 All right, hello everyone. We're just a few minutes before the webinar's start time. I hope everybody's doing great. Since you're here a few minutes early, if you could just let me know that you can see my screen and hear me, that would be really helpful so I can make sure that everybody can actually see the slides that I'm presenting. So if you don't mind going into either the chat or Q&A, it looks like a few responses have already come in. Awesome. Thank you, Darcy, Tina, Tanya. I really appreciate that. So we'll get going in just another minute and I just want to give everybody a minute to get logged in, but we'll get started right at the top of the hour. All right, it's just about the top of the hour, so we'll go ahead and get started. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining me today for four secrets to getting more donors. I'm really excited to share this information with you. We got a lot of interest from our existing Mighty Cause admins, so I'm hopeful that this will be a really helpful webinar for everyone. My name is Linda Gerhardt and I'm the Senior Community Engagement Manager here at Mighty Cause, and I'm going to be taking you through the four secrets to getting more donors today. And here is a quick look at what those secrets are. Unfortunately, there aren't any easy gimmicks here. These are all tried and true strategies that nonprofits use to grow, and my hope is that everyone who's attending will leave this webinar with some action items and ideas that you can take and get to work on immediately at your nonprofit to start getting more donors. Just as a little bit of housekeeping, we are recording this webinar and we'll make sure that everyone has access to the recording after the webinar is over. And just because we have a lot of content to blow through today, I'll take questions at the end. So if you think of something that you'd like to ask while I'm presenting, just go ahead and pop that into the Q&A box of your Zoom panel and we'll make sure that we have time to get to it at the end of the webinar. So the first secret to getting more donors is partnerships and coalition building. Before we really dive into how these methods can help you get more donors, I really wanted to go through the differences between a partnership and a coalition and understand what these vehicles are. A coalition is formed around a specific cause or initiative. You'll often see coalitions formed for the sake of political advocacy, but that's not the only cause you can form a coalition around. A coalition can really be any group of organizations that come together to advocate for a cause and maximize their impact. So just as a personal example, when I worked for an animal shelter in Baltimore City, the local shelters who were otherwise completely separate entities, there was a government shelter, there were a couple of private shelters. They were fully separate, but they formed a coalition that came together every year during the spring to help promote cat adoptions because there were a lot of cats in the shelter system at that time. And the shelters worked together on that initiative. So there really just needs to be a shared mission or idea at the center of a coalition, as well as a clear goal, like getting an ordinance passed or getting all of the adult cats in the shelter system adopted. Whatever the issue is, the coalition kind of forms around that. Coalitions are all about collective impact and mutual support. Coalition members share resources, ideas, contact lists, and opportunities. These are really not competitive endeavors at all. You're working together for a specific cause. A coalition can be ongoing or it can be temporary and dissolve once the goal is achieved or it's no longer relevant. And the spirit behind them is really just joining forces to have a greater impact for the greater good of all of the organizations involved in the coalition. Partnerships are mutually beneficial agreements between a nonprofit and typically a business entity. It's an arrangement that you're both getting something out of. These partnerships are not typically cause-based, but ideally there is a value alignment between the organization and the company. For instance, a food bank in a farm to table restaurant that's focused on community-sourced ingredients and supporting local farmers might be a natural sort of partnership or an animal rescue and a local pet supply store. Not every partnership needs to be quite that cute or quite that well-aligned, but in most cases, there is some sort of alignment in terms of their values. In most cases, there is funding that's flowing from the business partner to the nonprofit, though there are a few different ways that can actually happen. But the thing these two ideas have in common is that you're teaming up with others in your community, which can really help you gain visibility and lead to growing your donor base. And we're going to talk through how that works for both coalitions and partnerships. Nonprofits can use these arrangements to not only further your mission and further your cause, but lift up your organization and grow as an organization. So when you're just starting out and you're still trying to lay down your roots and expand, teaming up with other organizations, whether that's a nonprofit or a business, is a really sound strategy for growth. Partnerships can be extremely powerful for nonprofits that are looking to grow. First of all, a business partnership usually involves bringing revenue to your organization, which we all know is extremely important. And it's often a way to tap into a whole new base of donors. A partnership can increase your visibility in the community, which is incredibly important if you want to gain donors and grow your base of supporters. Every business is made up of individuals, and we're talking about participating in a workplace, if we're talking about participating in a workplace giving program with a mid-sized company, that can bring you a ton of donors who are likely totally new to you. So this partnership works as a bridge to get you in touch with new donors. A solid partnership with the right company can be a great way to grow your nonprofit, and it gives you all kinds of new opportunities for reaching new people, getting publicity, building your brand, and basically laying down roots in your community. If you're a new nonprofit or your growth is stagnating or has plateaued, the right partnership can absolutely be a game changer for your nonprofit. So this is by no means a comprehensive list, but there are two main types of business partnerships that we typically see, and these are also easy ways for you to get started if you're new to business partnerships. Workplace giving is pretty common. It's a solid way to get revenue coming into your nonprofit, and it can look like companies encouraging employees to devote a portion of their paycheck to nonprofit causes. That's something that I've done at previous employers. We had a list of nonprofits, and we could choose to donate a percentage of our paycheck or a static amount to that nonprofit every time we got paid, and many not many companies will also