 Right. Hello, everyone. We'll just give everybody another minute or so to get logged on. Before we begin, I would just really appreciate it if you can hear me speaking right now and you can see my screen. If you could just let me know by typing yes into the questions box of your go-to webinar panel, just so I make sure I'm not talking to myself here. Excellent. Thank you. All right. Well, just I'm gonna put myself on mute for another few minutes and then we will get started. All right. It's just about three o'clock here on the East Coast. So we'll go ahead and get started with our webinar today. Hi, everyone. Welcome to our second webinar for Give 828, which is all about fundraising strategy for Give 828. My name is Linda Gerhart, and I'm the senior community engagement manager here at Mighty Cause. And this is my second year working with Young Black and Giving Back Institute on this giving event. Last year it was called Giving Black Day. This year it's Give 828. But it is the second year this event has been on the Mighty Cause platform. And I'm not sure if she's logged on yet, but we will also have Chelsea Brown from YBGB to answer some questions for us in the live Q&A. So she will be joining us shortly. And Chelsea, if you're there, hello, we'll make sure to get you online and talking to everybody when we do the live Q&A. Here is a quick look at today's agenda. We'll be reviewing some Giving Day basics just very quickly for anyone who missed our first webinar and then diving into campaign strategy and marketing. Just as I mentioned, we'll be doing a Q&A session at the end of the presentation. So if you'd like to think of anything you'd like to ask me and Chelsea about while I'm presenting, just type it into the questions box of your go-to webinar panel. And we'll make sure that we get to it in the Q&A session. Okay, so we're going to kick things off with a quick review of what this event is all about and how to get oriented to the platform for anyone who might need a refresher since our last webinar was a while ago or didn't get a chance to attend or view that webinar. Just so everyone's on the same page and has the same base of knowledge when we start talking about things like campaign strategy. So you probably already know a lot of these basics if you've been to the Give 828 website and you've talked to Ebony and the other people at Young Black and Giving Back Institute. But here are the basic details. Give 828 is a giving event that's hosted by Young Black and Giving Back Institute. August is Black Philanthropy Month and this event is intended to build on the momentum of that month and culminate on August 28, which is a meaningful date for reasons many of you are already super familiar with. But there's some really great information that was put together by the YBGB team on Give828.org if you haven't already checked that out. The event starts at 8 a.m. and goes to 11 p.m. and in order to participate you do need to register. Most of you on the webinar have already done this and taken this step and have been accepted into the event, which is why you're listening to this webinar. But I just wanted to note that even if you registered for last year's event, because we want to make sure that everybody's got up-to-date information and we get your confirmation that you are looking to participate in this year's event, we do ask that you register each year. And there will be some prizes. They are super close to being announced. I've been talking about that with Ebony and Chelsea this week, so stay tuned for prize announcements, but there will be prizes available just as there were last year. Okay, so once you're registered, you'll want to familiarize yourself with the dashboard on Mighty Cause because that's what you'll be using to access your fundraising tools, your reports, and your settings. From the top down on your dashboard, you'll have an overview page, which will have some key metrics about your nonprofit. It may be empty if you've never used Mighty Cause before. This is your first year with this giving event, or you just haven't used it since last year's event, but don't worry about that. But if you check in, you'll get some quick metrics that are meaningful to your nonprofit, like how many visits, how much you've raised, and so on. And we'll also have blog posts and announcement there for you as well, so if you would like to, you know, check out our blog and see what else we've got going on, you can take a look there. We also have content on our blog that might be helpful to you. This is also where your to-do list is, which we're going to talk about in a moment, so that is on your overview page. Next on your dashboard, you've got your fundraising tools under fundraising, where you can edit your profile, create and manage your campaigns, customize your checkout flow, and so on. And then underneath that, you've got reports where you can find your donation report, your retention report, which is going to be a huge help to anyone who participated in giving Black Day last year, and you can also check out your disbursements. I do want to point out for most of these reports that you can download a CSV or a spreadsheet that has more information and has a lot of data about each donation. So you have an overview on the report page where you can change the filters and you can get some quick stats and you can sort of see the donors. But if you want to pull up really detailed information like mailing addresses if you're collecting those, phone numbers if you're collecting those, dedications, and so on, that information will actually be in the spreadsheet because there's just too much there for us to put in a view on the page. So I just wanted to note that all of the reports are things you can export and get more details about. And then lastly, you have your settings, which is where you can set up EFT for direct deposit, manage or update your legal information if anything needs to be changed. Sometimes if you've changed your organization's name, your legal address might still be on file with the IRS. And if you want to update that or you've moved to a new address, you can change that information there. And you can also add and remove other admins. So for instance, if you have a volunteer who's helping with your campaign this year or you need to give your bookkeeper access once you need to download your donation reports, or if you have someone who's no longer with your organization that needs to have their access to your page removed, you can easily do that under admins in settings. So you can add, you have a total of 10 people you can add there and you can remove them as needed. So you have total control of the ownership of this page and who has access to it. So if you need to add anyone or remove anybody that is under your settings. So once you've taken the time to get registered, I also recommend taking some time to just sort of poke around your mighty cause page and see where things are, just so that you aren't in a position where say on the 28th you desperately need to find a particular donation. And you haven't looked at your donation report report and you don't know where that is so just take a little time to get oriented with the dashboard so it'll be easier if you need to access things really quickly later on. And there's also some great fundraising tools that you may want to use under the fundraising area of your dashboard. Your profile is typically the main page that you want to use to fundraise for give 828 so the URL in the browser when you're on your profile page is what you'll want to share with your donors. And it's sort of the face of your nonprofit during this event. You can customize the look and the feel of your page and you can get super created so it looks like your nonprofits brand and tells a compelling story. Your