in the work that you're doing at your nonprofit um this may be a really great opportunity for you to reach out to an organization doing similar work in your area a school district um if you work in a particular location another education nonprofit for instance and sort of see if they're willing to help you get your campaign out to more people some organizations especially ones that have scaled back are looking for ways that they can help and stay relevant and coalition building is a great thing right now so if your new organization um and you don't have a previous donor history um it's a really great time to reach out to other people in the same area of work in your community where you do your your work and see if they're able to help lift up your message I think you'll find that a lot of places are looking for this sort of info I don't know about you guys but my town hall is posting things every day hey here's this food pantry they need this this education organization that provides uh you know school lunches for kids they they're set up here and they need donations here so just really you know put some feelers out into your community maybe spend a little bit of time researching um channels in your community where people go for information about how to help um and see if you have any nonprofits that you can sort of team up with and see if they can help you out and sort of lend their their followers to you so that might be the best strategy in terms of your your messaging right now with schools being out and being home-based obviously you have a really powerful message because you're doing essential work children who are homeless right now obviously they have nowhere to to go during this so just lean on what you do and what your mission is and see if you can rely on some community connections or make some new connections to get your message out there um oh here's another one um can mighty cause be used for recurring giving on our website yes um so i'm glad you asked that we do have a widget the widget is available to all users that's an easy i-frame embed so take it to your webmaster it's just a little bit of code that they would put in um that is free to use and you can set up recurring donations through that widget that was not always the case so if you are an old user or i should say a veteran user um that may not have always been the case but now you can set up recurring donations through the widget um if you have a subscription to mighty cause advanced you have a whole donation page that looks exactly like the page on mighty cause where you can send people to set up recurring donations so absolutely mighty cause can be used to set up recurring donations on your actual website there's a few different ways that you can embed it either through the widget which is the most popular that's what brings a lot of nonprofits to mighty cause in the first place um and also the donation form if you're interested in advanced subscription so yep absolutely you can embed those things on your website and start collecting recurring donations there as well um let's see sorry for the how do i add the website and add and our facebook links so um i'm a little unclear on like how to how to add this to your website if you're talking about the widget you just embed the code so it depends on what you're using to build your website if you're using like wordpress or wix it's going to be a little bit different but it's just a snippet of code where you can add in um the widget and it'll appear on your website and it's interactive with our site and you can collect donations there um and on facebook you'll just put in the url to your profile it'll be like mighty cause dot com slash something and you just copy and paste that url and you put it in um and that's all you have to do just facebook will generate a preview so that link is just the url at the top of your browser to your profile okay so there's a request about a particular slide i'm going to share the slides with you guys um but i will go back to the best practices we actually had a couple so i'm going to send you the slides so if you were taking notes and i went too fast for you you will have the whole presentation available to you um let's see just i'm sorry i'm scanning through the um questions here so if we participate in georgia giving tuesday they're funding paid fundraising page is separate from mighty cause so this is a good question um so mighty cause is the platform that georgia gives uses so it's all happening on mighty cause georgia gives just has their own site on the mighty cause platform that is specific to their event so uh basically you're going to be using that as a portal but it's the same basic infrastructure your profile is going to be the same you're just going to have some georgia gives branding added and then you have their event rules to follow so um it's the same platform um one of the things that mighty cause does is we host host these giving events so georgia gives is on mighty cause they're using our platform all of the instructions are still the same instead of giving tuesday.mightycause.com you're just going to put in gagives.org they have their own domain but we are are providing the site for them and the technology for them so we're just partnering with them so it's not really separate um it's they're doing giving tuesday and we have giving tuesday now if you're participating in georgia gives just ignore everything i've said about giving tuesday now and just replace it mentally with georgia gives all right um should organizations send tax receipts to donors like at the end of the year in addition to the automated one for mighty cause that's a great question um the general best practice on this is no because you could be in a situation where you're double receding them and giving them the opportunity to claim a donation twice um that's not a huge concern because the bar for who can itemize their taxes and actually see a benefit from charitable donations has gone up quite a bit recently um but