offer matching donations. So they'll match their employees' donations to nonprofits, and a lot of companies actually do both, especially bigger companies. An example of a big workplace giving program is the Combined Federal Campaign, or CFC, which is a program for federal employees to give back to nonprofits. And in my area, I'm in Northern Virginia. We have a ton of federal employees, so for nonprofits that are local to me, participation in the Combined Federal Campaign is actually really important to revenue. Another type of partnership is sponsorship, which can often be campaign-based and temporary, but it can also be ongoing, where a business partner makes a financial contribution to your nonprofit, either for an event or a campaign, or even on an annual basis. And in return, you really talk them up, share their logo on your website, and any materials you're putting out, and tell everybody about how meaningful their support has been and how philanthropic their business has been. This is a really common arrangement for things like charity walks. You'll often see the sponsor logos on t-shirts and swag bags. And Giving Tuesday is also a really great opportunity to engage sponsors. There's a lot of different ways you can get them involved, whether they're providing a matching grant or something else for your organization, but Giving Tuesday is also a really big sponsorship opportunity for you to break the ice with a new organization or a new company. The process of finding partners is not very different from a lot of donor prospecting. First, you start with research. Who is in your community? Who are the major employers where you live? You want to start locally and research workplace giving programs, and think of any natural partnerships that you can think of. One thing that can be really helpful if you're not quite sure where to go with this is asking your board of directors. Many times, board members will have business connections, or may even be business owners. So they can be an excellent source of information and connections when you're thinking about partnerships. Then you'll want to put out some feelers, make contact with your prospective partners, which could be setting up a phone call or a meeting, or even just filling out the paperwork you need to be included in a workplace giving program. If you're looking to reach out to a company and there's not a lot of clear information on their website, or they don't have a specific program for that, you generally want to start with their human resources department, since those departments are often in charge of those programs. And then the last step is you'll want to hammer out an agreement. Of course, when you reach one, so that you can set expectations and determine the terms of your partnership. Now, you can always leave this somewhat open and leave some wiggle room, since you don't want to put too many limits on a partnership, you want room to grow that partnership and increase their involvement with you. But it is important to make sure that everybody is on the same page that you have a formal agreement and that expectations are set. So moving on to coalitions. A coalition is really all about strength and numbers and working together to achieve things collectively that most of the organizations would not be able to achieve to achieve on their own. The really cool thing about coalitions is that you're a nonprofit can sort of end up borrowing credibility from another nonprofit organization, linking yourself professionally to other organizations makes your organization more credible in the eyes of the public. So when someone supports nonprofit A, and you team up with nonprofit A, people who support nonprofit A are much more likely to be warm to your organization and see you as credible and trustworthy, which makes them more likely to donate to you. But the sharing of knowledge, resources, and ideas is the real benefit to working as part of a coalition. Working with other organizations will make all of you stronger because everybody has something valuable to bring to the table and something to contribute. Sometimes coalitions can be really innovative and find incredible solutions to problems and issues that all of the coalition members are working on solving. And sometimes nonprofits, especially smaller ones, can be a little hesitant to work with other organizations. And sometimes there can be a sense of competition, but it's definitely better to be willing to team up and work together rather than taking an antagonistic stance. So if you're all working on the same issue, even if you have different approaches, sometimes joining together to solve a particular problem or advance a particular cause can really make both of you stronger. So even if you're sold on the idea of coalitions, you might be asking how this actually results in more donors. And to be sure, forming a coalition or joining a coalition for the sole purpose of getting more donors doesn't make a ton of sense. That's not something that you would do for the sole purpose of getting more donors. So you do need an initiative to rally around, but more donors is a bit of a fringe benefit. The biggest thing that you'll gain from being part of a coalition is being more visible, and that helps you get more donors. One of the things that's really important when finding new donors is affinity. How is someone connected to your cause? How do they know your organization? And participation in a coalition creates a connection with a whole bunch of people who are connected to your organization through the other organizations you're working with in the coalition. You also become familiar to a bunch of new people, people who support nonprofit A, may never have heard of nonprofit B, but when nonprofit A keeps mentioning their work on a coalition with nonprofit B, they get exposed to them through the efforts of nonprofit A to promote their coalition work. And nonprofit A's followers become much more familiar with nonprofit B, which makes them much more likely to support that organization. And that's really a common path for donors. They'll find out about a nonprofit working on a cause they care about through another organization that's working on that same cause. So this is a really common path that donors take to find a new organization to support. So it's definitely something that we know works. And finally, a lot of coalitions will explicitly engage in lists sharing and list renting among coalition members. So that can be a really powerful way to build your list and reach out to new people. So if you've ever made a donation to a political candidate, and then you start getting emails from a bunch of other candidates you haven't heard of and phone calls asking if you're planning to vote for so. And so what you're seeing is list sharing. So if you're working with a coalition or even building one and you want to grow your list, you'll just want to make sure that that's on the table at the outset. You shouldn't assume that, but that is a part of a lot of coalition work. Now there are some important things to keep in mind about coalitions before you dive in. The first is whether or not you're engaging