story or your about section in particular is where you'll want to make a good case for your nonprofit and why people should give to your organization for give 828. If you participated last year just make sure that it's updated and you have current information. And if you do nothing else to customize your page, we strongly recommend that you at least complete your to do list which is on your overview page. This list basically breaks down the bare minimum that will make your page personalized and set up for donor engagement. On the to do list you have adding a logo, which is really important because it'll represent you all over the give 828 site in the search on the leaderboards. And we also recommend uploading a custom background image or banner image. We do have a gallery of stock photos if you wanted to choose one from there. But that's something that people see right at the top of the page. So if you can personalize it we recommend trying to personalize it. So on your to do list is creating your thank you page, which displays right after someone makes a donation, and also in the same page where you'll add that you can add a custom thank you message to your receipt. So it automates thanking your donors quickly so that you buy yourself time so you can do a more personal thank you later on. And just to clarify that mighty cause sends a receipt to your donors, it's kind of just a donation receipt. It doesn't have any language that we put on there aside from what legally needs to be there. But you can put a custom message there so that it's from your organization and thanks them in the email as well as on your thank you page. So I definitely recommend taking some time to make sure that your thank you pages updated. You also need to add a story that's in your to do list. If you just want to put your mission statement in there that works, but people can get really creative with their about section. You can add video so if you have a campaign video or a video that you use to explain what your nonprofit does, you can add that there it just needs to be uploaded to either YouTube or Vimeo first, both have free accounts, and you can go on to your story so people can watch it there. The more time people spend on your page the more likely they are to make a donation. So it's always good to add other elements. You can add links images and really let people know what your organization is all about what you do in the world and what you do in your community. Generally speaking, when donors go to a profile and they see that it's not really filled out or doesn't seem like the organization put much time into it. It has a tint to donate. So it helps build donor confidence and basically close the deal when you show your profile some love and make it your own. And finally on the to do list is setting up EFT, which is for direct deposit disbursements basically with you if you set up EFT. It's totally free to do it secure to do. You'll get your money faster and deposited right into your bank account, instead of having to wait on a check. So it's not required, but we definitely recommend that so that you can get your money faster and put that to good use. This sounds like a lot as I'm saying it, but it's just five things. So even if you do nothing else, we recommend trying to do these five things so that you can succeed on give 828. All right, so with that out of the way I wanted to start digging into giving events strategy and how to make the most of your participation and give 828. So since last year's event was the first on a centralized platform as giving black day I thought it might be fun and helpful to go through some of the data and the things that we learned about give 828 donors and how they give and what that might mean for your strategy. So one of the things that I like to look at first is where the donations are actually coming from what are the sources of traffic. So we have Google Analytics to track that information and overwhelmingly traffic is coming from direct links, which means in most cases that the user the person who clicked the link started from a link in an email or somewhere like that, and started their journey to donate there. So emails are a huge and powerful way to get people to the right page. And this is consistent with what we see for other giving events throughout the country that are hosted on our platform. And what we know about how people give to charitable causes, they give to specific causes because they were asked and they were given a link to the place where they were supposed to give. So people generally, you know they want to give they have good intentions but when they are asked to give that is when they take an action. So some donors do use the search to find organizations to donate to, but that's a much, much smaller percentage in the number of people who just click on a link that you gave them. Social media is a second distance second I should say to direct links in terms of traffic with Facebook, Instagram and Twitter being pretty significant sources of traffic so give 828 donors are very keyed into email and social media, which is important to remember as you plan your campaign. Another thing I find is really fun to look at is how donors are actually giving and we do have some interesting data to dig into here. 65.2% of donors from last year's event used a mobile device to make their donation, meaning they used a smartphone or a tablet. And I thought this was really interesting because for giving events in general, we see that it's more of an even split. In some areas we'll see desktops as the most popular way that people access the site and make their donations, but give 828 donors are much more likely to be on their phones or be using a tablet when they view your profile and make their donations which is a really interesting data point. And what that means for you as you plan your campaign is that you'll want to make sure that any emails that you send out through constant contact or whatever program you use, look good on a smartphone. You should do that anyway, but definitely knowing that lots of your donors are going to be using a smartphone to not only open the email but go to your profile and make a donation. Mighty Cause itself as a platform is mobile responsive. So that means we actually designed for mobile devices first and the elements of our site adjusts to the device being used to view it on. But sometimes your banner image that looked really great on your MacBook looks a little different on your iPhone because the orientation is different. So as you're customizing your page and getting ready for your, your campaign to launch, just check on your phone and make sure that it's looking good on mobile as well because that is where the majority of people will be looking at your profile. The average donation was $44, which is a nice amount and also means that donors for Give 828 tend to give in smaller amounts. The donations from last year were a lot of people making donations for under $100, which is important to think about in terms of what you're If you make the first option on your suggested donations on Mighty Cause for instance for $100, you might actually be pricing some people out or making them feel like they aren't giving enough. So that's an important thing to be conscious of is that your donors tend to give in smaller amounts. And you can also see what your average donation is for your nonprofit if we have data for you, if you participated in previous years by looking at your donation report. And that's an even more specific data point where you can say, okay, this is what our donors tend to give. And you can let that guide you as you're getting your emails together and so on. You can look at that and say, okay, this is how my donors give to me. And another thing I want to note is that 