 Hi everyone. So I want to specially, hi everyone. Okay. Please if you can hear me, can you just wave? Can you hear me? Hello sir, I can hear you very well. Okay, okay. All right. How are you doing? Robert. Yeah, I can see you. So I want to specially thank each and every one of you for your time. So I want to specially thank each and every one of you for your time. And I promise it's going to be a very exciting session to be. And we'll be discussing lots of stuffs with you all. As usual, I would get to introduce our guests. Our guests are to be someone that is very spectacular. So I expect you guys to carry your pain and virus and listening to all you have to see as a wealth of experience as regards to non-profit organizations. And it's also a tech group. But before we proceed, I would like to briefly tell you guys about TechSoup. So TechSoup, what's TechSoup? Most of you have been asking what's TechSoup? How can you be a part of TechSoup? So this program is hosted by TechSoup Connect. And TechSoup has a branch in Nigeria, which is the likewise TechSoup Connect Nigeria chapter. So basically what we do, what we do on TechSoup is we put communities together. We try as much as possible to support local non-profit organizations with tools that they could use to enhance their non-profit organizations. So TechSoup connects you with discounted products like software, hardware, projectors, and stuffs you could use to enhance your non-profit organization. So like you can see on the screen, we have Microsoft, we have box office, we have Zoom. Like you know, we are currently using the Zoom platform for this meeting. So TechSoup connects you with all these products and you can get these products at discounted rates. So I would like to now introduce our guest for today. Hello, can everybody hear me? Please, if you can hear me just wave, please just wave if you can hear me. Yes, we can hear you. Okay, so I would love to introduce our guest for today. And he's not a person that, as we all know, his name is Hope Okontabi, who is currently the co-founder and CEO of North Boy Technologies Limited. It's spread in about two countries currently known in Africa, Mauritius, and Nigeria. So today, the Hope is going to give us a pep talk on why non-profit organizations need, why non-profit organizations. Okay, so can you hear me? All right, all right. Thank you so much. Thank you. So like I did say, I'm going to introduce our guest. Hello, can everybody hear me? Yes, I can. Okay, yes. Okay, all right. So TechSoup Connect is a global body that connects non-profit organizations with technology. They try to see as much as possible that these local non-profit organizations can utilize technology for good. That's why they came up with a program called Tech for Good. So Tech for Good helps local non-profit organizations to enhance their fundraising campaigns and to see how they can move their non-profit organizations forward. So briefly, this program is hosted by TechSoup Connect Nigeria chapter. I want to especially welcome each and every one of you to today's session. So I will be introducing our host. He's no other person than Taby Okontabi. And he will be, he will be hosting the session for today. Please just a minute while I try to connect our hosts. Okay, please just a minute. Please just a minute. So please just give me a minute. Okay, yes. Please just a minute. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. Okay, can you share your screen so we could start the session? Alrighty. Okay, okay. All right, please just, okay, okay, fine. All right. So you're good to go, you're good to go sir. Okay. Thank you very much, Alex. I think you're having some technical issues, but nevertheless, it's, it's very fine. Thank you very much, Alex, and the TechSoup team for having me. It's an interesting topic when, when, when you contacted me concerning the topic, it was right on time because I was in, or I am still in the middle of a digital fundraising campaign for the Rotary Club. So it's, it was so much of a coincidence, however, I think it was good timing. I'm happy to be here and hi to everyone that's here present. I can see Law, Adi, and the rest of them. Nice to, nice to have you guys here. So I'll just dive right into the topic and after that we can get into questions and answers. So the main topic is why digital, why digital fundraising is important for NGOs. And while presenting this presentation I tried as much as possible to question. So if you own an NGO and you've been asking yourself, how do I leverage digital fundraising, and is digital fundraising really for me. Well, I'll try as much as possible, not to answer your question, but to give you enough information that would help you make informed decisions as regards your non governmental organization or your charitable organization. So digital fundraising is simply using online digital channels to raise funds. And this definitely or simply has to do with leveraging technology. According to Henry Rosso fundraising is the gentle art of teaching the joy of giving. So what does it mean, it means that you're leveraging technology to teach people how to give. And as we go on we'll begin to see the importance or the relevance of this statement with respect to the fundraising in general. Why digital fundraising. You have many reasons that would encourage someone to go into digital fundraising. And like never before we've seen so many NGOs leverage technology to raise funds, mainly because of the COVID-19 pandemic so like never before during the COVID-19 seemed so many businesses, so many businesses, as well as NGOs get into the practice of leveraging technology to respond. So the question is why, why would they do this, why would you, as an NGO want to consider raising funds using technology. You're looking at wider audience, you're looking at the ability to communicate in different languages, you're looking at the ease of contributions, increased donations transparency flexibility and affordability. But let's go let's dive deeper and understand these different concepts and why these are very important to consider, why the rich, you see technology plays a very important role when it comes to reaching more people. And we understand that if we were to compare our ability to meet people 50 years ago and ability to meet new people right now in 2021 you cannot compare them because the difference is exponential. That is to say that if I was someone 100 years ago, living on earth, I might have the ability to meet just a couple 100 people around my village or the villages around my village. But with technology now I have the ability I see on social media on Facebook some people have up to 1000 friends. So you could imagine that 1000 people you think it's small. 