 Hello everyone. I just wanted to give you a quick welcome as we get ready to get started. We're going to start in just a few minutes. But in the meantime, if you wouldn't mind maybe just dropping a quick note into chat. Let us know where you're from. Georgia, California, Oklahoma, Texas, another Texas, Oklahoma, the UK. That's great. They're going so fast. I'm not going to be able to read out all of them, but there's a great mix of folks from all over Oregon, Arizona, Toledo, Oxfordshire, Indiana, Missouri. Wow, this is great. Wonderful. Wonderful mix of folks today. And welcome. Again, we're going to go ahead and get just started just a couple minutes. This is great. Thank you. And we'll be right back in just a minute or two. And hello to Fresno as well. And Michigan. Excellent. Canada, DC, Idaho. It's really, it's wonderful to see where folks are all coming and calling in from. And so thank you for joining. We have a fantastic session today. And we're going to go ahead and get started. So again, welcome. This is our topic today is on mastering, giving Tuesday and year-end fundraising. And a giant welcome. Thank you to our panelists today, Rob Wu and Jenna Noder-Fanchesco. So welcome. Before we go ahead and start with the formal part of the presentation, we did want to talk through a few housekeeping items. And also a quick note about who we are. We are TechSoup. We are a nonprofit that helps other nonprofits access and use technology. And as you can see, sometimes there are minor glips with technology. But let me get to the quick notes on housekeeping. If you have questions during today's session, please go ahead and pop up in the Q&A part of Zoom. We'll be collecting questions and having a bit of a Q&A at the end of the session. So we really appreciate when folks jump in there and ask questions. Also a quick reminder, after the session, you'll be getting a recording and slides for today's session. And so maybe some additional resource links as they come up. So keep your eyes peeled for follow-up information from us. Also, during the session, if you're hearing something really, it strikes you particularly cool and valuable or interesting, please don't hesitate to send out a quick tweet or any other kind of quick note on your social media channels just to let folks know about the session. We'd love to encourage more participation. And if you do, please use the hashtag TSWebinar. And then lastly, I think folks may be really familiar with this part of Zoom at this point, but closed captioning is available. Turn it on with the CC button located at the bottom of your Zoom menu. Should you have any kind of technical issues or troubleshooting questions, also feel free to send us a quick chat during the session and we have folks here who can help. So that's it on the housekeeping. So who are we? We are TechSoup. We've been around for a long time. Some of you may know us quite well, but for those who don't, we are a nonprofit. And again, we help other nonprofits and NGOs around the world access and use technology. We believe very strongly that technology can be a tremendous force for good. And much of today's presentation is going to touch on the ways that that is possible. So again, thank you so much for our panelists for joining. Speaking of which, let me introduce our panelists today. Again, Rob Wu and Jenna Notafranchesko from Cosvox. Rob is a builder at the intersection of philanthropy and technology with over 15 years of experience as the CEO and the founder at Cosvox, a digital fundraising platform. For the next evolution of nonprofit fundraising, Rob has focused on streamlining major gift work with digital fundraising. Rob has supported thousands of nonprofits, helping them raise over 500 million in funds. His work has garnered attention from publications such as New York Times, CNN and The Wall Street Journal. Also joining us today is Jenna Notafranchesko. Jenna is an account executive at Cosvox who is dedicated to helping organizations achieve fundraising success and grow happier donors year round. It's a great, great focus. In her spare time, she enjoys painting and caring for her plant babies. And without further ado, let me hand it on over to Rob and Jenna. Thank you. Thank you, Catherine. Let me share my slides real fast. All right. So that was an amazing intro, Catherine, and really appreciate it. I don't think normally we get such an amazing intro from our host. So thank you for that. So we're excited to just chat with you today on Giving Tuesday and your fundraising. But before we get started, we do have a pre-webinar question. So just to set the stage here, I know a lot of you are engaged in the chat as well as Q&A. But in one word, how would you describe how you feel about year-end fundraising today? So if you have one word for it or maybe two, or just a phrase in general, just give us your thoughts, put it into the chat, and we'd love to hear from you. And just get a little bit of a limit test of how people are feeling. So today's topic is on mastering giving Tuesday and year-end fundraising. Giving Tuesday is upon us. We're officially in November, and giving Tuesday is just a few weeks away. Added with that, year-end fundraising with December coming along is the biggest season for giving at nonprofits, as many of you know. So the idea here is to figure out how we can help you augment the year-end fundraising as well as giving Tuesday campaigns you're running, and how can we help you increase fundraising results today? As Catherine has mentioned, my name is Rob, CEO and founder of Cosvox, and then you also are on with Jenna, known as Francesco. We've helped some of you before already, since we are on the TechSoup catalog. So a bunch of you are probably our users of Cosvox already, but for those who are not aware of Cosvox, we'll give you a very short intro about