in political lobbying, because public charities have some guidelines to follow regarding political activities. There are sometimes things that you absolutely cannot do, or you do need to approach things in a particular way. And sometimes you just need to log certain activities like phone banking. So before you start doing anything related to a coalition or gathering, attending a gathering at City Hall, you'll just want to make sure that you have a good understanding of the rules and consult with your nonprofit's legal counsel just to make sure that you don't cross any lines and you know what's going on. Coalitions share resources, and they also share costs and work. So you'll want to make sure that you have the capacity to equitably contribute. Sometimes one of the problems with coalitions is that one or two nonprofits or organizations that are involved can end up bearing the brunt of most of the work and the cost. And you generally want it to be spread around equally so that everybody in the coalition is happy. So don't get in over your head and make sure that you're only promising what you can actually deliver on. And then the other thing that's a little bit tricky is that sometimes when you're borrowing credibility from an organization, you're also linking yourself to the public perception of them. So you just want to make sure that you're working with organizations that you are comfortable linking your nonprofit with. You're all separate entities. You do not have to agree or take accountability for everything that that nonprofit does on the coalition. But there is a little bit of risk involved. So it's just good to understand that and do a little bit of extra work to make sure that it's a good fit for your nonprofit before you dive in. So moving on to the next way to acquire new donors, the next secret is peer-to-peer fundraising, which is probably a concept that's familiar to everybody who's ever attended one of our webinars. So peer-to-peer fundraising is a technique where you leverage your existing supporters to bring in new supporters. With peer-to-peer fundraising, your organization is not reaching out directly to donors to ask for a donation. You're using a supporter as a proxy. They are reaching out to their social network and asking them to make donations to your nonprofit. We talk about peer-to-peer a ton at Mighty Cause, and that's because it really is a fantastic way to acquire new donors. So here's a little visual of how peer-to-peer works. So your nonprofit is at the center. You are the hub of the peer-to-peer fundraising, and then you ask a supporter or two or 10 or 20 of yours to fundraise for you. And then they ask their friends, their family, their colleagues, people they know on social media to make a donation. And through that one person, you're reaching many more. The amount of people that you're reaching multiplies. So from one fundraiser, you're gaining access to an entire network of people who are likely new to your nonprofit. And the link to your nonprofit is that person who supports your nonprofit and agreed to fundraise for you. And so instead of just asking that one supporter to make a donation and then caching that check or taking that home to the bank, you're getting a bunch of people to make a bunch of donations. Peer-to-peer is really designed for donor acquisition and is very good at getting that done. And there are a few reasons why peer-to-peer is so awesome for donor acquisition. And a lot of it relates to why people give. One of the most common reasons that people make their first donation to a nonprofit is because someone they know asks them to donate. It really and truly is that simple. They know someone and that person asked them to make a donation and they did. There have been a couple of studies that have shown that people are much more likely to make donations when they are asked by somebody that they know, rather than an organization that they don't have a relationship with or have very little relationship with. So in the same way it helps with sales to have a personal connection, which is why if you've ever dealt with a salesperson, they might ask you for the names and numbers of some people you know, especially if it's a multi-level marketing situation. It does help to acquire new donors as well. It helps to have a personal connection. People asking their friends to donate is actually more effective than your organization putting together a masterful appeal and throwing all of your best tricks at getting them to donate. So they're actually a little bit better at getting people to actually take the plunge and donate if they're not super familiar with your organization. And the magical thing is that the people your fundraisers bring in are typically people your nonprofit does not have access to. You don't have permission to solicit them for donations. So for instance, your nonprofit does not have a connection to my aunts and uncles, but I do. So I can ask all of my aunts and uncles to donate to your nonprofit and because they know me and trust me and I'm telling them that this is important to me and I would like them to donate, they are much more likely to donate, which means that you can now include them in your fundraising communications and work to get additional donations, which is the important thing. Not everybody coming from a peer to peer campaign will become a lifelong donor. Some of them will remain one-time donors, but each one of them presents an opportunity to become a lifelong donor if your nonprofit really works to cultivate that relationship with that donor. So a lot of times the first thing I hear from nonprofits, especially ones that are on the smaller side, is that they don't know if anyone would fundraise for them. They can't think of who to ask and they wonder, do I even have people who will fundraise for me? And the truth is that you do. There are natural peer to peer fundraisers that are built into the fabric of pretty much every organization. First, we're going to be talking about this a lot more in a minute, but your board can fundraise for you. So ask your board members first and foremost. Your volunteers will often be more than happy to help with peer to peer fundraising. These are people who care about your work and they want to help out and they have demonstrated a propensity to volunteering their time and efforts. So tapping into your volunteer base is also a really great way to get peer to peer going. If you have paid staff, these people can fundraise for you. I wouldn't require it, but it's certainly worth asking since they're invested in your cause. They show up for work every day and they do a lot of hard work for you. So a lot of them are perfectly happy to talk about your work to people they know and ask them to make a donation. And I would especially consider asking people who are at the C-suite level to fundraise for you because those people can be extremely well connected and have big powerful networks. And then recurring donors are people that you can count on to support you and it can actually be really fun for them to get more involved and run their own campaign. So don't be afraid to ask your