2000 people you feel it's small but 100 years ago there were some people that in their lifetime that will be the number of people that they would meet. So if you think about it you see how far technology takes us and the affordance that technology gives us. So we technology we have the ability to reach more people in our digital in our fundraising campaigns. So if I have a connection to 1000 people and every other person in my team has a connection to 1000 people. That means we have the ability to leverage technology to meet close to 10,000 people for just one fundraising campaign, as it again organized an event that you might have just 50 people in attendance. Apart from wider reach. Another reason would be the ease of communication leveraging technology allows me as an individual to communicate in different languages in different formats and at different times. So this flexibility or affordability with respect to communication has become, would I say a peck or great benefit when it comes to raising funds. For instance, if I am a native English speaker and I do not know how to communicate in other languages, and my donors are primarily French speaking. It would be difficult for me traditionally to be able to speak to them if I invite them to an event and I don't know how to speak French. But my ability to leverage technology allows me to speak even to a friend speaking community. I could just translate what I have written in English into French, design it into a banner and boom, I target a specific language speaking demographic on social media and you find that my campaign is now speaking to someone in a language that they understand. I could also say, what is the community of my target donors, do they prefer text, or would they prefer a video. I can do that with digital fundraising. So we digital fundraising, I could either create my campaign in text, or I could create my campaign in video, and I could post that to different demographic as and when I feel it's going to be relevant, relevant to them. And so let's move to the next part. And that's ease of communication. Why digital fundraising is of communication with online payment gateways and platforms fundraising can be conducted without the limitation of a single mode of payment, or single mode of money transfer. I'm sorry about that. I think my internet was shaking. So ease of contribution allows digital fundraising allows us to leverage technology and grant the people that are supposed to contribute to our courses. The affordance to contribute with respect to how comfortable they are the different media or medium that they feel comfortable with, you see. So that is also an advantageous side of digital fundraising. An example of that would be a current campaign that I that I mentioned that we're running. Right now, we're running a campaign that affords people the ability to contribute from wherever and at whichever time that they feel comfortable to do so. And because it is a digitally fundraised campaign, you realize that we have people given from different parts of the world, we have people contributing for that same project from France, we have people contributing from Europe, we have numerous people contributing from Africa as well. And they do this via different mobile payment gateways via visa master cards and all that. Now, traditionally these wouldn't have been possible. But because we're leveraging digital fundraising, we can now collect contributions from people that we haven't even met before, and from and through channels that are that those people find comfortable enough to work with. So when you start increasing donations, you realize that when you grant people the ability to give, however, and whenever they want to give, then you're meeting them at a point where they are more autistic. As you reduce bottlenecks with respect to donations, people feel more obliged to give as soon as they see your fundraising campaign. So transparency and accountability. We all understand that when it comes to money, people want someone that is transparent and someone that is accountable. So if you're running your NGO, one of the best ways and easiest ways for you to maintain transparencies would be through digital fundraising, because with digital fundraising campaigns, you could easily make it visible to everybody that is that is even people that are just visiting the campaign to see your target and to see how close you are to that target and to know when you have reached that target. That level of transparency and accountability allows anybody that wants to be realized that okay, if there could be transparent enough to show me how much they have collected so far, and how much they want to collect at the end of the day, then I think there would be accountable and transparent enough also communicate to me how these funds have been or are going to be administered in the project that they say that we're going to administer these funds in. So you realize that by showing people figures psychologically it makes people feel like you are open enough to show them everything that your campaign is all about. And that brings out the altruistic side of people the more flexibility. We all understand that as any project whether it is a charitable it's a project being run by a charitable organization is a project being run by a business or even a personal project that you're handling. You understand that there would be bottlenecks, and your strategies might not be one of that is to say what you plan to do might not work at the end of the day. So you might say how do I change this how do I correct this let's take an example. If I were to print a thousand copies of a flyer. And at the end of the day after paying my printer, and he prints everything I get it and I realize, well, my communication strategy for that particular campaign was not top notch. You see, we have just wasted resources and money in printing those flyers, we cannot correct those flyers, you would have to discard those flyers and start printing again. But the, but the advantage of digital fundraising is this, if I were to design something and post online and leverage all these channels. Whatever I designed or whatever I wrote online does not really speak to my audience the way I wanted to speak to them, I could simply go back to the drawing board with my team and say okay, let's work on something better. Let's work on some more crisp and immediately I take that and replace whatever I had online. The flexibility that digital fundraising gives allows you and your team to easily where