 looks like we're going to have a smaller group, which is perfect because I'm hoping we can just have a lot of valuable discussion of what everyone has learned to try, doesn't want to do again, wants to do again, learn from each other. I've talked to several colleagues, friends, and some of which who I can't share the organization name, but I wanted to harvest out some of what they shared, and that can start us off to share some of that. But if everybody, if you haven't already in chat, if you want to either say in chat who you are, where you're from, you can also take yourself up mute and just tell us whatever's more comfortable. That's great. I can share real quick. My name's Mariah, and I have been working with Army Community Service here in Wiesbaden, Germany for the last little bit as their family advocacy specialist. But I am moving, so I'm currently in a hotel room, about ready to transition to the Fort Worth area, hoping I'm in an interview process for a position with Catholic Charities as a case manager for their Padua pilot program working with people experiencing intergenerational poverty and helping them get out. So that's where I'm at. That's great. Thanks for sharing. The last one's to share, so we can take advantage of being a small group, and it's okay if you don't, too. We can just... I'll go ahead and share. I'm Adrienne. I am with Square, which is the same company that Jenna's with, but I also serve on the board of two different nonprofits that have had some pretty cool experiences on going virtual and some lessons we'll be taking into the future. So I am looking through the lens for today's conversation of the two nonprofits that I'm on the board of and what I can learn from you guys and share from our experience. I'll go next, but that's okay. My name is Delisa Burnell-Smith. I'm from Waco, Texas. I work for a non-profit organization. Of course, everything that we have experienced from COVID up into the conditions of the weather today, we want to be able to do more things virtually. Maybe learn what other folks have had issues with and piggyback off of that. I'm not going to be on the call very long, but I have some other colleagues that should be coming in as well. My name is Mayer. I am working with the Borgen Project. I'm currently an ambassador for them. I actually don't live in Texas. I don't know if that's okay. It's absolutely okay. Okay, cool. I'm just here to learn. Obviously, we had to go virtual like everybody else. I'm not very big in the project, but I just kind of wanted to come in and see what everybody else was doing as far as going virtually, although I do know we're struggling to raise funds virtually. Maybe we'll talk about that today. Anybody else want to share? I can share. I just don't have my camera working today. My name is Kayla. I am in the DFW area. When COVID hit, we did transition everything to going virtual. I'm with Helens Project. We do case management and counseling with individuals. During COVID, we did transition everything to going virtual, but there's definitely some areas that we have found we want to improve on. I'm hoping to learn some new things. All right. I think everyone shared that one or two. I wasn't doing headcount. Good to count it on my fingers, I guess. I'll go ahead and share my screen and just have a few things to go through. Then really, we can talk. That's going to be probably the more meaningful part of what we're going to do. Like I mentioned, a lot of these, I have the privilege of getting to work with a lot of organizations because I like people, but I work in software. You can find me afterwards if you want to have any kind of follow-up conversation for what we talk about. The specific software we work in, we do open source, which basically means nobody owns it. You can own it yourself. We help maintain, host, do development in it, specifically in those software and also technology strategy, maybe. That's not related to the software. If you want to learn more about us, you can go to our website, square.com. Today, we're talking about lessons learned. It is nice that we are this far in. I was telling a friend yesterday that I feel like more from a human empathy level. In the beginning, there was this panic and we had this level of empathy that was heightened because we were all starting into this change, COVID, what that meant for work, what that meant for family. Then I feel like, for myself, I entered a phase of hard-to-have empathy, where the world gets a lot smaller because you're in more of a sustained survival of whatever has changed in your personal, professional life and the way that you can be open and available to other people around you. Then coming out of that where there is opening, maybe jobs changed, maybe non-profit impact could change. Kids know how to use devices better than ever before. Whenever I just talk on a phone, five-year-old son is wondering why we can't see them because that's his new normal, that everything should always be video. We can have this conversation at a really interesting time where there is a greater comfort and familiarity both with the tools that now have been used for 12 months plus and what we want to keep and what we have to keep because nothing is back yet. The phrase of new normal is not to be understated. If we look at what we learn, I just want to recognize up front that some of what strategies non-profits had, it can be a privilege to even talk about that, that I don't know what everybody's experience has been on this call, that maybe you were laid off or maybe you shared getting a different job or you had to lay people off or you had to fire people or that I think that that's an important context to have is a little bit of a foundation of what we talk about because in some ways I recognize the privilege of it is to think about the strategies and how we're reaching our community when so much of that has been thrown up in the air that if we can even be present emotionally to the work that we're doing let alone if we have the resources to pay for a new strategy or the skill set to implement some sort of new technology. So the next thing that I think is valuable for everyone to keep in mind and Adrienne will love this because I think she's heard me repeat this now many many times but it's my new favorite concept about