generally speaking the tax receipt that they get from mighty cause the automated one is fine you do not have to send them an additional receipt if you would like to send them an additional thank you message then that is 100 appropriate and encouraged but once they've received that receipt from mighty cause because all of the donations are filtered through the mighty cause charitable foundation and we disperse the money to you you don't need to receipt them twice they've already received their their receipt and if they have any questions they're like oh i didn't get it sometimes people put in typos in their email addresses it happens all the time uh support at mighty cause dot com we can make sure that they get access to their receipt um and if they need like an annual giving statement they can also access that through their mighty cause profile we have a they can print it and then we also have a sort of living history of all of their giving on our platform um so you don't need to give another receipt to them if they would like some sort of statement at the end of the year you can certainly provide that um outside of mighty cause but it's all accessible through their user profile and if you have any questions from donors like hey i didn't get my receipt you can always send them to our support team because that is one of the services we offer is customer support for things related to the platform all right so how do i start a giving tuesday covid 19 fundraiser does it already exist on the website um so if you don't have one that you've already created and utilized for past giving tuesday events um then it doesn't already exist all non-profits have a profile on mighty cause if you are using mighty cause and you are an administrator for your non-profit you can just use your mighty cause profile if that doesn't make any sense to you um you basically just would need to claim access to your non-profit and start managing your non-profits page what our platform does is we import information from the irs database um so as if your non-profit is in the irs database it has a page on mighty cause it's just going to be a little bit sparse and there may be no one managing it so just search with your ein or you can put in the name of your organization and you can claim access to your page it's just a really short form verifying who you are why you're requesting access and it's a quick process to get set up but you can use that profile as you're giving tuesday covid 19 fundraiser um if you already are using uh mighty cause and you're asking about creating a separate fundraiser it's really as simple as going to your profile clicking the button that says fundraise which is next to the donate button and then filling out a fundraiser so it's very very easy to do um if you have any specific questions based on your situation you can always go to support at mighty cause dot com and they will help you find the correct page and how to help you get access to that page oh interesting um how can we weave facebook donations into my campaign i see that some people prefer to use facebook but i still want to tie in my mighty cause campaign um so what i would recommend is if you are able to tell people um either on social media on facebook or in an email or on your website however you're communicating encourage them to use mighty cause because this happens a lot during disasters i think facebook has to you have to raise a certain amount through facebook to get the check um and a lot of nonprofits where maybe somebody's raised like 50 bucks for them they kind of end up in disbursement purgatory where they can't actually access their $50 that was raised through peer-to-peer fundraising so if you're able to set up a uh a channel where you are telling them hey use mighty cause you can do it for free on mighty cause and this is what we prefer because this is where we manage our donations um just let them know that that is the preferred avenue for peer-to-peer fundraising um in terms of facebook uh donations i would maybe enter them as offline donations just so you have a record of them in your um your donation report and your supporters tool if you have an advanced subscription um so you can always enter those donations into your mighty cause um account as offline donations unfortunately we don't offer any sort of integration with facebook donations because they're just two completely separate systems and they actually have two separate systems within their own fundraising some of it goes through network for good and some of it goes through um facebook payments so there's just we aren't able to integrate and facebook is not very good about allowing people to integrate with them in this regard because they're trying to take over the world of online fundraising um but that would probably be my suggestion is as best as you can encourage people to set up fundraisers on mighty cause um we do have some uh support articles that you can share with them that walk them through that process um and then just enter them into as offline donations so that you have them tracked in your donations report if that's the primary system that you're using to track your donors is go fund me charity using mighty cause so go fund me as the competitor of ours we have no connection or affiliation with them so they're totally separate from us um i don't they're kind of new um their charity division um they i don't really know a whole lot about what they're doing but we don't have any affiliation with them um so i hope that answers that question and then does guide star help with donations um that i don't i don't know i have i'm not really sure what they're doing if they're doing anything guide stars are really good resource if you're looking for information about a nonprofit and i believe they have done some fundraising efforts in the past but in terms of what they're doing for giving tuesday now if anything i'm honestly not sure so i would maybe check in with their social media or check on the the guide star website and see um if