tried and true donors to get involved in this way. A lot of nonprofits are afraid that it's too big of an ask, but it's not. It's fun for a lot of them and the worst thing that will happen is that they won't fundraise for you, but you might get some donors who are happy to. On Mighty Cause, we really are built for peer to peer fundraising. So we have several tools to help you out. Charitable fundraising pages are easy to start if you're already on Mighty Cause and really anyone can figure it out. There is no special skill required because we've designed all of our charitable fundraising tools, our peer to peer tools, to be easy for all levels of users to use. We've also given you the ability to create a fundraiser template, which gives your fundraisers a head start by allowing you to pre fill parts of their pages for them so they can get published more easily and they're not starting from scratch. And it's a really great way to facilitate fundraising for busy board members who really want the process as streamlined as possible. So if you are trying to get your involved, a great way to do that and facilitate that can be the use of a fundraiser template. And we also have teams and events, which are for group peer to peer campaigns, which is taking it up a notch and it's usually going to result in even more funds being raised. With teams, you can get multiple people working together to fundraise. And with events, you can get individuals and teams of individuals fundraising together in one central location. So these tools could be really cool for your board, your volunteers, you can get people together and get really creative with how you utilize these tools for peer to peer. So it is the end of July and it feels weird talking about it, but believe it or not, Giving Tuesday is right around the corner. It will be here before you know it. This year it is on November 30th. And in case you're not familiar with Giving Tuesday, it's a global philanthropic event and peer to peer fundraising is usually a big part of it no matter how you're participating. So it's a really great opportunity to dig in and try a peer to peer campaign this year, doing a board challenge. And you can also organize a team where you get your volunteers, your staff, your biggest supporters involved in fundraising for you. Giving Tuesday is a social media based event or happening and it gets a ton of traction on social media. So you can even cast a wider net by asking social media followers to fundraise for you. And for a lot of people who are younger and maybe don't have a lot of individual funding to contribute, this can be a fun way for them to have an impact and give back to your organization. Mighty Cause has a lot of events happening on Giving Tuesday. There's Rich Link gives, there's Georgia gives, there's a whole lot happening. But if you're not part of one of those events and you would like to get involved in Giving Tuesday, we do actually run our own event and you can register for that now at givingtuesday.mightycause.com. Just click register and fill out the form. And we've got a lot of great training planned for the event. So there will be lots of content to help you plan out your strategy. We'll definitely be talking more about peer to peer. So this is a really great opportunity if you are new to peer to peer or you just haven't really tried it out yet or you want to take your campaign up a notch is trying peer to peer for Giving Tuesday. All right. So I said I would be talking more about this, but the next secret is tapping your board of directors. So one thing that I really want to make absolutely sure that everybody on this webinar knows is that it is 100% appropriate to ask your board to help you with fundraising. In fact, it is one of their primary responsibilities and commitments to your nonprofit. Often board members have lots of ties to the community and large networks and can be really essential in helping you make important connections. Your board members are public representatives of your organization. So they should have the organizational knowledge and ability to speak well about your work and your mission. And they should be well suited to fundraising for you. Really if you're not sure who to ask your board members should be the first place you go. And I say all that knowing full well that there are a lot of boards who don't engage in this way. And I wanted to spend a moment talking about why a lot of board members report simply being confused about their role in the organization. They may not realize that this is part of their job or an expectation that your nonprofit has of them. So they don't participate in fundraising because they don't know to. Sometimes they honestly don't know where to get started and don't get any guidance on it. So they just opt out all together because they aren't fundraisers and they don't quite know how to do it. Communication across the board, so to speak, is a common problem with board relations. So board members simply may not be informed about the day-to-day operations at your nonprofit, any upcoming initiatives or campaigns you have going to get fundraising happening and how they can get involved, which is in many cases because executive directors look to their board for governance and bean counting and big picture stuff, but they fail to include them in conversations about fundraising. And on that note many boards don't engage in fundraising because no one ever asks them to. So if you don't ask they're likely not going to volunteer to fundraise for you because they're not thinking about it. So a lot of times it's really as simple as just asking them. So then the question becomes how do you fix that and get your board involved in fundraising? The first thing you may want to do is start a fundraising committee that your board members can join, which will help you find the board members who are interested in fundraising and sort of put it in their hands a little bit more to be thinking about fundraising and how to integrate the board in those fundraising efforts. If you have fundraising staff or even just volunteers who do most of the fundraising legwork for your nonprofit, get them involved. Get them talking to the board. They can show your board their ropes. They're really the experts and it will help your board feel more comfortable in the fundraising realm. Carving out specific fundraising roles can be a really great way to get them involved. Having a job description is always helpful, especially if you're going to be talking about committee work. What are the expectations and what do you want to bring to the table for a particular role? And you can also just be informal and find out what people are good at. You may have a board member who's a really fantastic graphic designer who can help you with marketing and you may have a sales wizard on your team who can really help you get out there and make connections, get sponsorships, find partners for your campaign. So there's a lot you can do to get your board involved. And really, the most important thing is to set expectations. As I mentioned before, a lot of boards just don't know that it's a key responsibility. So