things is that so much of the way things have shifted in the past 12 plus months is that we're all reliant on technology in a very different way that our organizations are needing to use new tools that we never had used before that on a personal level we're trying to get ourselves and those around us comfortable with your tools and that technology is a tool and it is also a mirror and so for your organization maybe you implemented a new technology and it just really didn't work and that's because it is a mirror and it's going to show and reveal all the things that are broken about maybe internal communication is not very good or there's dysfunctional relationships and so just like any other process that you may provide if some of that isn't figured out then the technology isn't going to work as well too and so that's why just a reminder about people in process right that those really really matter and that a good tool backed by the right process and people is a superpower and so to instead of being hard on yourself or hard on the tools that you chose and also reminder and an ask of that we can step back and look bigger at even how our organizations are functioning or how we're communicating which is at a at a more basic level of how we get get our work done so just a couple backdrop thoughts as we get into things so also this is this has been a huge switch and so if we look at in the kind of a case study so a lot of the strategies and things that were tried is going to come from a dear friend of mine who works for an organization that cannot be named for their own protection reasons but they serve seriously ill kids and their families and what was an interesting thing for that organization is that for a lot of the population they serve those people were very isolated already and and so one question that was coming up for them and that kind of the different audiences that they work with is what did normal look like for the community before any of this happened I think that there can even be assumptions about how connected or social or how much people were already using devices or were not using devices that can more assume that everybody is functioning like I am and in in reality for their organization they were realizing like wow our families aren't struggling in the way that we thought because they already were living in these isolated bubbles just for the the health and safety of their kiddos and so by the time the organization was ready to engage the family had already been there that there was this more this hesitation of well how are they going to react to this how are they going to how are they going to connect with the strategy that we're trying to connect and and they could have started much sooner than they thought that the the fear of trying something was holding them back when they could have been having those meaningful connections earlier in another question that came up is what is the most meaningful connection that you have been making you know if you could think about what your strategies used to be where do you see some of the biggest value of when maybe it's the strategies for how you were recruiting those really dedicated volunteers who are going to be with you and be that advocate and be out in the community and share your stories and you don't have to pay them at all and get more people excited through that just the the social nature of why and how we support the organizations that we do and so understanding the connections that already existed and what was meaningful then helped in this case them to try to understand and break down okay if this is where we feel like we were having the most meaningful impact and meaningfully connect with the with the clients with our donors with our volunteers then how do we need to shift that instead of the more you know panic inducing free for all of okay we need to change everything everything may need to be changed but you have to start somewhere and bite sizes the you know can have a bigger impact and so some of the ways that they did that was a big thing for that organization was consistency so they used to have in-person gatherings for their families that would be every Thursday and so they switched that to being online and of course the way fewer people attended but overall having it always something that happens could allow that freedom where people are just dropping in if they can if they have the emotional or mental ability to do that and even if only three people showed up one week and maybe 25 people showed up the next week it was something that could be counted on and I think there's the word stability comes to mind of that that that used to not be as interesting of a word and I think for all of us stability has a very different meaning and that that can be provided by the work that we're doing in a way that we're communicating engaging within our community then that has a huge value that that stability is now a premium right that we can offer both out on a personal level with our personal relationships and the way if we can look for what stability looks like for the work that our organizations are doing what elements of that add stability to your clients to your community's life and so for them just having that regimented structure was helpful another thing was having contingency plans that they know that they need to make sure and keep in the future so for example because it's just the standing call just like a happy hour or a meet and greet or things that would have been in person and you don't always know who's going to show up and what if a lot more people show up the new thought or nobody shows up so you know with zoom there's options to have these breakout rooms where they need they knew that they needed to have a certain number of staff or volunteers available on those calls so in case they did have 30 people and they wanted to still have that meaningful dialogue that you can happen when you're at sort of a fire chat you know and you're not talking over 25 people break people up which has been part of the preparation that needed to happen before so you can have those people available so they they know how to use the technology in a basic way and they can be that kind of guide and facilitator for making it a meaningful engagement no matter who shows up and how um so