70% of donors opted to cover fees for nonprofits last year, which is a really great number. A lot of organizations are concerned about fees. I totally understand that you're a nonprofit, and especially if you're small, you need to watch what you're spending. And we do have a special discounted rate for Give 828, but your donors are also really overwhelmingly happy to just add that cost of any fees to their donation, which they can do at checkout. And we show them how much it would be. And especially when donors are giving in smaller amounts, sometimes it's less than a dollar. So donors are generally very happy to cover those fees for your organization so that you can get the full amount. So that was a cool piece of data to see that most donors absolutely want to cover fees for your nonprofit. Okay, so what does this all mean for your campaign? Well, number one, you'll want to make direct outreach to your supporters of priority. Come up with a plan to market your campaign to your supporters, your donors, your followers on social media, because they are following the links that you send them. That is how most of the donors accessed the site last year and completed their donations. As we discussed, test on mobile and also make sure that you're sending emails that are easy to read and look good on mobile devices. An important thing to remember here is that basically the main difference between designing for something that's viewed on a desktop and designing for a mobile phone is that a phone will stack all of the different elements. So instead of things being side by side, they will be stacked. And sometimes if you're not using something that, when you're designing it, if you're using like a newsletter format, you may not realize, oh, these things are going to stack on a phone. So just make sure that you use mobile friendly templates in whatever email program that you're using and just take a look on your phone and see how it looks and make sure that it looks good and looks the way you want it to. Ask your donors to cover fees for you. You don't have to do this, but donors are willing to cover those fees for you. And so including a little PS at the end of any emails reminding them to cover fees if they're able to, because it helps your organization can be a helpful reminder I mean that your nonprofit will be will see more funding from what they bring in because we won't have to deduct any fees. Again, we're giving you a discounted rate. And the fees for the event this includes credit card processing is 5.9% plus 30 cents but donors have the option of covering that for you so asking them to do that can help boost the amount that you're actually bringing in. And finally what the data tells us is that you should be proactive with your fundraising. You do need to actively solicit donations. Most people aren't just going to find you through the search and donate, they will give because you or someone else they know asked them and made a gave them a link. Now definitely donors can find your organization through the search, giving to stay has done some promotion of the give 828 search, so that people can find a black lead organizations to donate to from our search. But for the most part donors are finding you because that you gave them a link, and you asked them to donate. So now I want to move into some strategies for your campaign that can help you raise more money. Give 828 is actually more than just one day, you have a full two weeks to collect donations. You can start accepting donations on Friday, August 14, which is coming up very soon it's hard for me to believe, but you should be able to start accepting donations very very soon. And these are not pledges these are donations that process immediately and are added to your give 828 totals. So some great people to ask for early donations are your board members tried and true supporters that show up to support you every time you do a fundraising campaign. And really anyone in the inner circle at your organization. We call these seed donations, because these first few donations help your overall total grow. A quirk of charitable giving is that people are more likely to donate. If they see that other people have already donated to you so people like to be joiners nobody likes to be the first one. So that's why it's really helpful to do some early outreach get some donations from people you know you can count on so that you have some money basically in the bank when the event itself starts. It seems like that would be the opposite, but it is consistent across the board on mighty cost of taking advantage of these two weeks is really helpful in building momentum for your campaign. One thing I hear nonprofits concerned about is that with early giving that they'll do less on the day of the event that they will basically be shooting their shot a little bit too early. But the beauty of having two weeks is that your supporters usually actually give more than once rather than just making their one donation early. And I know I do this with donations if I'm asked for a nonprofit that I support, and I just got paid on Friday, I'm going to give. And then if they asked me again two weeks later and I've gotten a new paycheck, I'm going to give again. And I'm definitely not the only person who does that sort of paycheck math with my charitable donations. So you really shouldn't be too concerned about, you know, sort of wearing people out by don't by taking advantage of this early giving period. And hopefully you're targeting people that you have your organization has strong ties to so that you're not just blasting it out to everybody and you're sort of targeting some people, you know, you can count on to give reliably. And just as another bit of data nonprofits who use early giving for giving events on mighty cause raise more overall so this is one of the things that you can do to boost your overall fundraising totals. So that's something we see consistently in orgs that raise lots of money on giving days. They are taking advantage of early giving and they're basically just building momentum for their campaign and getting some money in the bank a little bit early. All right, so this is the next level fundraising I think you guys are ready for it because you did an amazing job last year. One of the tools that you can use to make your campaign a huge success is matching grants. Matching grants are larger donations that you leverage to bring in other donations by offering them up as a match it's basically Bogo for donations. So let's say you have a board member who wants to contribute $500 to your give 828 campaign. So you could just take the money from them and you could take that $500 and add that to your campaign totals, or what you could do is take that $500 and use it as a match and say during a power hour. Let your, your, your followers know, hey, between one and 2pm, we will be matching every donation made up to $500. You could also say we have a board member who will contribute $500, but only if we can raise $500 in an hour. So if you donate between one and 2pm, you can help us secure $500 for our cause. This is a really compelling and exciting way to get donors into donating. It's a great way to get them fired up to donate right now because some people get an email and they say I'll donate to that later. But this actually compels them to give now nonprofits that use matching grants tend to raise more on giving days. And the reason your reason matching grants are so great is because you're offering additional value to your donors. Everybody loves a Bogo sale. I love a Bogo sale. I want to get more for my money. And this gives donors the opportunity to do that. And you're also giving an opportunity for your bigger donors, say your board members are a major donor that you have a great relationship to