set expectations. A lot of nonprofits will have a fundraising requirement for board members. So that's something that you can incorporate if you don't currently have that. Some nonprofits, if they have board members paid dues, they may allow fundraising to count for part of those dues. So there's a lot you can do to set expectations with your board to get them to fundraise for you. Excuse me. One of the easiest ways to get going is to start with a peer-to-peer campaign. Peer-to-peer is an easy way for you to dip your toe in and for your board members to dip their toe in. And one of the easiest things that you can positively do is just add a peer-to-peer component to your next campaign, including your board. So teams and events are really perfect for this type of board challenge. It's something that we see a lot on Mighty Cause. People use the platform for this kind of thing all the time. And Giving Tuesday is a great opportunity to give it a try. That way, you don't have to have them start their own campaign or run it entirely themselves. They're just adding on a campaign, adding on a component of an existing campaign. And something that can also really help is hosting a training session to help them get up to speed and know what they're doing. Sometimes what the problem is is that board members feel a little bit lost. So using a fundraiser template and having either a lunch and learn or a special dedicated meeting where you are helping them get onboarded into the process can be really helpful. Providing image assets and talking points, a timeline, a fundraising guide. These are all things that can really help them know what they're doing and feel confident in what they're doing. And you can also set a fundraising requirement. So you may require that for Giving Tuesday, you want all of your board members to raise $500. So setting a goal with them and setting expectations is a great way to get going and to make your peer-to-peer campaign feel manageable for them and help them understand what their expectations are. Some other ideas are a meet and greet, like a happy hour, a dinner, a facility tour. And you can also try friend-raising. It's kind of a corny term. But basically the idea is that you have some sort of event where each board member brings some people, at least one person who's new to your non-profit, and kind of introduces them and acts as the conduit to get them involved. That can be a really great way to get more people into your non-profit and donating to your non-profit. Including fundraising in your onboarding process for new board members is a great way to set expectations at the outset and make sure that your board members feel confident fundraising. Sometimes if you don't quite know where all of your board members stand in terms of their interest and skill set, you can conduct a survey just to kind of find out what they're feeling about fundraising and where they would feel interested and confident. And then just keeping the lines of communication open with your board, empowering them to have ideas about fundraisers and brainstorm ideas, having a dedicated section of your board meeting for fundraising. There's a lot of things you can do, but it's really just important to make sure that they know that they can have fundraising ideas. You're open to that. And you want to include them in the process of raising money for the non-profit. So hopefully this has become clear, but in terms of how this means more donors, each of your board members has a network of contacts just like in peer-to-peer fundraising. The only difference is that board members often have a really powerful network of people that can open a lot of doors for your non-profit. And they are a conduit to bring people into your non-profit. They're a personal connection. And board members are very highly invested in your non-profit. At least I hope they are. So they can do a great job of advocating for the importance of your work. And they can bring people on board. Friend-raising events are a mainstay for that very reason. And your board members are natural spokespeople for your cause. They help set the big picture mission for your organization. So they can be really powerful fundraisers because they have an in-depth knowledge of the work that you do. So definitely tapping your board for fundraising and including them in the process can really help you grow your donor list and grow your fundraising program. So last on the list, and I know we're going a bit over 30 minutes, if you need to head out, that's absolutely fine. You'll get a recording of this. I'm sorry for going over my time. But the last secret is community outreach and list-building opportunities. So really the trick to building a list and getting a big donor base in support of your non-profit is being a presence in your community. As we were talking about earlier, familiarity is a really important factor in why people donate to non-profits. So the more familiar people in your community become with your non-profit, the more trust that they'll have for your non-profit, and the more likely they'll be to make donations and feel comfortable getting involved in your non-profit. Every person that you meet, every person that you touch in your community is an opportunity to acquire a new donor. So when you see every touch that you make in your community as an opportunity to cultivate a relationship with a supporter, it really makes it important to be out there, get out of the office, get offline, and start making connections in person with events. Your non-profit can really make important connections through community outreach, through being part of the community and being present. So this is just a really important tip and trick to get people invested in your non-profit is to be present, be there, be out in your community, and be talking to the people. And what I mean by that is taking it offline. So me personally, I am an online person. I'm very online, but human interaction is really important. So even though I, you know, love having relationships with people and organizations online, meeting somebody face to face, having a phone call with them, that's really important for relationship building. Across an email, it's kind of a faceless organization. But when somebody can think of a face at your organization that they've had a great interaction with, that really helps make the connection between your non-profit and the work you do. And it makes it the connection, the personal. So that human interaction is really important. We forget about it a lot in the digital age and we're just getting it, getting back into it in society right now. But as we ease back into it, finding opportunities to engage one-on-one is really important. And the other thing that I want to make a point of mentioning is that not everybody is online. So a lot of nonprofits will focus all of their efforts online. But there are a lot of important people in your community who are potential supporters, who don't have reliable internet access, who are not digital natives and don't spend their whole lives online. And they might be able to, you might be able to reach them better through