and some other some other things about just diversity in general um I think that the this is the slide that we all have different comfort levels and I think um some of our comfort levels have shown themselves in a different way when we've been more locked down right of that maybe I I don't I'm never going to be the one to raise my hand first I'm I'm just going to type um or maybe I'm a talker and I'm always going to be the first one to talk or I process very differently and I need to take it in before I'm going to share back and that no one of those is better than another that they can be useful right in certain situations but a big change that has happened in how we engage and are wanting to engage is this comfort our comfort actually mattering now in a different way because since so much was physical and in person and the way we were doing our work we could take it for granted the different roles that people had I know when we are looking at online events and planning for things we expect minimally maybe 50 of people who register are going to come because there's just a lower threshold where you can kind of be in the background now being what are we two dimensional is very different where I'm not as shown up even now even though I'm the one presenting I'm not as with you all is it as I would be even though as we're all more comfortable it is comparable so I think that awareness of people's comfort and having a venue I know thinking of my friend Nicole and what she shared that it was important especially in these virtual spaces that they prepared from the beginning that they knew some people were only going to chat and they knew some people were going to be the first people to talk and they knew some people weren't going to engage in any way and that doesn't mean that there was a different level of how all of those people were actually showing up and wanting to be there and so the way that translated into what they did is that they needed a volunteer or a staff member who could monitor this the chat because if that's where people are engaging need to make sure that someone is in that space or if someone is just going to sit and listen maybe that's the follow up that can happen afterwards and so the the awareness of kind of the styles that people are bringing to these kind of replacement venues replacement opportunities for some of what our in-person work has been this this style and comfort I think is more important than what it's been in the past another opportunity and I'll be curious to know what has changed with some of your organizations of that time zone hasn't mattered right I mean we for safety reasons we're staying away from each other but that doesn't mean we haven't gotten in cars right and like worked from a nature center or I know I've taken my laptop and have been in all kinds of places if I have my hotspot internet and also the way I think the what I was hearing reflection from is when bubbles have gotten smaller then we care more about what's happening in those people's lives so I know even family members or friends of mine they know more about the organizations I feel passionate about than they did before because it's this smaller smaller bubble and so this opportunity that for the case Nicole my friend that they were able to have volunteers be able to engage in their work that they never would have before which all of a sudden created a new opportunity of okay some of these virtual things aren't going to go away and so these are folks that we could continue to engage that we often would have kept off the table because they're not within our geography they're not within driving distance of any of the work that we're doing so I'll be curious to know and think as kind of a follow-up as we after this we just talk together of what what you've done with time zone how that's changed with the way you're working in your community and communicating with each other another thing that my friend was talking about a lot is that they really had to be judicious and that has been really hard because budgets are very different and where can they make the most impact while also still trying to include everyone right and those are very conflicting goals and so just to embrace the tension of the conflicting goal and so some of that was being okay with having kind of that grade book of okay who is going to be eligible for this program if now instead of 25 people we can only have 15 and and that that's okay I think there was a there was a great podcast from a couple weeks ago that was about the COVID vaccine and there was a lot of questions about you know who should be able to get it who should not be able to get it and a scientist epidemiologist was talking and was sharing that the goal is to save lives and we have doses and maybe they're too much of control that the goal is to save lives and so at some point even if a lot of questions are valid on the table to have as far as who makes it and who doesn't and my own impact on my health or external impact on health that if we if we hold the goal of we need to save lives that's what really matters and I think there's a lot of those hard questions that can feel like relieving people out that we have to put on the table just so the dollars that are available can be spread further and so so in the case of this there's always kind of a in this organization trying to have a substitute so maybe that free way that if if someone can't participate or or be eligible for a program because maybe it's gone from 25 to 15 or 50 to 20 participants allowed then maybe there's some sort of virtual thing that they can still participate in or better yet a whole new kind of strategy where we get out our stamps and we connect in that way that you don't need to see me two-dimensionally on a camera but maybe if I send that send that letter or send that update or different from snail mail but SMS the kind of low threshold and low investment that's needed with some of the different text messaging platforms that nonprofits can take advantage of to share updates and information and the way to supplement that together so people are still feeling connected and it's personalized but you're not necessarily have the internal capacity or the dollars available to provide the same kind of programming that you did in the past so that's