necessary. Also, you're talking about affordability, compared to traditional fundraising raising approaches, digital fundraising is less expensive and less demanding of human resource. You're not talking about the logistics, for instance, if you were to set up an event where you're inviting people to come donate, you have to make the environment conducive enough for them. You have to think about refreshment, entertainment, the people that are going to volunteer to come work, but now with digital fundraising, you don't have that event any longer. You focus on what is important, communicating a project vision that is convincing enough for people to give them money, rather than focusing your energy on raising funds that you do not have to set up an event to raise funds. You realize that leveraging digital fundraising in some instances saves you a whole lot of money, time and resources in general. So we've talked about the different reasons why it is important for us to leverage digital fundraising. We might ask ourselves, what are the tools and strategies for digital fundraising because it wouldn't make sense if I just spoke to you about digital fundraising as is and why it is important. I do not suggest to you tools that you could leverage to up your game when it comes to digital fundraising. One of those would be newsletters. You also have social media website crowdfunding platforms, recurring donation strategies, and also peer to peer fundraising. Let's take a dive and understand what all these tools and strategies would mean. So for newsletters, this is one of the ways in which you can stay in touch with your community and build even a wider portfolio of donors. You ask yourself, why do I need to stay in touch with my community? But you would realize that people would give most likely to people that they know. It is important as an NGO that you're raising funds or you're not raising funds that you maintain a relationship with your prospective donors, with the community around you and even the wider community. And one of the ways that you could do that is through newsletters. So digital tools that you can use to communicate the journey and the activities of your NGO would be MailChimp.com or HubSpot.com. Personally, I use both of them but HubSpot is better for me because HubSpot gives you both the capabilities of CRM, which is a customer relationship management system. And you could use it anyways for your NGO as well because your donors are almost like your customers. So you could use HubSpot to manage your donors and also to send bulk emails and build very nice newsletters. Secondly, social media. Man is a social being and we are all very social and the adoption rate of social media has grown exponentially in the past, I think, two decades. So while you might not know who has a higher proclivity towards altruism and giving, social media algorithms know. So the reason why it's important to leverage social media is because if I wanted to know the people that have given before the people that are very committed towards giving in my community. Can you take me some time to go from door to door or to ask around, do you think this guy is going to be compelled to give, willing to give towards this course. But if I run an ad, for instance, on social media, on Facebook and the rest of them, it will be very easy for me to target a specific demographic. I'm not targeting because the social media platforms already have the algorithm, I would be able to target a specific cluster, and I know that there is a higher chance of people within that cluster that I am targeting to contribute towards the course that, or the project that I am working on. So it really would be your website. You see, in today's society, a website is important in every sense, for all organizations, and NGOs are not left out. People would want to know more about you before they give. And while you are not on what I could be. So, it's one thing for you to say I don't have a website. One thing to say I don't need a website. So if you don't have a website then it's a it's a good thing because there, your, your problem might be because of cost. Well, I have put tools here that are pretty much free. They have packages that are very free and open to everyone to use. You have Squarespace, you have WordPress, you have Wix, you have Wibbly, and you have yola.com. All these platforms enable you to build a simple web page that communicates whatever you want to communicate to your audiences. And I think this is a good place to start if as an NGO you do not have a huge budget. So with this you could easily build a website, so that if you have a campaign for donors running online. It's easy for someone to click a link, visit your website and learn more about your NGO. And the good thing about that is, it allows you to put testimonials and pictures about projects that you have handled before. These would serve as compelling factors to whoever is visiting your page to know that they have a track record of performing. They have a track record of meeting the people you need and handing over this help to them. So if I give them my money, I'm confident that they are going to do what they said they are going to do crowdfunding platforms. These platforms allow you to reach many more people who can contribute to a cost. In an NGO you can leverage several crowdfunding platforms and I've put some some examples of this year. Most of my examples because this workshop or seminar as I would call it, as I would call it is primarily under text to connect the Nigerian chapter so I'm trying to keep all my examples to resources that can be accessed easily in Nigeria So if you have a beg dot app, it's it's an app that you could get on iOS, and you could get them on Play Store and all that so you install it in your phone and you could pretty much run a digital fundraising campaign that you have done it. You have Niger phone, you have quick race. So leveraging such platforms allows you to reach a wider audience. But mind you, if you are to create a campaign in some of these platforms, it is necessary that you know how to communicate to the people that you want to target and not just creating that and leaving it there and expecting that people are going to donate. You have to do the work with respect to social media, share the link to your campaign and encourage people to share as well and invite as many people as possible to contribute. Another strategy to be recurring donations and I love this. This could be a strategy that you adopt for the corporate world, because there are many companies even like my company that is committed to CSR. So at the end of the month