an in-person event or other types of outreach that are not online, than you would just sending them emails. They may not read their emails, but they may be willing to talk to you at a booth at an event or something along those lines. So when you're thinking about community outreach, you really want to start with a plan. And the first thing you'll want to do is defining your audience. Who are you trying to reach? So obviously you don't want to make a plan to go somewhere and interact with people when it's not appropriate and they're not likely supporters of your organization. So find, you know, where your audience is, who you're trying to get in touch with, and then where do they go? So you want to do research. Where are you likely to encounter the target audience? Stay in touch with community happenings. Stay tuned into what's happening in your community. Get calendar updates sent to your email. And make connections with organizations that are really keyed into things happening in your community. And you want to set goals as well, like you can't create a plan without a goal. So what is your purpose? What are you trying to do by participating in something or by reaching out to a particular audience in a particular way? What are you trying to do? And how are you going to measure your success? And then just create an action plan. Plan out what you're doing each month, each quarter, and make sure that you have a presence in community events, whether you're creating them or just tag teaming onto an existing event. So that brings me to my next topic, which is some ideas. If you're not really into creating your own events at this point, and if you're small, that doesn't necessarily make sense. But working partnerships, teaming up with like-minded businesses, nonprofits, and working together to reach out to the community and other stakeholders to make plans to reach out can be really more effective than trying to do this on your own. Joining existing events is something that I really recommend, especially if you're small, being a presence at places like farmers markets, first Friday events, outdoor movie nights, main street events. These are low stakes ways to be out in your community, meeting people, and just bring a clipboard and have people sign up for your list. Meet people, talk to them about what you do, and have them sign up for your email list so that you can start cultivating a relationship with them. And then community service days are something that a lot of communities have. So find out if there's any service days coming up and participate in those and get involved in those. So tag teaming onto events that already exist or teaming up with other people in the community who have an interest in outreach and getting out in the community is a really great way to tackle this so that you don't have to start from scratch or plan a big intensive event. So in terms of what you're doing, you want to make sure that you're getting what you need out of it because it's not worth doing if you're not going to be getting anything from it. So you really want to think about what you're there for and you want to make sure that you're educating the public about what your work is. So bring your collateral with you, any brochures, any flyers that explain what you do and what your work is all about that people can take with them. Make sure that you have those materials with you when you're reaching out to the public. And definitely service is a part of outreach. What are you providing for the community? A lot of times that can be the main thing is you're going to an event and you're providing a particular service. When I was working in animal sheltering, rabies, vaccines, microchips, those kinds of things were great community outreach purposes. We were doing things that advanced our cause and our mission and we were also interfacing with the people in our community who have an interest in what we were doing. So there's a lot of things that you can do, but focusing on how you're serving them and even how you can provide those services at an event is a really great way to make sure that you're getting the most from your outreach. As I mentioned, bring an email sign-up list to each and every event. Get people's names, their addresses, their phone numbers, and make sure that you have some way to follow up with them because you can have a fantastic conversation with somebody at a farmer's market. But if you don't have any way to continue that conversation, then that was just wasted effort. So you want to make sure that you have some way to follow up and that you have a plan to follow up. You got a big list from attending a First Friday event. You got lots of great names and had lots of great contacts with people, but what are you going to do with them now? That may be sending out emails, giving them a phone call, whatever you have on them, just using that information to keep the conversation going so that they can become enmeshed in your organization. You can pull them in with other efforts. I did want to mention, obviously we're still in the middle of a pandemic, so make sure as we all tiptoe out of our homes for the first time in over a year, make sure that you're following any local guidelines in terms of safety and that you're keeping your staff, your volunteers, and your community safe. Keeping things outdoors is safer than things that are indoors. So if you can show a preference to outdoor events, then that will keep everybody safe. Consider wearing a mask if you're indoors or even if you're outdoors and even if it's not required, you can probably hear that I'm a little horse and stuffy and that's because when I entered the world again after COVID, I caught a cold. So even if you're not worried about coronavirus, masking up is always a great idea to protect yourself and just remember that you are setting an example for your community. So make sure that you're keeping everybody safe and that you're following safety precautions and if you have volunteers going out into the public for you that they know what they're doing and they're not taking any unnecessary risks. Obviously we're all kind of in different places in terms of safety, but just make sure that you're being safe out there as you get reintegrated into society. All right, so I wanted to make some time for questions. I do have to, let me just take a look at what we've got so far. I have to stop sharing in order to see them. Let's see, we've got a handful of questions here. Do we have a PowerPoint that we could print out? So what I'll do is I'll share the slides with all of you. So when I send out the email with the recording, I'll just include a Dropbox link that has the slide deck for you so that you can download the slides. So yes, you'll have access to the slide deck. Let's see. Oh, this is actually a great question. This is a question from Sue. Has anyone else had problems with Facebook blocking posts that use a non-Facebook fundraiser? We have had our posts seen by almost no one. So Sue, you're not imagining that that is 100% happening. And the reason for that is that Facebook, what they're doing as a company is they really want you to use