the that's pretty much the extent of some of the big the big takeaways and I I want to give the rest of the time to hear from everybody to hear and and as one of the slides said if you just want to chat that's great if you just want to listen that's great and if you want to share or ask questions of others that's great too so I would curious as just a prompt has time zone changed a difference in the way your organization has worked has that has that opened up any new opportunities or your community your audience in a different way I don't know I'm responding to that it just feel I'm not that presentable because we are having to implement weather here so just take me as I am for the next couple of minutes if you guys don't mind I'm glad you can be here I am going to go to another call but I want to say that you know even with us just learning that people are being a little bit more savvy on using technology like even the phones and and things like that even people that were probably afraid to move forward with accessing different tools and things they are learning that they have the capability to move forward with things and you know what we have become a little bit more efficient as well as we begin to use the technology components and going virtual so that's been exciting for us you know we were a small group of about eight employees and only four or five of us are able to really work from home but what we find out is that you know we put things in place and it's become a lot more operational effective for us as well and more streamlined too so you get the chance to look at some of your programs and services and realize that you can cut out various different steps so which work well for us now we teach a home rise education course and typically we'll have about 35 to 40 people attend that class and it usually happens every other month so we're putting together a virtual class and we're finding that even people that we partner with are willing to still come in and also take a small piece and we can keep that piece flowing from month to month which will fill up some of our staff time that we can be able to work on different leads to feed into our programs and services so you know I think the virtual thing has really taught us a lesson that some people may be afraid of technology but for being faced with all those different challenges they seem to overcome them and realize hey you know I can really do those different things so those are some of the things that we learn internally that just don't be afraid to do it just go ahead and move forward far with it yeah that fear and then holding back when actually everyone could have been more ready but now you know yeah yeah do you know I'd like to share with you that about a year ago I worked with four young adults in the Vancouver British Columbia area to host an in-person convention in Vancouver BC and about a year ago the pandemic started shutting everything down so we quickly quickly pivoted from a Vancouver BC centric in-person convention for young adults to all of a sudden becoming location agnostic and then four months later in when we held the actual event it was a virtual event we were stunned to find that our largest group of representatives of young people attending our hackathon event came from Nepal we have 14 young people from Nepal and even more people than Canada signed up and the funniest thing is today a year later our Nepalese contacts are the most vibrant partners as a matter of fact we helped them launch their own hackathon in Nepal to advocate for more female representation in a male dominated STEM career fields we would have never expected this one of their young women now is one of our close leaders in our 2021 hackathon which will be even more virtual so something that at first we were very skeptical and fearful of turned out to be serendipitous in a way we would never have expected I guess that's what serendipity means right but just we just had no idea that getting rid of that getting rid of that location centric dimension could so profoundly change what we do and our potential impact so and by the way the this is so funny the Wi-Fi connection I'm currently basing in Los Angeles but I used to live near Houston and also I have my son living in Dallas so I have some reason why for being here well do you know I actually found you an hour ago on the tech soup with that Eli so I've been stalking you so the funny thing you know is that our Wi-Fi connection between US and Canada and Asia often Indonesia was far superior than my connection between Los Angeles and San Francisco figured that out yeah who else had surprises like this was not at all what I planned for and whether that surprises that are bad but what in the world who would have guessed well I will say one that we've had with the network for teaching entrepreneurship which we teach entrepreneurship skills to kids in eight through 12th grade and it's always been a challenge to get successful entrepreneurs in the community to go to the classroom to meet with the kids tell their story be inspiring whatever to make these kids really see that you know what I can do this too and we always try and coordinate schedules to get those entrepreneurs in the classrooms to be those role models and that coordination and those getting that timing and the transportation and oh I have to drive all the way across town to go meet at this one school and I have this other meeting far away and then suddenly we say no no no you can just be online at this time wherever you are and our volunteerism is like tripled or quadrupled because the busy entrepreneur is more than happy to jump on a zoom call for 30 minutes or an hour but to actually take time out of their day to drive across town that was a much more difficult so we're actually even once pretend COVID is completely gone next month and no problem we're going to keep doing the virtual volunteering because we're able to get people in the classroom that would have otherwise never shown up they wouldn't have been able to make the time. I wondered about that with the the potential whether it's nonprofit to nonprofit or nonprofit to business and the doesn't matter what the relationship is but what kind of partnerships have existed because there is that lower threshold right if you don't actually have