engage with your nonprofit in a cool new way. Instead of just giving you the money and then you take the money and you use that and put that into your nonprofits coffers. You're giving them a new way to get involved and you're turning that into new donations. So that can be really exciting, not only for the donors that are having their donations match, but the people who are providing the match. And especially if you have like sponsors or community partners like organizations or companies that you partner with. This is a really great draw for them because you are able to give them a little bit of publicity. You're able to show your sponsor a little bit of love and then they get known for being, you know, they're contributing to this really great cause. So it kind of works out for everybody. So there's three basic steps to securing a matching grant. The first step is prospecting meaning who are you going to ask. Like I said, your board is a really great place to start because fundraising and the financial well being of your organization is a key part of the commitment that board members make to your organization. So before you ask anyone else, check in with your board and see if any of them are individually or collectively able to contribute a matching grant. But major donors and sponsors are also a good place to look. So if you have a donor who always tends to give say, you know, $500 annually. Why not say, hey, if you're able to make this $500 donation now, we can use it as a matching grant and bring in some extra money on give 828, which is this giving event that we're participating in. So there's a lot of possibilities there. Generally doesn't need to be a huge donation like you can make a $200 donation work. It depends on, you know, your organization depends on the size of donations that you typically get. But it doesn't need to be a huge donation but board members, major donors and any corporate sponsors or community partners, you have a great place to start. And then you cultivate, which means starting the conversation with them checking in with them, feeling them out and letting them know about give 828 and how you're participating it and then just asking them, which is where you pitch the idea of giving a matching grant. Some people might say no and that's totally fine. It's it's normal for people to say no, but it's such a huge boost to your campaign that it doesn't hurt to ask. And now is around the time when you want to start asking for matching grants when you're in the planning stages of your campaign. You can also be flexible. Like I said, the grant doesn't have to be $500 or $1,000 or higher. $200 can be a helpful match to offer for, you know, an hour long sprint and you can use a series of smaller grants to bolster your campaign. So you can be creative and be willing to adapt to what your grantors, meaning the people who would provide the grant are able to do. This is a really flexible tool so it can actually do quite a bit. And the cool thing about it is that it does math for you, which we're going to talk about in a second. So when you have your matching grant, you've secured it. Hooray. You have, you know, a donor on board. You'll need to promote it because what a matching grant is at the heart of it is just a marketing tool. It's not really extra money. It's a donation that you're leveraging to bring in other donations. So if you don't market it, it may as well not exist. We do have a tool that you can use on Mighty Cause to enter your grant on your page and it's under the fundraising section of your dashboard. Like I said, that tool does the math for you, which is always a huge benefit in my book. That means that once you enter it and the grant has started, it automatically calculates not only when it ends but how much has been used and you'll be able to see which donations are a match. That is all automated for you. But it'll also make sure that your grant is displayed on your profile so that any donor who is on your profile while your grant is active can see that you have a match available. And we also have a special search for people to find organizations that have matching grants available in case they're frugal and they're looking for some, you know, more bang for their buck. We do have a special search that will be on the live event site where people can find organizations that have matches. And you'll also obviously want to market it outside of the platform when you promote your Give 828 campaign. Let people know you've got a match available too and schedule some posts and emails to go out when your grant is about to go into effect so that donors are ready to give and they know when it's available to them. So moving on from matching grants, you will have prizes to compete for as I mentioned, and there should be an announcement about that very, very soon. But here are the types of prizes that are typically available so you can sort of think about how you want to compete when you get that announcement, and you're able to see the breakdown of what's available. First, there are leaderboard prizes. And what leaderboards do is track your cumulative total so everything you've brought in since early giving began. And they are one by being in one of the top spots and raising the most money for your organization, or if it's a most unique donors leaderboard bringing in the highest number of donors. So leaderboards are kind of the centerpiece of the live event page you'll see them there, and those have a cumulative total. You'll also have power hours, which are one hour fundraising sprints where you're either competing to bring in the most dollars, or the most individual donors. So if the strategy is to bring in the most dollars, you'll want to communicate with donors about that because the amount is important. And you can also coordinate with bigger donors so that their donation is made during a power hour. So if you have someone you know is going to give you 500 bucks. Talk to them maybe see if you're in a, you know, get going for a power hour, see if they can make their donation during that hour that's just playing the game that's being smart. So you can coordinate any donations that you know you've got coming in so that you have a better chance of winning a power hour. If it's a most unique donors power hour. It's a numbers game so even if your donors give the platform minimum which is $5. If they show up in big enough numbers. The amount they give doesn't matter. All of these power hours are all about collective impact. So that can inform your strategy for communicating your but with your donors about these hours, even if they've already given say hey if you have another $5 to give us that would help us win some money for our nonprofit. So you want to change up your strategy based on the type of power hour it is. There are also golden tickets, which are random donations that are chosen and then basically the donor wins another prize and that price is extra money for your nonprofit so the donor doesn't get the prize. But they get to be the donor who helped you win a prize that you know gave you some extra money and you know put some extra money in your organization's pocket. So these are the basic structure of the prizes that we offer on Mighty Cause. Keep your eyes open for the prize announcement it is coming soon. YBGB Chelsea and Ebony and everybody over there is working hard on solidifying these, but they're definitely going to be some regional prizes. So when that announcement comes out you'll just have to review the prizes, see which ones you're eligible for because some of them are regional and which ones you want to try to win. All right so earlier on in the presentation we had talked about how people give to charities most commonly because they're asked by the organization or someone they know, which