they're offering anything um but i'm not sure what they would be offering and i don't know if that's really their role they are really great sources of informations for rating charities and monitoring their transparency with the public in terms of their funding but i'm not quite sure what they are doing um how far in advance before and how far after the may 5th event is appropriate to start the giving tuesday now campaign um so you can start now um you can start raising money for giving tuesday now right now so you can start whenever is whenever you'd like you want to try as best you can to do most of your promotion on may 5th if your main focus here is participating in giving tuesday now um but you can start fundraising at any time on mighty cause we're not really like tracking it as an official giving event we're not going to have a leader board we just want to facilitate and help you fundraise and be supportive to you um so you can start fundraising as soon as you're able may 5th is the event it's not that far away so you can start promoting it now you can start getting donations now that will count for giving tuesday now um and if you need funding right now if you are you know struggling under the weight of coronavirus start fundraising sooner rather than later um in terms of how far after may 5th is appropriate to fundraise for giving tuesday now i would say um after may 5th is probably the end date that you'd want to start you want to keep using giving tuesday now but for sure if you have a reason to to fundraise if you're still looking for donations at that point i would just maybe transition transition your campaign to being a general covid relief fundraising campaign and just not emphasize giving tuesday now but you can keep that campaign going as long as you can keep up the momentum so um there's no hard and fast rules um but giving tuesday now ends uh after may 5th ends um but there are some variations if you're participating in a localized event um you can always you know keep some of them are longer minnesota is doing give mn raise mn at home i think is the the name of the event and i'm sorry if i bungled that and that is actually lasting a little bit longer so it really depends on what you want to do what your capacity is but may 5th is the giving tuesday now event and after that point you may want to just like rethink how you're packaging your event together um what what are the fees is there something special for covid 19 um right now it's i would say opt into our pricing guarantee our pricing guarantee is guaranteeing that the fees will never be more than 2.9 percent plus uh 29 cents per transaction which is lower than paypal you can opt into that in your profile so that you get that um pricing guarantee um so that is what the fees will be if you are not opted into that it would be uh whatever plan you're on some people are grandfathered into old pricing plans and some people are just using our standard pricing which is a 4% platform fee and then credit card processing fee but if you um we're not offering anything special because our regular pricing with our pricing guarantee is already the cheapest on the market it's again lower than paypal so you can go into your profile and in your settings see what your pricing plan is and on that same page you can opt into our pricing guarantee and that will ensure that your fees will never be more than 2.9 percent plus 29 cents which is cheaper than paypal so there's no special promotion at this time but we are just you know we try to keep our prices low year round um let's see oh okay so this is a clarification on the guide star profile um does halving our guide star profile updated help us fundraise better yeah i in general i think it does because a lot of the people who um give to charities they want to make sure that they're giving to charities that are transparent and using their funding well and that is what guide star tracks so if it's a huge lift for you right now and you're struggling with capacity i would say you know don't worry about it but in in general yes having a you know guide star profile that you know is well filled out and reflects well upon you is definitely a good thing um it's kind of more of a nebulous uh help it's not a direct help but um when people research your nonprofit they can pull up your guide star page and they can see what your rating is there and they can read more about you there so it is a resource that a lot of people when they're looking into a cause do consult they they look at that page and they sort of let that guide them in terms of is this a good use of my donation money so it does help to have that filled out i would not say at this point that it's a top priority for you um but if you have some extra time and it's not a huge amount of effort for you definitely having that page filled out is useful just because people do rely on that to sort of research the nonprofits that they donate to um do you have any matching grants for giving Tuesday i don't believe we're offering anything as a company but i would definitely stay tuned we may be offering some prizes again we're not doing a formal event because we wanted this to be as simple and easy to do as possible we just want you to fundraise and to support you in your fundraising but stay tuned check your inboxes if we have anything to announce we will announce it very soon i'm not sure that's the honest answer we're really just trying to help facilitate organizations fundraising as opposed to offering prize money at this point but we will announce anything related to that very soon all right so thank you all for uh for joining me today these were all really fantastic questions um please feel free to reach out if you have anything else you need to ask me our support team is always available to you support at mighty cause dot com especially with any technical questions um and i hope you're all safe and happy and doing well i wish you all the best um and i look forward to seeing what you're able to achieve on may 5th