to get in a car and oh man I didn't eat lunch like now I'm hungry and grumpy and then I have to be somewhere and then drive back home that that lower threshold engagement what has what have folks experienced of different kinds of partnerships that opened up just because putting a little bit of skin in the game became a lot easier and that's okay that's not what are the systems what are the systems that folks use what's what's your software what software did you try out that you're going to keep or scrap so I can speak so with um army community service we were we're kind of hands tied about what the government is willing to use as far as software um I I really would had hoped especially doing social social services um that we could use a variety of ways right um to to really reach people um in ways that were more easily accessible but because of the um privacy issues that zoom had for like a half a second a lot of social service agencies including also the government shut that down and the government has not been willing to open that up at least not for army community service so we've been using Microsoft Teams that and it's doable it's not nearly as um user friendly and maybe the user friendly isn't the right term because it actually does offer almost all the same um aspects that zoom does but it it's just not as as widely known and so a lot of our community don't know about um Microsoft Teams and don't show up even when I send them the link with the specific directions right um they are having a hard time navigating how to do that um and then also with teams you know at the same with with zoom but many of them already have had it on their um smartphone or their laptop and so when they're telling them they have to download something people get suspicious right um about downloading things and so we've had a little bit of a hard time and um I want I want I really want to use I want to hear if anyone else has used uh the Facebook rooms um and if I mean I know that there's a privacy issue with that right so we'd have to disclose because my my dream or my idea would be to offer classes or enrichment um programs or something you know even for half an hour um that are just quick let me get in on my lunch break right because pre-covid we were offering um lunchtime classes right bring your own lunch for snack lunch we could meet this community area people could have their lunch break with us eat their food right but COVID has shut all that down and here in germany the lockdown is even more extensive than anywhere that I know of in the U.S. and so we are I want to get people on that still that that just have that little bit of time that are looking for ways to improve their family healthy family functioning right and so um yeah I was curious if anyone had tried Facebook rooms and what challenges came with that or what benefits came with that so I've not tried Facebook rooms but I've done a lot of the Facebook live broadcasting for different kinds of events which the fact that that opens up geographic limitlessness is really really awesome and the quantity of attendees you can have is just incredible that you can have thousands of people following a single stream which really isn't possible say on just you know regular zoom things like that just with bandwidth but I will say one struggle I've had because I've not used Facebook rooms but then that led to a different question in my mind is because there's so many different technologies and in particular um it seems as though there's a lot of startup technology companies with all the latest greatest oh it's another another way to have video sharing screen sharing Microsoft teams huddle all the different kinds of ways that every time you introduce a new one to your audience I end up with 15 or 20 minutes of how does this work give me tech support I can't get audio to work so how can we not be so distracted with the disruption of introducing a new technology I don't know if there's an answer to the question but every time I start a new technology it seems like it's a hurdle of tech support and everybody wanting to debate about which one is better or worse so I'm wondering if Facebook rooms introduce the same challenge for you yeah I was a little different from mass community I don't know if that yeah but um I've heard of this for some of the social service human service organizations and their use of Marco Polo so very different than a live event but something that's recorded that can be accessed that is also group-based I don't disclaimer have no idea the security of in terms of if what sort of rules would have to be followed depending on what organizations are needing to have in line but that was a way to create connection and building communities between people and for them to do that on their own and also engage at their own time rewatch if you want to have specific communities that don't have to be as okay remember we show up on our cameras every Tuesday at 7 a.m. something like that that is much more owned by people but that the the connection of a relationship is still there and there could be the proliferation like Adrienne was saying of other similar platforms I think that I've seen that go from something that's been more used on a personal basis to then organizations seeing the application of serving their human service organization working with their clients doing small groups support groups where the facilitator is has a very different role than what a facilitator would in a room but a lot of overlap of what rules apply I just saw the question about yeah Adrienne pulled up I did not know yeah for blocking if Facebook streams are allowed in China where they may be blocked from my experience most people in China because I have spent some time in China pre covid most people particularly that are in businesses or industries that have international connections that do business collaborating with other countries they all have their ways of getting on VPN and they know how to do it but they do have to use their VPN to receive any of the technology protocols that Facebook uses which includes Facebook streams as well as just the normal using Facebook what sort of changes did folks have to make related to to targeting your services that really uncomfortable but necessary decision to be judicious and who who