is that's the next strategy I want to talk about which is activating ambassadors. Ambassadors can be people who set up their own fundraiser for your organization, but they can also just be people who share a link to your organization profile and ask their friends and family to donate. So there's a lot of wiggle room and what ambassador actually means, but at the end of the day, these are people you who can help you reach more people they can spread the word about your cause and get your campaign in front of more eyes. You may not have the ability or permissions to contact someone's mom and their brother and their aunt and their 600 Facebook friends to ask them to donate, but those people do have that permission they have that ability. So they can help you reach new people. And they're also really effective at getting people to donate because the ask is coming from someone these people know and trust. So in that way they're actually a little bit better at making the case for donation, then you as a nonprofit are especially if you don't have ties to these people. So, you know, they're able to say to their friend, hey, this is a really excellent organization. I love what they do. Here's a link where you can donate anything that you can give them is helpful to them while they're competing in this giving event. And they're really great at making that case because that that the ask is coming from somebody that the person knows personally they trust them. So that's a really cool thing about ambassadors whether they're peer to peer fundraisers, or they're just people who are sharing the link. And they can also talk about why they care about your nonprofit, what you do and why it's important and their story about how they learned about your cause and your work, and how they got involved with it. So they're often really powerful storytellers because again this is coming from someone that people know, they're saying, oh, my friend really cares about this cause. I want to support my friend and I also, you know, want to support this cause as well. And they, there's trust there because it's somebody that they know asking them to donate. So ambassadors are really a powerful way to amplify your message and boost your campaign and get your strongest supporters involved so you can raise money, acquire new donors and climb up the ranks and win prizes. So there's a couple of different ways people can get involved. The simplest way is just asking people to hey share a link on August 28 then ask your friends on social media and email wherever even in conversation to make a donation to your organization on give 828. That is how grassroots organizing works and how you build a larger base of supporters is through word of mouth. So one great way to engage your ambassadors is with peer to peer fundraising, which is where your supporters actually create pages to fundraise on behalf of your organization. A lot of nonprofits are familiar with this from Facebook. They have a pretty simple peer to peer tool. Unfortunately, those donations that are made through Facebook don't actually count toward prizes for give 828. But the good news is that peer to peer is also something that Mighty Cause offers. It's baked into our platform. So it's super easy to get started. And you can actually create a fundraiser template that they can use to get published even easier. So that actually allows you to pre fill some of the areas of their page for them so that it's even easier for them to go in get published and start raising money. In terms of who to ask your organization likely has some natural fundraisers in your midst, like again board members, volunteers, your staff, and even people who've used your services or have been through your programs. So some targeted outreach to these groups of people. It's a great way to get peer to peer fundraising going. And again, it's very easy to get started. All they have to do is go to your profile page and click the button that says fundraise, which is right next to the donate button. And that automatically links their fundraiser to your nonprofit. So all of the money just goes into your donation report. You can see whose page it came from. The money never goes to an individual. It's just included in your disbursement. So clicking that fundraise button from your organization page. It's right next to your donate button is the easiest way to get started. And you can also, you know, our platform is really well set up to help them through that process. So once they start that process of creating a fundraiser, we walk them through setting it up. But it's also helpful to provide tips that they can use to let them know that you're available to help them. And what a lot of nonprofits will do, especially with busy board members is they'll offer to just set up the page for them. So that's something that you can also do. If that's easier, or maybe you have a board member who's not really that savvy with creating pages on the internet, it's really easy. But sometimes people are busy and you're able to go in and create that page for them. If that makes it easier to facilitate the people that you'll want to ask are natural fundraisers for your organization because board members, staff volunteers. These are all people who are invested in your cause and can talk to the people in their lives about it. And so this is a really excellent way to create some grassroots support and build on your campaign. So if you haven't tried peer-to-peer in the past, if you were just getting oriented to the platform last year or if this is your first year, peer-to-peer is a really great way that you can boost your campaign, bring in more money and reach more people. So it's a simple thing to try to get going. Usually some targeted email outreach or even phone outreach, if that's how you contact most people or just some social media posts can really get some peer-to-peer fundraising going and help you raise more. So if you are an old pro at peer-to-peer, if this is something that you do all the time and you feel good about it, or you just want to take a more active role in managing peer-to-peer, something that you can do to take it to the next level is team fundraising, which allows groups of peer-to-peer fundraisers to work toward a common fundraising goal. This is a little bit next level, but you could have a team for your board or you could have a team for your staff and so on. You could even orchestrate a showdown between your staff and your volunteers, which adds some fun and friendly competition. And again, this is all baked into the platform and teams and events in general on Mighty Cause raise more than just nonprofits or individuals fundraising alone. So it's really worthwhile to look into team fundraising as well, especially if you're comfortable with peer-to-peer fundraising and you want to organize a group of people to fundraise for you on Give 828. We also have events, which are the step up from team fundraising, where you have individuals and groups of individuals competing to raise for you. You have your own leader board, which is really cool. So if you wanted to take it even a step further, you could organize an event where you have some groups and you have individuals and they are all working toward a fundraising goal for your organization. So these are tools that are available so that you can really engage with people who are, you know, solid supporters of your cause and willing to get involved and step up and help you fundraise. All right, so now I wanted to walk through some marketing techniques for Give 828 and share some tips. So if you haven't already done so, the team at Young Black and Giving Back Institute put together a fantastic resource for you, which can be downloaded at the Give 828 site under a participant toolkit. In there, you'll find