you, or at the end of the year you have to do something you have to give back to the community. It's very easy. If you strategically position your NGO to say okay, I'm contacting these donors, and I'll sell them the vision of my NGO, so good that they want to be part of our journey every single month, or every six months, or every one year. And they become recurrent donors. That means there's a standing order or if that's what you would call it on their accounts whereby at the end of every month or annually or every six months, depending on how it is said, they have already programmed that they're donating this amount of money to my NGO. This is a very good strategy because it gives you a sense of stability for your NGO. You're not always running campaigns to raise money, but you're quite confident that at the end of the month I have this pool of donors that every month I'm confident of getting maybe 100,000, 200,000 depending on the currency and so on and so forth to run the activities of my NGO. And then I could move forward to say okay, I'm running specific campaigns for some other projects and platforms that you could use would be paystack.com you also have Flutterwave and there are a couple of others that you could leverage depending on your location and what works best. So we have peer-to-peer fundraising. So peer-to-peer fundraising is a strategy whereby you're saying, okay, we are in a team and we have our collaborators and partners and we allow them their affordance or ability to create these campaigns concerning one project. There are several people who create several campaigns, but all the contributions are taken into the same pocket to execute one single project. But it's important to be very careful with a campaign like this or a strategy like this because there is always room for limited accountability. And many notes that people are contributing to, it might be difficult to track what's accountable, it might be difficult to hold everyone to the same level of sincerity when it comes to gathering funds and you could leverage social media or even crowdfunding platforms to get this running. Now, you might ask yourself, okay, now I know why it's important for me to do a digital fundraising campaign and I also know a couple of tools and strategies that I could apply, but how am I sure that I am going to have a successful fundraising campaign? So for you to have a successful fundraising campaign, one of the well-known strategies or one of the well-known ways that you could do that is following the four steps of successful fundraising and that's identification, cultivation, solicitation and stewardship. It is important to know that these steps are not just a one-time journey, they're iterated. So that means when you, it's a cycle. So when you go through identification up to stewardship, you still have to go back again to identification, cultivation, solicitation and stewardship. And these could be a general focus of your NGO or it could be campaign-specific and it could be individual-specific. So you could be focusing on saying for the next three months, this is what we are doing through identification for identification. And the second month, we're going to do cultivation and then we're going to solicitation and then stewardship. Or you could say there is this individual, we want to have an individual that would be a major donor. So we go through a process of identifying that particular individual or that firm and then how do we cultivate a relationship with that firm? And then finally, how do we go to solicit for funds from that firm and then stewardship? So those are two ways. Let me go deeper to explain how you could go about this. So identification. You have to identify who can be your donor. Think about their waterholes. Waterholes, we're talking about where do they gather, where are the places that you're going to find these people? And if they have given to you before, it is popular knowledge that people who have given to a cause before, people who have given to your campaign before, are most likely to give a second time. So you have to identify who can be your donor. Now, again, like I explained, this could be a firm. You're saying, okay, we have 10 companies. We identify a company out of these 10 that we say we are interested in this company. Or it could be you saying, I have launched my NGO or I have my NGO and we are online. How do we identify a specific user base or an audience on Facebook? Do you understand? So you begin to communicate in a certain way so that you can identify that niche demographic on Facebook. It could be focused on an individual or it could be focused on the whole community. So identification is very diverse. Now, cultivation is you building a relationship with your prospective donor or donors. So you would say, if I have identified this company in my community and I feel like they're going to be good donors for this course. How do I build a relationship? How do I cultivate a relationship with this particular firm or these audiences that I have identified on social media? How do I speak to them? What is the language that they understand? You could, if there are young people, you could speak to them in the way that young people understand using memes and the rest of them. You could speak to them in the way that they understand. You could pay them cut sea visits and not ask for anything. So in the stage of cultivation, you're not asking for anything, but you're building a relationship. You want to be familiar. You want to be known and you also want to know them because in the stage of cultivation, you're building a relationship so strong that you would be confident enough to move to the next stage with them. And that's the next stage, which is solicitation. So now you're asking for the donations by connecting the donors to their interest or by connecting to the donors' interest. Now, you cannot communicate effectively to the donor if you do not know their interest. You cannot get them to be empathetic enough if you do not know how to speak to the conscious, to the conscience in them. So you have to be able to know them. You have to be able to go through the cultivation stage before you're confident enough to go through the solicitation phase because solicitation is actually the most challenging or difficult of all the steps. Now, while trying to solicitate for funds, you have to be able to communicate because communication is very important at this point. Now, how do you communicate? You have to highlight the impact that their contribution is going to have because people are not just going to give you money because you want to do something