you can spend money and time on when belts are tightened and what did people learn or experience in that process of their organization you know when I was talking to my friend about it she was saying that they kind of went crazy with mail because they their judicious was that okay you don't get to be part of this regular programming but we'll send you mail and then they just realized how expensive sending packages is so now they're back to being judicious of okay well we can't that's too big of a budget line item but it also bought time right like bought them time to then now figure out what they need to do so having that form of engagement I think a lot about SMS which I mentioned when I was talking earlier and the kind of the cost effective nature that that can be to keep people up to date and how personal that can still be and flow in to what's already happening and also sort of get in before everybody hates text messages I mean like we we I was getting a lot of text messages during the election and then that stopped and now I've forgotten that I was annoyed during the election of how many text messages I've got so like we should all capitalize on the moment that there are fewer right now and that that is a technology that will probably have a bit of a swing you know for those that are getting into it now could have a bigger impact whether that's updates or volunteer opportunities or whatever it may be one change that we made to as far as like how the organization could run was we had spent had a budget for virtual equipment that we hadn't had before and so we bought things like headphones and and with microphones higher quality cameras you know because we also did Facebook lives those types of things because we're doing you know our parenting classes or marriage classes or whatnot or trainings or briefings right with kind of some higher up military folks that we wanted to look somewhat presentable instead of grainy pixelated images for people so that was one thing but also instead because people like you said couldn't come to us and still can't here can't come to us we I and and my little team just our little team I just said we're we're just going to hit the streets then so we just cleared it with grocery store the grocery store on base and things different places to get a little table set up outside we had to be outside but just with information there and kind of even had some conversations right that that would have been taken what would have easily taken place in the office and maybe would have been maybe like a mini considered a mini class right but that was kind of one of our things was like I'm just hitting the streets I'm getting out goodies you know like the thing that we're all about over here is giving out free stuff because it's the government and they've given us a certain amount of money and so we can give out free stuff but part of that free stuff is enticing people to take information on family health and family well-being and so yeah you get this cool you know backpack but inside is stuff full of you know information and things like that so yeah that's one way that our organization changed to kind of still get our mission out there well and I hear too the the budget plan that's what you when part of what you're first sharing about just because you don't have a budget for something doesn't mean you're not going to spend the money right and a budget just shows like okay we are going to spend this money let's just plan for it and it has to come from somewhere of that that's where surprises can be avoided like one of the my current obsession about technology and how it's a mirror to show us all of our false or or fantastic successes and the investment in that's something that can be planned for and needed and also the decision about depending on how completely virtual remote or not those changes have been in an organization to then make that as a policy of what do people need to provide for themselves if they're going to be in their home versus what as an organization are you providing which that again going back to stability what does stability provide for people to just know that I am allowed to ask for this or no I need to go to TJ Maxson by my own headphones you know like what are my options Eli welcome yeah I just want to echo back that the classiest power move that happened at TechSoup was that they yeah opened up a bit of like a micro grant opportunity within the organization for people who needed you know up to $200 to help with things like a new camera or a setup a change to their desk setup because they acknowledged that everyone was now working from home and I thought that was actually a nice way to control it which is not just to do it for everyone because maybe everyone didn't need it but to sort of make it a very easy like three question grant application that you could basically do internal within the organization that's great that can spread the dollars to and create the culture where it's great if you need help just let us know fill out this form and it's great too if you don't yeah I know and the other part that is we were super smug going into COVID we were very confident like oh we're a technology organization we can totally have everyone working from home and and well we had all the pieces in place we were not ready for the scale we weren't ready for everyone to be there so to this day a year later we are still scrambling and adding more capacity to things like the VPN to allow everyone to you know log in at the same time without everything grinding to a halt so even for organizations that think they're really on top of this when it actually came to the reality of like oh stress test we were not quite ready and so I think part of it is just like let's be patient with ourselves um and and learn and grow and and see if we can figure this out I like that the smug like no we we totally know what we're doing now I still show up as my husband I have no idea how to change that on Zoom I've googled that that's just going to be who I am when I'm not logged in so one challenge we've had that I'd love to know if anyone has any ideas or solutions and Eli maybe you from the tech soup point of view would is the nonprofit that I am on the board of a lot of our fundraising comes from events so for example people buy a