step-by-step instructions, timelines, tips, and so on. And it's specifically crafted for you and this event. So please download this and look over it if you haven't already. It's fabulous and it'll be a huge help as you plan your campaign. We also have our first webinar posted on the Give 828 site, which you can watch if you want a more technical orientation to the platform. And there are also nonprofit FAQs. So if you have a question or something that you're unsure about regarding Give 828, there's also some donor FAQs. So if you have a donor ask you a question, you don't know the answer. You can always come to us, but you can also find the answer sometimes in the FAQs. So it's a really great place to get oriented to the event so that you understand everything related to it. So as we discussed early on, email is an important tool for Give 828 because people respond to direct asks and links in emails. We recommend keeping your email short and sweet because people have a short attention span online. So if they open an email and you have a full essay about your nonprofit's mission with a CTA button buried kind of underneath all that text, people might not read it or click the button because you've lost them with all of this stuff in between. So keep it short and impactful and pair it down to the essential message. And people also really like images and emails. They actually tend to click on the first image they see in an email like regardless of what that is. So make sure that you have an image in your email that has a link to wherever your main CTA button goes. Think about timing with your emails. I recommend as much as you can use whatever program you use, whether it's constant contact or mail chimp or campaign monitor, whatever you use. Schedule as much stuff out in advance as you can save yourself some time and effort and schedule some emails. Also make sure you're using mobile friendly templates because as we talked about your donors are most likely going to be looking at your emails from a phone. Something you can do if you're really comfortable with email marketing is a B test, especially during the early giving period, you know, try out different subject lines, try out different positions for your CTA button, you can even try different colors for your CTA button. And just make sure that, you know, the email functions properly. Unfortunately, it happens to everybody when they do email marketing, but make sure that you have the correct links. So make sure that you're checking your emails, have somebody else take a look at it, test the links, make sure it's all in good working order. I have sent out emails without checking with people and they've had the wrong links and there's really no worse feeling in the world. So have your team take a look at the emails and test the links and make sure everything works. And then have a clear ask, you know, something like donate now, give now, we need your support now. Sometimes nonprofits can be a little bit hesitant to use strong assertive language like that, especially with everything we've got going on in the world right now. But just have a clear ask and make sure that, you know, you're clearly asking people to make a donation because when you ask, usually they will respond. All right, so social media, as I mentioned, is a really important place for give 828 in particular. My advice is to always spend the most time and effort and give it the most love where your audience is. So if you have a huge Instagram following, use most of use Instagram primarily to contact communicate with your donors on the day up if you have the biggest following over at Twitter, spend the most time thinking about Twitter posts and interacting with people on Twitter. If all of your people are on Facebook, use Facebook. So use your energy where you can see it making the biggest difference and where you have the most people following you. You don't need to split it evenly between all of them. And obviously with, you know, Facebook and Instagram, and I think Twitter is using an algorithm as well to make use of stories. So Instagram stories, Facebook stories, those are a great way to sort of, you know, you can't really outsmart the algorithm. But since this is time sensitive, you can get more eyes on your campaign because sometimes with the way algorithms work, it's, you know, they might not see your posts until a couple of days after and that's that's tragic when that happens. So big use of your stories if you haven't really played around with stories on Instagram and Facebook. Now's the time to start posting stories just so people know to look for you there. I recommend as much as possible schedule things ahead of time so that if you're live tweeting or you're making live posts, you're doing it to let people know that you want a prize or you hit a milestone or something that is time sensitive, but schedule as much content as you can before the big day just to save yourself some some effort and make sure that you, you know, aren't driving yourself crazy on the day of boosted posts can make a difference, especially like on Facebook and Instagram, they're connected and you often don't have to spend much money to make a difference. So sometimes like 15 to $20 for a boost can help get more people clicking your links and seeing your, your, your post. Definitely looking at the kinds of content that people engage with most people love photos, videos, stories. Video is something that, you know, that works really well on Facebook. You know, using stories getting people interacting with your stories. So look at your social media accounts and see what people are engaging with. Do people like it when you post boomerangs do people like it when you post stories like do you get more people watching your stories and you do actually liking your posts see what is effective and what your audience finds engaging and then come up with a plan around that. And then, you know, we have, we have a lot of information on the mighty cause blog which is blog dot mighty cause dot com about social media strategy so you can always check that out. There's some information I believe in the participant toolkit. So, yeah, come up with a social media strategy because that's going to be one of your keys to reaching your donors on get 828. All right, so, especially if you participated last year, focus on retention. So, when I talk about donor retention I'm talking about the donors who gave last year for giving black day, coming back and making another donation for give 828. So develop a plan for these donors, they're important, and they're low hanging fruit they're people that have already given to your nonprofit. And they already know what this giving event is so there's no reason to try to not to target them for some some outreach on give 828 so develop a plan. You do actually have a retention of report that you can use to single out who these donors are. So you go to reports and then retention and using the message that we know that we can count on you, you helped us out last year and you, we need you to help us out again. And just acknowledging that they've given in the past is is a great way to message your, your ask to these donors. You want to work with them to increase their gift from last year. If they gave $20 odds are they're not going to give $500, but you can maybe bump them up to 30 or 40 and that'll overall increase the amount that you raise. And then track your donor retention on the day of one thing that I think is a really great strategy is if you're nearing the end of the day. Just check in on your donor retention report. Have an email ready to go pull that list of everybody from last year who hasn't given this year. Plug that into your email marketing program and just send that email, because some people just may not have seen it they