Facebook for everything. If you're doing something online, they want you to be doing it on Facebook. So a lot of nonprofits have had a hard time with having their posts that have links to outside fundraising platforms seen because Facebook wants to gear people toward using their own fundraising tools, which in my opinion are not nearly as comprehensive as mighty cause. You don't get the same donor information from Facebook. You don't get the same control over your fundraiser and you don't have anywhere near the number of tools. So yeah, that's a problem. One way that you can get around that is paying a little bit of money to boost posts. It doesn't take a lot of money to help your posts be seen by more people. You can actually just target the people who follow your page. I wish that wasn't necessary, but sometimes that is necessary to be seen. And just make sure that you're posting engaging content. So things like videos that you upload directly to Facebook will help your posts be seen by more people. Having engagement, so conversations and the comments, people liking your posts, sharing your posts, those are all things that will help your posts be seen. So if you have any volunteers who are working with you on social media, just ask them to give your posts a like if they see it or let them know. Like, hey, we're sharing our fundraiser on Facebook. If you could go over to the post and like it, share it, make a comment on it, that would really help our posts be seen by more people. And the other thing to note is that Facebook has not had sort of chronological news feeds for a while. I think that was, gosh, like at least five years ago, that they switched to, you know, basically they're showing you what they think you want to see. So doing some things like making sure that you're uploading videos, images, and getting that interaction, especially early interaction is really important to helping those posts be seen. What a lot of nonprofits have done, especially if they've leaned on Facebook, is they've really just kind of focused those efforts to email, because, you know, email, you have direct access to your supporters through their inbox. So if you can try to get as many people signed up for your email list from social media as possible, that's a great way to make sure that you're actually being seen. Not everybody in the world reads their emails, but at least you're not being blocked by an algorithm that wants you to use Facebook's fundraising tools instead. You can send them whatever you want. So yeah, that's not a problem that you're imagining. There are some different things you can try to get around it, but everybody's reach has been declining for years, especially if they're linking out to other platforms, unfortunately. Let's see. Moving on, there is a question from Danielle. We've had a hard time getting peer to peer to work. How do you recruit ambassadors, any tips or ideas? So again, I would start with your inner circle, people at your nonprofit that you know will show up to support you, like your board of directors, highly engaged volunteers. If you have any staff, get them involved, getting people who are really tight knit with your organization to fundraise for you is the first place you want to look, because somebody who follows you on Facebook but doesn't really interact that much, is going to be less effective as a fundraiser than people who are very involved in your nonprofit's work. Something that I have seen people do is they'll sort of sweeten the pot, especially if there's a campaign where they're trying to get peer to peer going for a giving event that we host on our platform. One of the organizations said, hey, the first 10 people who sign up to start a fundraiser and raise X number of dollars will get a t-shirt with our logo on it or something like that. Little tokens like that you can use to incentivize people. It doesn't have to be a big prize. Sometimes people will go to great lengths for a bumper sticker just because they like to win. You can always think about things that could sweeten the pot. Not all of them have to cost you any money. You could think of other benefits that are non-monetary that you could offer in exchange for helping you out by starting a peer to peer fundraiser, but really by focusing on people who are close to your nonprofit, you're generally going to find more interest from people. And then it may be worth talking to the people who have had issues in the past. Maybe they signed up for peer to peer, but they didn't raise much money or didn't have any luck talking with them, sending out an email and just getting their feedback and seeing what the barriers were. If there were technical issues, you could always host a training. You could do a Zoom meeting to show everybody how it works, or you could even help them get set up hands on. A lot of nonprofits will actually set up pages for their peer to peer fundraisers and then just sort of hand them off. So that's something that you could do. But it's really more a question of what the actual barrier is because you most likely have people who want to help you out in this way. So you just need to find a way to facilitate that. And the easiest thing to do is just to talk to people who you maybe have asked in the past and see if there was any particular thing that inhibited them from doing it or inhibited their success and make it as easy as possible. So using fundraiser templates is a great way to go. Sometimes when people hear, oh, well, you need to create a fundraiser and run this whole campaign, that can sound like a lot of work. But if you're like, hey, we've made it as easy as humanly possible, you can use a template. You don't even have to put anything in yourself. You just have to create the page and publish it and share the link. Sometimes that can be really helpful in getting people to actually make the plunge. There's an anonymous question. How do you encourage donors and board members to ask friends and connections? We've had trouble motivating people to participate in peer to peer campaigns. Yeah, so that's a common thread that's showing up is that there's a difficulty with getting people to participate and encouraging donors and board members to ask their friends and connections. You just want to be genuine about it. You don't necessarily need to provide an incentive for them to participate, but let them know how meaningful and important it is, especially board members. These are people who agreed to represent your organization. So they should at least be willing to reach out to their friends and their connections. And a lot of times I was just reading something on board source, I think. Most board members are more than happy to ask their friends and their social network to make a donation. They're proud of their involvement in your nonprofit. So they're happy to ask people to get involved because they're involved and they work hard for your nonprofit. So it really depends on what the barrier might be. You might want to just at a board meeting ask, you know, we would like to incorporate more peer to peer and get you more involved in helping us promote our fundraisers. Is there anything