hundred dollar gala ticket to come to this dinner and it's this really nice you know gala event but because several hundred people come to it that's where we get a lot of the funding is the tickets it's really difficult to get people to say they want to spend a hundred dollars to come to a zoom gala that just doesn't happen so and then not only you don't have your ticket sales you also don't have the sponsorships that you get at those events because when you're at an event you can put up a giant sign somebody says y'all pay you thousands of dollars for that sponsorship but to say that well I'm going to include your logo in the email announcement or in the slideshow on a zoom call that's really a tough sell for people so part of the whole idea of getting that fundraising right no go ahead now Eli what ideas do you have so yeah I live with a fundraiser and she's been thinking about this a lot as well because she knows that half the power of the gala is like oh let's get everyone a little bit drunk and they're going to be a little bit less judicious in the charity auction you know that that's part of the reality of it so so actually I don't have any great answers for that but I did drop a link into the chat because it's actually the theme of the next event I'll be co-hosting here with my Vancouver chapter because it's the question I hear from all of my members which is like how do we transition successfully and there's been some groups that have actually had good success around that and you know and part of the advantage is they get to serve people who they could have never served before people with limited mobility who often by the way as elderly people may have significant means as well as people who just are maybe like not able to travel because it's in one city and maybe you serve like a whole state or a whole country so you can really open it up to a whole bunch of new people so the answer is I don't know the answer to that but I hope to learn a whole bunch more of that and you're all welcome of course to sign up and join me there as well I've seen some successful strategies of some organizations where they kind of combined a different physical take-home kind of thing and replace of the gala that this gala is happening in the course of 48 hours would normally it would have happened between 7 and 9 p.m. on a Saturday night and and that there's something that is is distributed to those that are signing up and then the use of a hashtag or facebook live or some kind of contest also to make it kind of fun where then people are sharing online within this 48 hour period and then building momentum which you're going to have a much smaller community that's doing that than what would be at the gala but the thing that I saw with that strategy is that because of this lower threshold and people feeling like they're not fancy enough to go to a gala or whatever misconceptions preconceptions we have in our head but then all of a sudden it opened up participation to be more broad than what the normal event would have had because of its communication is through a different medium and so I think that's been a fun one and sort of the spinoff of I know different restaurants who've tried to do the virtual wine tasting right so it's kind of the the business version of that is come by pick up a bottle of wine we've got this tiny little cute to go box of pairings and then show up on facebook live so kind of the equivalent of that but through the lens of communicating impact getting people involved and maybe they get something kind of fun and fun and cute that's relevant to the theme. Peter just put an interesting thought in the chat as well for virtual fundraising if you want to share that Peter. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry I'm multitasking eating pineapples while talking. Yeah I mean our industry the philanthropic industry in many ways can learn from other industries who needed to address these very same problems for their survival but they've been doing this for many more years so aside from the squeamish factor of learning from online gambling sites there are some things that we can learn from them about how to keep people engaged and how to virtually intoxicate them. I'm going to be giggling about that phrase for the rest of the day. Virtual intoxication. Virtual intoxication so thank you for that. But it actually reminds me of a recent thing I was invited into from a charity that has been doing 50 50 draws at hockey games for you know for the last 30 years suddenly they can't do that and so they've actually been bringing some of those online draws into the online space and actually there's this platform called raffle nexus that they've been using that sort of helps manage that does their legal compliance therefore it probably doesn't work in all states and territories but it's something to take a look at and see if it's an option for you. You know Eli one idea that I'm just taking myself I did a sample of one here so it's highly unscientific but one thing that would absolutely enchant me and free me and separate me from my hard-earned dollars is if I can see at a very micro granular level how my donations might impact very specific causes very specific locations and 10 years ago I had this idea of how this would be a very attractive way of engaging people but back then there was no technology now we have blockchain wouldn't it be great if we can have every single dollar donated or pledged be tracked to show it's even very very minute impact on somebody somewhere at some point in time that would be so incredibly empowering to me I would be happy to donate money and track every single dollar and feel good time and time and time again. Should that be like a project for TechSoup? Well there's a lot of industry so one of the things that I love with artificial well artificial intelligence but also facial recognition is really interesting that there's a lot of the software for facial recognition was really honed on cows that there's this really great article in The New Yorker from years ago that cows don't put on baseball caps and hide themselves and change their outfits and and for farmers to be able to manage and know these massive herds and the behavior I'm a daughter of a dairyman and and the impact of that to then we can learn from public