good. No, they could give other people that money themselves and they would feel good. But you have to connect to their interest to say that if you give me this money, I'm going to do something that you are passionate and interested about or interested in. And then secondly, the thing I'm going to do is going to produce this result. Now giving them communicating how they will be informed as well is going to be important because you also have to tell them in this solicitation stage. Because this money, this and this and this is what we are going to do. And we know that you are interested in this. And we are also going to come back to give you feedback on this project that we executed. Now they feel like they are part of something. They feel like they've been recognized. They feel like they are not parting with their money because people don't throw away their money. And secondly, people want to see what their money does. So if they're giving you their money as an NGO, you have to be able to make them confident enough to say, Okay, if I were to contribute to this particular cause, they are going to come back and they're going to give me feedback on how well this money has been administered. So through stewardship, which goes to say you're saying thank you, and you're maintaining communication and showing stewardship and accountability. So the fourth state, these monies that that was gathered. This is what it has been used to do. And these are the testimonials of the people. And the point that we realized that through stewardship, you're raising in business, you would say brand loyalist, but you're raising loyal donors who feel like, who feel proud because they have given money some months ago. And then you have shown accountability and stewardship. And so they have seen the outcome of their contribution and the benefits, the impact of their contribution. That becomes enough reason for you to identify them as donors that would give you in future. So you see we go back to identification. Now, because they have given, and you, and you have been accountable, and you've shown excellence stewardship, you're confident to identify this person as a prospective donor for your future campaigns, and it goes on and on and on. And so it's a cycle that that that continues as your NGO grows and hopefully you get brand loyalists through your stewardship that in future, you're not just going to be asking them to give money. But when you have a new campaign, they would be asking other people to join them to contribute towards your course. So if you don't understand like as an NGO, going online to solicit for funds, your, your, your donors might not just be people that have money to give to you. Let's just get that clearly. You're sometimes you might solicit for assistance from people that have the wider audience. So if I don't have the money to give to you, I might know someone that does. So have an open mind when leveraging online or digital fundraising to say, okay, I might know someone who is a musician, who is an artist, who is an actor, that has a good full full worship online. So I contact them. I don't ask them to give me money, but I asked them, could you please share this campaign on your channel. And that way you see that you're meeting more people that trust them so you're leveraging their trust to speak to the conscience of their own audience, and hopefully increase the probability or proclivity of people to contribute to what your, your campaign. And I think this is my final slide, and it talks about attributes of a great fundraiser. We've been talking about fundraising online, why it's important the different tools that you could leverage, and then the different steps that you could take through your campaign or the journey that you could take your donors through. But then let's also talk about the attributes of a great fundraiser, because you wouldn't be able to administer all these effectively, if you do not have these attributes. You would have to be a good researcher. If you want to raise funds effectively online. So, learning about prospective donors and how they want to make an impact is very important. And remember, initially we say communication is important. So I would not be able to communicate with you effectively if I do not learn about you. I would not know enough about you to know the words that mean something to you to know the registers with respect to your market or your business. So if there is something that you're interested in, how do I come to you using that topic of interest. So I have to research, you have to learn about your prospective donors. Now your prospective donor might be one person, and your prospective donor might be a whole audience of people, it might be a whole community, it might be a state, it might be a country. So you have to research and learn about your prospective donors, what you can say to them, and what you cannot say to them because what you could say in the United States for instance might not be same as what you can say in India. So you have to understand, so you have to understand the cultural differences of your audience or the individual that you're about to meet. An interesting way that some NGOs would do this would be maybe the way to address. Okay, if this person, let's use Nigeria for instance, this prospective donor is from the West. So he's Yoruba. I might decide and I realize that he's someone that has a strong ties to his culture. I might not want to visit him wearing a suit. I might want to visit him wearing an Agbada or something to go to his office. Now with that, because I know his interest that he has strong ties with his tradition, approaching him that will make him go for a relationship with us now. He understands that this person approaching me remember we are talking about identification so I've identified him and that's through the research phase is where you identify the person. I've identified him and I know his interest. And so I approach him in with an interest of his. So he doesn't see me as an outsider he sees me as someone that has interest in what interest him. And so he's more likely to give me audience. Secondly, storytelling ability. You have to be a good storyteller. I want to be a good fundraiser. First of all, because you want to be able to trigger an emotion. And the best way to trigger emotions is through storytelling. You have to create the you have to ignite the thought. You have to ignite the feeling of empathy. And you have to tell stories that align with the motivation and interest of the prospective donor. And when we're talking about digital fundraising, you know that you have that one of the skills that