may not they may have missed it it may have gotten buried in their inbox. But that way you are doing your due diligence to engage with these donors who've already given there's no reason not to reach out to them. And this report is here to help you do that. So that is something that I highly recommend doing because again, they are low hanging fruit, you've already got them invested they've already made a donation they've made that first donation so get them on board again this year. All right, so when we talk about plans we also need to talk about follow up because that should be part of the plan. So again, use the platform tools for prompt and personal thank yous add your thank you page add your thank you message, but also think about how you can thank donors in a meaningful personal way outside of those tools. Some organizations I've seen have volunteers who actually call donors, right after they complete their donation and say, Thank you so much that I've gotten those calls for giving days that I've managed. And I've just been so amazed that they went to that effort to call me and thank me for my donation so that's the strategy that volunteers can help with. You don't have to do that it could be something like, you know, an email from your executive director saying hey thank you for making a donation it means a lot and just starting that interaction that process of stewarding them and cultivating a relationship with that donor. So something that's really important is closing the loop with donors. So if they, you know you hit them with asks leading up to the event and during the day, send an email to everybody who donated, letting them know, Hey, this is how much we raised. This is what we did this is what we're going to do with everything we raised. Thank you so much and just sort of tie, tie the event up in a bow and you know put it aside and that way it's done. And the donors have a satisfying experience they're not wondering okay well what happened with all those donations. What did they do with that money you've closed the loop for them. And you can also if you raise a big amount of money, follow up with them later like hey remember good 828. Well, this is what we did with all that money here some of the great things we're doing with the funds that you gave us. So that's really important for donors to have a satisfying donation experience, and that is what brings them back. If they see that you've made a meaningful use out of the donations that they provided for you. Give special attention to first time donors and onboarding them. So somebody has never donated to you before you need to onboard them you basically need to say this is who we are. So what we're all about who are you let us know who you are, you know, an onboarding journey. If you use an email marketing program like Mailchimp can really help you with that like just sending them a series of emails to sort of let them know about your work. And also if you're very small something like calling them emailing them personally can go a lot in making sure that these first time donors don't become one time donors, but they actually come back and help you out time and time again. You can send these donors into your year round fundraising plan so even if you don't use mighty cause year in and year out if you just use us for give 828. That's absolutely fine, but don't forget about these donors pull your donation report and get them integrated into everything else you're doing so that you're continuing to talk to these donors year round and you're communicating with them and they are getting the emails that that you send all of your donors and so on. So as you're thinking through your campaign plan. Don't stop with the end of the day think about how you're going to use this event to make a lasting impact on your nonprofit. And just as a note we are here to help you mighty causes offering a full customer support to you. Our support team is here to support you on the day of the event and leading up to it. We have a full support library at support at mighty cause calm. That has a lot of technical walkthrough so for instance if you're trying to figure out how to access a report or customize a certain part of your organization profile. You can find walkthroughs there. You can also email us at support at mighty cause calm. We are here from Monday through Friday 9am to 5pm Eastern time, and you can also give us a call. So our support team is here they are probably the best people to ask any technical questions to because my role at mighty cause is not in support so sometimes I don't know the answer and sometimes I won't be as quick to respond as our support team. So don't be afraid to reach out to us if you have any questions or you need any additional support. We are here to help you through this event. Alright, so let me see if Chelsea got logged on. Yes, I'm seeing Chelsea. Let me just. Alright Chelsea, are you able to hear me or can you try talking. Yes, can you hear me. Yes, I can hear you perfect. Awesome. Well hi everyone. I am Chelsea Brown. I'm the logistics lead of the young black and giving back Institute. Thank you so much Linda for taking the majority of the wheel and answering questions that people may have. I'm here to also serve to answer any questions that you may have on the YBGP side in regards to registering for this amazing day. So thank you again for even taking interest in it. We hope that you continue registering and asking your black lead nonprofits to continue registering as well. Yeah, absolutely. So we've got quite a few questions here, so I'm just going to go down them one by one and just read them off. And we'll see who this one is a really easy question is the first webinar available on demand. Yes, it's available through the give 828 site. I believe if you go to trainings under resources, you can find that recording there. And that's also where you'll be able to find this one as soon as I'm able to upload it to YouTube. Yep. Yep. All right, so let's see. So the donors are the ones you generate through your campaign. So yeah, the donors are people who are making donations to your nonprofit through your campaign. You also may have a donor base that is not in mighty cause. So when I say donor, I mean it in a general sense like people that your nonprofit has relationships with that have made donations even cash and check donations. So I'm sort of using both interchangeably, but a lot of the donation reports and the donors that are tracked there are people who have made a contribution. They've completed a donation through the mighty cause platform. And when I say donors in general, I just mean the people that your nonprofit has relationships with. They can also just be supporters who've never made a donation, but basically your your base of supporters. So there's a few different levels there, you know, major donors who give larger contributions are included in that. So there's different levels of donors there. But that's generally what I'm referring to with reports and stuff through mighty cause. I'm definitely talking about people who, you know, may have came to giving Black Day last year and made a donation. If you participated last year, but I also just mean your base of supporters. You hopefully have a donor list somewhere with people who've made contributions in the past that you can reach out to this year. Oh, this is a great question. What happens to our donor info on this platform. So I will take that one. So we don't sell or share your donor data. The only people who have access to it is mighty cause if we need to help them like say get a receipt. We also share it with Young Black and Giving Back Institute because they are hosts of the event. Chelsea can maybe speak to, you know, the extent to which you guys do anything with that donor