sector right like that's where there's big dollars and there's not that big of a gap between how that can be very relevant and applied and that has you know that's facial recognition which has nothing to do in some ways with what you were just saying but I think there's those tools that do exist for that measured life and measured impact that yeah that there's lots of opportunities for how to get engaged. Mariah, talk to us. Yeah I was actually Peter what you said I was going to share that and I don't know this is exactly what you're talking about but I'm also I volunteered for a long time I lived in Portland for an organization called Because People Matter and so I still give to them and I still keep up with them and love their work and they work predominantly with the houses population in Portland which is growing at this point was already big continuing to grow and and so they held an online gala like what you were talking about Adrienne and I'd worked with them on galleys previous galleys and you know I mean that's their big winner right of how they get income and in the past the two years before when I'd been a part of that experience we'd raised a lot of money but this Zoom gala they reduced the price of $30 which normally gets it's like 100 bucks or more depending on what level you get but they reduced it to $30 and even then didn't raise nearly enough to get them close close to a goal but what they did afterwards was and I don't know if all nonprofits could do this right and I worked for the government I mean I worked for the government until last week so our funds are going to come no matter what like we don't have to work for them which is one nice benefit but going to Catholic Charities it's going to be different right but with because people matter when their gala kind of flopped on them what they did is they essentially did kind of what you're talking about Peter is they said that you could provide this need for these people depending on different amounts so you could literally like put in your cart a meal a hot meal for someone for five dollars you could wrap a warm blanket around somebody for $20 you could house somebody for a night right for $40 or whatever it was and it just went up but they kept it really low some of the price is really low at $5 so that anyone could feel like they could have impact and then they followed it up with whatever you chose if you chose multiple they sent you an email a follow-up email with pictures of someone doing that very apt so putting a warm blanket or putting a blanket on someone on the streets right or passing them a meal now was that specific meal the one you bought probably everyone got similar pictures if not the same pictures so it doesn't work quite work maybe the same way you were talking about Peter but I thought that was really handy and really helpful because honestly it was very motivating to me to see those pictures of those people receiving the very thing that I said that I wanted to be able to give and I've loved the gals when that's happened in person too because there can be that intentional I want to show that I am participating in the peer pressure of I'm raising my gala but I don't want to take on my painting or a sculpture right like someone else can buy that but it's a lot easier to still participate and the way that then with that you could depending on what's visible that very important peer pressure element of motivating donations of seeing peers do it and kind of wanting to be along with them that's great Mariah what I really liked about your example about the gala is that what happens it seemed like that event created a new type of currency not dollars but impact currency like how many warm hours of wrapping around protection is your money buying or how many calories or how many hunger pangs averted right so it becomes much more emotionally tangible and specific otherwise this dollar amount the dollar is a human concoction it's so incredibly abstract it's almost meaningless except for when translated into names and faces and locations that's brilliant this this impact currency yeah and also that it's more specific that we can connect on details not in in mass right like the one child who's hungry we can connect without in a different way than a thousand children that are hungry of our own emotional capacity as humans right that's how we work we are getting close to time but I wanted to share we do have a few more can you see my screen is it yeah upcoming events here we go there it is I just couldn't see my screen too many tabs we have a few upcoming events still and are working on getting our agenda filled up for the next quarter of 2021 and so the three upcoming google analytics how you can better measure what matters if you wait even one month between when you're logging into google analytics it feels like a very different experience sometimes there's so many changes happening always then in March 17th we're going to talk about 10 common accessibility issues that's going to be targeted mostly to looking at websites and what can be done differently on websites we'll also be careful to not have that specifically CMS focus meaning just WordPress or just ruble that the things that we'll be sharing can hopefully be relevant for whatever platform it is that your your website is on and how you can get started and then finally at the end of March looking at emailing marketing best practices since there's a lot more emails going out in the world and so how can you have your standout and deleted less open open redmore deleted less so I want to thank everybody for coming today and for the participation that you all had and everything that you shared hopefully everyone got some good tips and ideas and even questions that they can take back for themselves into their organization and we'll get the slides up and a link sent out to everybody who's attended as well as folks who weren't able to attend just to know a little bit about what happened and maybe engage when they can so any final thoughts questions thanks so much you're the best and ending on time shaming me in my last event so I'm very impressed thanks everyone and everyone in Dallas I'm so honored that you could come if you had power and that you chose to spend your moments of power with us in this community thanks guys