you need to have is copywriting. Because now it's not just you talking, we're talking to people online. So your copywriting has to be very good. And your design has to be very good as well. Because if someone is scrolling, your design has to be eye catching has to have colors well aligned in very good radiance that captivate the attention of someone even for three seconds for them to stop and read what your campaign is all about. And then, since your design has captivated them, your copywriting now triggers an emotion in them that makes them to click on that link and read more about what your campaign is about and hopefully at the end of the day, they contribute. You also want to be very good relationship builder, build connections with other people beyond when you need their money to be a good fundraiser you have to be able to build a relationship with people. Beyond when you need them to contribute to your NGO. So, you can't wait 11 months you never said hi to certain people, and then in the 12 months you now call them and say hi, I have a campaign that is running, or you send them a Facebook message and all that. That's not the effective way to do it. You want to build a relationship. I think people appreciate your presence. People appreciate your person as an individual, and they appreciate your NGO as an entity. And so when you build that relationship, January, February, March and the rest of those months, you're posting stuff. You're posting things that are educated, informative, and you're giving people insight information about your journey or the journey of your NGO. Slowly, people begin to feel like they know you, and they're part of what you're doing. So at the end of the day, when you've built that relationship, asking for phones would not seem alien to you and the people that have seen your campaign. Hopefully, you have to be trustworthy. You have to be trustworthy with funds, and also trustworthy or private with information of your donors. I think there's a typo error there. So you have to be trustworthy with money that is assigned to you. And because people are contributing to you, you have to be trustworthy to protect their privacy as and when they're demanding, because there are some people that would say yes we want to donate but we don't want that recognition. We want to donate online, but we don't want to be public. So we have a campaign right now running for the Rotary Club where we are raising some funds for a campaign. And we choose the platform that allows the ability for donors to decide not to include their personal information, because there are people that don't want that, and we are never going to make their information known to anybody. So you have to be trustworthy with both information and the money that is given to you. Lastly, you have to be dedicated and confident. You have to believe in what you are doing. You are dedicated and convincing enough to motivate others to join you. You cannot be a good fundraiser if you're not confident. And if you don't believe in the cost that you're raising funds for. And if someone is asking you to give them money to do something, and they are not convincing enough themselves that don't even believe in that particular project. How do you think it's possible that you would contribute to the project as well. It almost impossible the likelihood of you contributing for that project is almost zero. If you're a good fundraiser, you have to be dedicated and confident. That is to say, if you're raising funds online, sometimes it might require you to take a step further to speak for this campaign. You have, you could take a step further to make a video and show people how committed, how passionate you are that specific campaign. And by doing that, someone else looks at you, looks at the vision in your eyes, looks at the dedication and the passion that you have for that project. When they can see that, when they could hear you speak about it, even in your writing, if they can see that passion, then it's more convincing for them to become a part of that particular fundraising campaign that you're raising online. So this is my last slide. Remember, you have to be a good researcher. You have to be a good storyteller. You have to build relationships. You have to be trustworthy. And you also have to be dedicated. I think that's the last slide of my presentation. And right now I'm open for questions if you have any. Thank you very much. Okay, so like I said, like I did see a presenter today has done marvelously well. And as usual, I expected everybody to be taking notes. So there are some questions here. I would like to read out loud. I don't know if you can hear me. Can everybody hear me? Yeah, sure. All right. So, and this is, are you familiar with any digital marketing platforms that can be used in Africa? I'm only aware of software programs that are limited to be used in the US, in US and Canada. So I would like you to react to that particular question. She's asking if you could suggest apps, fundraising apps that could be used in Africa, that she's only familiar with most of the fundraising softwares that are used in the USA and Canada. So I would like you to react to that. Okay, so what's the name again of the person with ID? So, I would say digital marketing or fundraising there are two different concepts, but you could leverage digital marketing to raise to raise your funds. And some of the platforms that you can use, like in Nigeria, for instance, would be abeg.app.negeoffund.com and quickraise.com. That's for crowdfunding platforms. But when you're talking about digital marketing, digital marketing itself is a skill that also plays an important role when you're raising funds. So that means you have a budget and you want to market digitally. So you could leverage search engine optimization. So you could use Google display art, for instance, and Google is not just for the Western world in Canada or the US, anybody almost anywhere in the world can access Google. So if you have a Gmail account, you could open, you could also have a Google AdWords or Google analytics or all these things are connected. You have a website where you have your campaign displayed. And on that website, you have a link to your crowdfunding page where you're raising funds. Now you have to drive traffic through digital marketing to your website. So you leverage Google. You use Google SEM, Search Engine Marketing, and you could use display art. So you design certain banners to certain dimensions that Google advises you to, and you upload them on your account. And maybe you boost them with a little bit of money. Your budget could be $50, $100 USD. And