information, but it is never sold. It is not compromised. It is not shared with anyone. It's just mighty cause as a platform we have to see it if we need to help them with a customer service issue. And it's also shared with the event host. So Chelsea, if you want to weigh in on how YGBG uses that donor info. Yeah, absolutely. So we use it very much the same way. We allow each organization or nonprofit to handle, you know, their donor correspondence, their donor information. Again, unless there is something that you need YBGB or Mighty Cause is help on, we usually do not touch the donor information. Yeah, and we don't email your donors. The only time we will ever email a donor at Mighty Cause is a transactional email. So like if somebody were to set up a recurring donation for your nonprofit through Mighty Cause, which they are able to do and their card was about to expire or we couldn't process it or something along those lines. We would just send them an automated email letting them know, but we never solicit your donors. We never ask them to contribute to your organization or anyone else's organization. So as far as we are concerned, they belong to you and we're just here to help support you. Same. And that's a good question because we do live in a day and age where, you know, who knows what's happening with your data service agreements are very long and like labyrinth. So, you know, feel free to let your donors know that their information is safe with Mighty Cause and with YBGB whether nobody is mining their information for anything like that. All right. So can we use this campaign to promote memberships as well? So I can speak to that and then let Chelsea weigh in. Yeah, you can use this campaign, however, is useful to you because my understanding is that this campaign is just all about empowering your nonprofits. So however you want to participate in Give 828, whatever is meaningful for your organization, it helps you do your work is fine. Like you can use it however you want. I think the purpose of coming to a centralized platform was to sort of maybe give you some infrastructure so that if you don't have, you know, a donation platform and you want, you know, to start setting that infrastructure up. You can start using it. You're already set up through the giving event, but it's really it can be whatever you want it to be. So if you're looking for memberships, you can do that. But the only note there is that only donations that are made through Mighty Cause are eligible for prizes. So that's all I have to say if you have anything to add, Chelsea. You are honestly killing it with the answers very much the same. We want you to feel empowered to use this for whatever ability or whatever your need is for your nonprofits. So whether that's membership donors, new donors, old donors, et cetera, whatever you need it for, that is what this platform is for. Linda really spoke much more heavily about it, but agreed. Well, thank you. I'm glad that we're on the same page. Always a good thing. So this looks like our last question. And if you guys have any other questions, you can always email me, you can email Chelsea. But this last question I'm happy to handle this one, because it's about the platform is how are recurring donations handled with regards to give 828. So I think the question here might be, do you get credit for like the full year of donations? And the answer to that is no, because they're processed on a monthly basis. So you only as far as like your totals on give 828 and what is actually showing if you're competing for a leaderboard prize, for instance, it's just that one donation. So if somebody sets up a $20 per month recurring donation, you get credit for the $20, but we you get that $20 every single month, so that will be recurring until the donor stops that process. So you don't get like full credit for the annual amount, you get credit for the amount of the donation, but they can set up a recurring donation and with their card, it'll just be charged automatically every month and then just included in your disbursement from a mighty cause. So it's easy for them to set up they just have to click a button in order to check a box I should say in order to let us know that they would like their donation to be recurring on a monthly basis. You don't get credit for the annual amount unfortunately because then you know you could end up getting credit for a donation that somebody else can't that somebody cancels after the event. You get credit for that donation and what is actually processed when the event is active, but then you can continue to get that donation every single month. You can use our donation widget as well people can set up donations in on a monthly recurring basis it's free for people to access our widget. So if you don't if you have like a PayPal button or something like that on your website, the widget gives you a little bit more control over how it looks and what it says and people can set up recurring donations through that. So for instance this could be really useful if you are looking to get a more ongoing financial support from your donors if you wanted to make the goal of your campaign to get recurring donations. That's something that could help you year round. So that's another thing that you can consider when you're building your campaign, especially knowing that donors for this giving event. Typically not giving $500 at a time they're giving in amounts under $100. So that's another ask you could make is say, can you make your donation recurring. And some donors may actually be able to give on a monthly basis and help give that ongoing support. So I hope that answers your question but you can always email me Linda at mightycost.com if you have any other questions or specific questions about how recurring donations work. And just to add on to that. I'm sorry if I'm going on too long about them, but the donor is able to go into their mighty cause account. If they do set up a recurring donation they do set up an account just so they can manage that donation, but they can change the amount of their donation so if they want to increase it or decrease it. They can do that if they want to change the card, they can do that and if they want to change the day that it processes on they can also do that through mighty cause. And then they also have the ability to cancel it and we hope they don't but they can cancel it at any time if they want to through mighty cause. All right, so with what about the discounted fees with regard regards to recurring donations. That is a great question so the fees won't change so if somebody makes a donation through the give 828 platform and they're kind of on that brand is what we call it. Then those fees will continue to apply so you will actually get that donation with a lower rate. And if that donor ops to cover fees, then they will continue to cover their fees through that donation. So I hope that helps. All right, so I think that's all of the questions as we're all excellent questions. Chelsea, do you have any anything you would like to say to everyone before we sign off? No, I mean, again, this has been so great. You've been so informative and I'm sure extremely helpful. I just want to offer my help again as someone that works with the young black and give me back Institute. I also want to offer, you know, just a thank a gift of thanks and best wishes and good luck in any way that YB GB can be helpful in helping you kind of design strategy anything along those lines. Please let us know we are here to help and we want to help empower and uplift our black lead nonprofits that participate. Yeah, absolutely. Same for me. We're here to help and wish you all well and excited to see what this event does this year. So happy fundraising and keep your eyes out for the recording on the site.