we can do to help you facilitate that or what is the barrier that's preventing you from doing that? You will find some people who just kind of find it awkward. So helping them with a script can be really helpful. People love scripts that they can just copy and paste. So if you can provide something like that for people who don't quite know how to ask, that can be really the thing that gets them to do it. They just have to copy and paste. But talk to your board, see what their issue is with that, and just, you know, see if there's anything that you can do to facilitate it and make it easier for them. And just let them know that it's not that hard. Hopefully they can reach out and let people know about your organization since they're part of your organization. So hopefully they should be proud of the work that you do and happy to get people involved. There's a comment from Dominique, sorry about speaking fast or I speaking fast. I really, I do try to slow down, but I apologize. I'll try to speak slower for the duration of the webinar. Let's see. Oh, this is a really great question for Nicole. What if our board is predominantly low income people of color? Is it appropriate to require that they meet a fundraising minimum? Well, every board has its own culture. Generally speaking, a board of directors does make a commitment to your nonprofit to be involved in fundraising. One of the things that they do as a board is they are the stewards of your organization's financial health. So that can look different for every board if you have people who really don't have the ability to ask people to make donations. Then you can work with them about other things they can do. Maybe there's some way that they can get involved in your fundraising that doesn't require actually starting a peer to peer fundraiser. Maybe they can provide some marketing support. Maybe they can do something else to help with fundraising and help facilitate it. Obviously, every board has its own culture. If you really don't feel like it's appropriate to ask your board to fundraise for you, then that is your decision to make. But I would also look to integrate some more people onto your board who have the ability to fundraise. So you can have a mixture of people there. If you find that overall, they're not great fits for peer to peer fundraising. How else can they get involved? Are there other people that you can get involved in your board who are maybe a little bit better set up to do that? But as far as is it appropriate, like you know your board best, but it is one of the commitments that they make. So even if they don't fundraise a ton, even if they just ask all of their friends to donate $5 on Giving Tuesday, or they just share your campaign on social media, that can be a way to help you. So there's a lot of things that you can do and talk to them, see how they feel about it. They may be willing to do it because a lot of people who don't have a ton of money to give on their own are more than happy to do peer to peer fundraising because it's a way for them to maximize their impact. So I may not have $1,000 that I can give to your nonprofit, but through some legwork on social media and asking the people that I know to donate what they can and putting that effort in, I might be able to get to $1,000. So really, it's up to you, but it is part of the commitment that they make. So you may want to get some people on your board who are maybe a little bit more able to do that if you're finding that that is a huge barrier to participating in fundraising. Let's see, there's a question from Tiffany about community thrives. I don't manage that event and they have their own specific rules. So if you are participating in a community thrives and you would like to get some information and you have a question specific to that campaign, please reach out to support at mightycause.com. Our support staff will be able to help you out. Unfortunately, I'm not really involved in that campaign, so I don't have the knowledge to share with you, but our support team will get back to you as soon as they possibly can. Let's see. This is a question from Darlene. Does mightycause meet with organizations for this type of training? So what I would recommend is reaching out to us if you have a particular concern. We are always willing to have calls to talk about your fundraising strategy and technique. We don't do any consulting or that sort of thing, but we can certainly talk with you about your plans and how you can utilize mightycause to assist. We provide a lot of training on our webinars and through our blogs. So those are the primary ways that we sort of help provide that sort of information to our audience, but just reach out to us. And as a note of all of our advanced subscribers, so nonprofits that subscribe to our advanced program have a dedicated account manager who is a person that you can contact when you have a question and you want to set up a call and you're having a fundraising issue. So that might be a way for you to get some one-on-one assistance if you feel like you need a little bit more help from mightycause is sign up for advance. You'll have your own dedicated account manager who is at your beck and call and can set up a call with you to discuss your fundraising. Let's see. All right. So we have a couple of chats coming in. So I'm just going to switch windows real quick. Okay. So let's see. Oh, okay. This is a really great comment from Angela. Angela's, I've been in touch via email and she's attended my webinars in the past. So hello, Angela. She has a response to the question about the board that is mostly low income people of color. And her comment is I would allow them the option of saying yes or no to fundraising versus assuming no or that they are not capable 100%. That is absolutely great. You know, you want to ask, give them the opportunity to step up and fundraise for you. And if they say no, they say no. But it's worth asking. You're not insulting them by asking them to fundraise for you. And I personally know a lot of people who don't have a lot of money to give who love doing fundraisers for causes because it's a way for them to help signal boost without putting a ton of money into it. So definitely ask them if they say no, don't pressure them. But it's certainly worth asking. And there's a really great conversation happening in the chat that I hope you all can see. But yeah, it doesn't take a huge commitment. And it's a really great way that people who don't have a ton of money can still contribute and make a big impact by reaching out to their network. And there's a really great comment from James Oliver. Thank you so much. I'm so glad that it was a helpful webinar. I will make sure that all of you have the recording to this. Thank you all so much for attending today. I hope this was an informative webinar. I apologize for speaking fast. I'm a fast talker. I'm trying to work on it. But I'll make sure that you all have access to the recording and slides. Thank you all so much for all of your great questions and contributions. And I will follow up with you as soon as possible. In the meantime, happy fundraising. Take care.