then that way, Google through targeting is going to show your campaign to as many people as possible that meet your targeting, that people that are interested in NGOs, in charitable organizations, people interested in giving, people that have given before to such charitable campaigns. So that's one way that you could leverage digital marketing. So Google is one of the best channels that you could use. Another channel is Facebook. As simple as Facebook is, it's powerful beyond what we think it could do. What would you need to do? Create a page, not a group, not an account. Create a page for your NGO. And then based on that page, from that page, you could promote a particular campaign. So you get a link that leads to your crowdfunding page, and you make a post, you put that link there, and you boost that post on Facebook. And again, you might decide to put in $20, $50 USD, 100 USD, and you boost that. So wherever you are in the world, my best bet for you to go through digital marketing will be Facebook and Google. And Facebook also owns Instagram. So if you're boosting on Facebook, you're also boosting on Instagram as well. But I don't know if that answers your question. Okay. Please, if any other person has a question, I would appreciate it if they can ask. But I have a question and it's as regards to, hello, can you hear me, sir? Yeah, I can hear you. So it's as regards to the storytelling when you're trying to raise funds online. I don't know if you could expand on that. You know, I would like to know what kind of stories are you telling? Are you telling them this is what your raising funds for? Or what exactly the storytelling attributes that you would have to introduce when you're raising funds online? Okay, for instance, let me use a simple example. Yeah. One of the campaigns that we're raising funds for is for reusable parts, sanitary parts, right? So if I were to meet someone, if I were to meet someone to talk about that campaign, I could just go straight to the point and say, hey, can you please give us some money? We are buying reusable sanitary parts for young ladies. That's straightforward. I have already told him what the campaign is all about and then asking him, can you please contribute money? But that's as basic as it could be. And that would not be effective. But if I were to say, do you have a minute? Now, this is face to face now, right? Do you have a minute? And I use some statistics and I say that do you know that there are some families that cannot afford three square meals in a day? The person says yes. And I'm like, do you also know that most of these families have maybe a mother and two to three daughters? The person says yes. Now, let's imagine if this family, you see what I say, let's imagine. So now I trigger an imaginative sense in the person. Let's imagine if this family have three women and we understand that they do not have enough money to feed and we understand the cost of sanitary parts every month for one woman, multiply that by three. Do you think these women are having it easy? Of course, the person would say no, because through storytelling, I have triggered an emotion. I have triggered empathy and the conscience of that person. So instead of me just going to the person and asking them, we need money to buy sanitary parts. First of all, if the person is a man in our society today that some people think in an archaic way. You mentioned sanitary part is like, how is that my business? They become a little bit defensive. But through storytelling, you do not, your focus is no longer on the item you want to buy, which is sanitary parts. Your focus is on the human being that you're impacting, because the woman is a human and the person you're meeting is also a human. And really, every human being has the gift of imagination. So through storytelling, you touch their imagination to put themselves in the shoes of the person you're trying to help. Now, if they feel uncomfortable in that shoes, then they are most likely going to do something about it. So there is an ad about the United Nations about kids without food. It's not something I've forgotten the actual words, but it's also storytelling, trying to tell you that one dollar could feed a couple of children somewhere in the war. And there are some people that one dollar means nothing to, but imagine what one dollar could do for a family. Through that ad, when you watch that ad, I don't have access to it right now. It triggers a feeling inside of you and you ask yourself, if I had a child, would I subject my kid to just one dollar a day? My Starbucks coffee could cost more than that, 10 times more than that. And that's coffee that you're just drinking. Comparing a kid's meal to Starbucks coffee that means nothing to you makes the person feel a specific kind of emotion. Like, if I could afford several cups of coffee a day, I think I can feed 10 children somewhere in the world. So the person is moved to say, I'll sacrifice one cup of coffee for 10 kids, you see. So storytelling is all about writing your fundraising, would I say, pitch in a way that it puts your donor in the shoes of your beneficiary. So in just five lines, you're able to make your donor see himself in the streets without clothes. You're able to see your donor at home without food. You're able to see your donor as a woman without sanitary materials. If you can do that, then you're a good storyteller. Then you can convince someone to give more. So I really want to thank you. I want to thank you for this session. I believe we've learnt a lot, we've learnt a lot. So I want to thank all our participants. So you can put sharing of your screen down. So I can just give them the last slide of thank you. So I want to thank all our participants from wherever you joined us from. I want to thank Adi from South Africa. I see Valet. Valet is doing a great work in Nigeria. I believe Valet, hello Valet, can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. I believe he said something about the work you're doing in Nigeria. I think you're working on sanitary parts. Yes, I am. Okay, all right, all right. So I believe you learnt a lot from that too. Yeah, a whole lot. I'm actually glad I joined. Thank you for telling me this. Okay, all right, thank you. So I can see Nambi Richard. Nambi Richard, can you say hi to us please? Nambi Richard, can you say hi to us? Definitely. All right, so why are you joining us from? Okay, the city of flyovers, Potapot, Nigeria. Oh Potapot, that's great. It's great to have you. So I can see Amin Sanusi. Amin Sanusi, can you say hi to everyone please? Hi to everybody. Please, why are you joining us from, sir? Okay, okay, I can see Laura Pata. Pata, please can you say hi to everybody? Hello Pata, can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. So hi everyone, and I'm from Mauritius. Oh, so great, so great to have you. Yeah, it's so great to have you. So I can see Louis Ulta. Ulta, please can you say hi to everyone? Hello Ulta, can you hear me? Hello, Ulta, can you hear me? All right, so I want to thank each and every one of you that has joined in this session today, and I want to believe you have learned a lot. So generally I would just do a recap of what TechSoup Connect is. TechSoup is a global community that connects non-profit organizations to tech giants like Google, Zoom, Microsoft, and through TechSoup we could leverage the opportunity to use lots and lots of digital platforms for your NGO campaigns. Just like he said, he has mentioned a couple of platforms you could use to increase your donor, your recurring donor, and all that. So TechSoup breaches that gap between you and this tech giant. So you could also be a volunteer for TechSoup from wherever you're joining us from. You could also join the TechSoup family. And if you're interested in doing that, please send a personal message to my email. My email will be put on the chat button for everybody to see. And as usual, we will be meeting next time next month. And I want to encourage each and every one of you to join us next month as we are going to bring up someone that is also as spectacular as a presenter for today. So on behalf of TechSoup Global Community, on behalf of TechSoup Connect Nigeria, I want to thank each and every one of you for your time. I want to thank you for coming out this evening or wherever you're located in the world. I want to thank you for giving us your time and I believe you have learned a lot. Please, the slides will be shared to everyone who has joined us through your email box. So I finally want to thank our presenter. I was taking note of almost everything he said. And I believe I've learned a lot and we have all learned a lot. So I want to see us go out there and do the good for our communities and bring about social change to our environment. So once again, on behalf of TechSoup, I want to thank each and every one of you for joining. And bye for now. See you next month. Thank you. Bye everyone. Thank you so much, Mr. Taby for your time and your presentation. You have really taught us a lot about how to use digital platforms for fundraising. And I'm glad. Alex. Okay, alright. Sorry to cut you. The young lady, I think she's running a campaign for pads for young ladies. Yes, yes. As I told you, we have a campaign running similarly in Mauritius. Okay. So that's just an interest interest for me. So I don't know whichever way that we could collaborate, maybe just to extend the hand of assistance, maybe, but just to have an information about it. Just to get information about your company, maybe outside here we could have discussions further. Yeah. Okay. Alright, alright, so definitely I would, I would definitely get across to you as regards to how you can communicate with Fowlet. So once again, I want to thank each and everyone of you for joining and see you next month. And I hope we'll get to have the presenter once again to share a different topic entirely. But I want to thank each and everyone of you for joining. Thank you and see you next month. Bye for now. Thank you so much for joining us this evening. Mr. San Nussi, Mr. San Nussi, can you hear me? Yeah, I can hear you. Okay. I don't know, are there questions you want to ask because the meeting is over, so I don't know if there are questions you, I think you joined me from. Yeah, very late. I joined late due to my network share, but I just guess maybe after going through the slides that which you may say. Okay, this slide to me. I'll get prepared based on next month's meeting. Yes. And maybe through there I could also get you maybe personally. Okay, okay, so are you, do you run an NGO? Are you a member of an NGO or do you run an NGO? I run an NGO that works on peace and inclusive. Okay, so what part of Nigeria do you run this NGO? Down here in Gumbi. Okay, Gumbi, that's good. So we work with NGOs across Nigeria and Africa and what we do at Tech Supernet is to try as much as possible. Have you heard of the Google AdSense? No, no, actually. Okay, so we have a program coming up next month for Google AdSense where you could learn how you could leverage using $10,000 for your online campaigns, where you could learn how you could run your ads online. I believe your NGO has a website. Hello, Mr. Sanusi, can you hear me? Can you hear me, sir? Mr. Sanusi, can you hear me? Yes, yes, yes, it's breaking but I can hear you now. Okay, I believe your NGO has a website. Hello, I said I believe your NGO has a website. Yeah, actually we've not launched it but we're working on it. I'll give someone to work on it, we've not launched it. Okay, and your NGO is registered with, I think the body for registration in Nigeria is up with the First Commission, am I right? Yes, yes. Okay, so get in touch with me through the email I shared and let's see how we could send your document to our Tech Superstastic Brands branch, which is in Ghana. They're in charge of all of our Tech Superstastic Brands next meetings and all that. So we could send your documents to them and if they get your document approved and then you could send a request for Google for non-profits and then once you have an account created for Google for non-profits, then definitely you will be eligible for the $10,000 ad grant from Google, which would help you which would increase your advertisement of your NGO and its activities online. So create your website after creating your website so it could be easy for you to integrate your website on the Google platform, you know, you know how that stuff works. I don't know if you're getting me clearly. I don't know how that works. I also have a lot of where I do that. All right, all right. Perfect. So with your website, you could attach a donate button to it and with this ad grant, people all over the world could get to see your donate button and support your NGO. So I would want to thank you once more for joining and please create time to join our next meeting as we'll be sharing on how you could assess the Google ad grants. And I hope you could learn a lot from that session. So once again, thank you so much for joining us. I would just ask you to exit the forum from now on. Thank you. All right, thank you so much. All right, bye. All right, so get in touch with me and let's see how we could help your NGO. I'll do that right away. All right, thank you so much. All right, bye.