that. Today's agenda, we did our intro, so that's done. We'll talk about some best practices regarding mastering giving Tuesday and year-end fundraising, and we'll also have a free toolkit. So this is the biggest toolkit that Cosvox has ever created, probably the biggest toolkit that anybody has created around giving Tuesday and year-end fundraising, and it's 100% free. We do have that as well, we'll walk through that. We'll drop in the link as well, if you want access to it, that guides you through everything you need to know from start to finish, on how you can master giving Tuesday and year-end. Also we'll have a Q&A session at the end of our session, dependent on time, and we hope to allocate a bunch of time to answer the specific questions that you have. With something special today, as Catherine has mentioned, we love to get you engaged. So we have prizes, everybody loves prizes. So we have two prizes today that will be awarded by Catherine, sponsored by Cosvox, for the first one being the most engaged attendee. So I want to see your chats in the chat, as well as your questions in the Q&A feature. So Catherine will be awarding at the end of our session after Q&A, who has been the most engaged now. I don't know how she's going to figure it out, but that's her job, and I'm just a messenger here. So the second award would be the best fundraising idea. So as you're listening into Jenna and myself talking about giving Tuesday and year-end fundraising, if you have a great fundraising idea related to giving Tuesday, or like a tactic you want to share that's where you work for you, or something you read somewhere that has really resonated, feel free to add your thoughts into the chat or the Q&A, and we will be awarding that fundraising idea to you all, one of you all at least, which are amazing nonprofits and fundraisers. So that will be at the end of our session. I know this is probably the most important thing of the webinar today. And also, sorry, the award would be your choice, a $10 gift card from Amazon or Starbucks, winner's choice. All right. So let's talk about Cosmox real fast. So Cosmox, we're a digital fundraising platform for nonprofits. We've been a TechSoup partner since a very long time. I don't know, a very, very long time. I forget how many years, but basically what we do over here at Cosmox is we're an online fundraising tool that you can use to build the nation pages that are fully branded. You can build a campaign sites as well as fundraising websites that are tailored to your organization. So as well as you can run different types of fundraising, like peer-to-peer fundraising, event ticketing, you can use basically the Cosmox tool to build a full-featured comprehensive fundraising website. And then that's directly integrated with our forms, whether it be an event ticketing form or a donation form. So if you're looking for something that excels in branding as well as doing an experience, then our platform does that very easily. We also provide hands-on support. Similar to the thesis of TechSoup, we love to help folks one-on-one as well as educate them with our free fundraising education. You can unlock modern fundraising with our fundraising tools. So you can build branded donation pages that are completely integrated with your organization's message. You can also do more advanced automated giving for your donors, such as pledge donations and recurring donations. And you can build campaign sites like For Giving Tuesday or Year-end fundraising. If you're looking for more information about Cosmox, feel free to register for our online demo. We'll drop the link into the chat. It's Cosmox.com slash schedule-a-demo. So feel free to take a look when you do have a chance. All right, so let's talk about Giving Tuesday and Year-end fundraising. I went on this journey a few months ago on trying to figure out what is the state of fundraising today. So I know a lot of you have added your thoughts in the chat, but I wanted to look at the data to see if the data is reflective of the feelings that we have when it comes to fundraising. Well, what we see in the data is that Giving USA notes an almost 11% decline in charitable giving in 2022. For me, this is an inflection point. We've seen charitable giving grow year after year for a really long time, and then we see a 10%, 11% dip. Now, the question is, is this dip, is it part of a longer-term trend where we see a decline in charitable giving, or is it just a momentary pullback because of various macroeconomic reasons? Regardless of the reasons, I think something that's really enlightening is that when I did this study of trying to figure out where things are and looking at the data, we found that 81% of our survey respondents intend to actually sustain or even boost their charitable giving activities. So yes, you see charitable giving decreasing in 2022, but in 2023, when we survey donors, we see 81% of them actually still have a strong spirit of giving. So don't be too disparate when it comes to fundraising. What's even more interesting is when we look at high earners, high earners as well as the fluent households, 93% of high earners intend to sustain or even boost their charitable giving activities. So these are the folks who give the most, who have the most capacity to give, and these are the folks who over-index in terms of wanting to give, which is great news for organizations. Well, what's really interesting about this is that as the charitable giving environment shifts, there's a few things that we need to really keep in mind so we can move with these patterns and trends. The first one being that 81% of high earners want a streamlined donation experience. They really value how easy it is for them to give, how automated it is for them to give. It's not transactional anymore where, for example, during the pandemic, where every donor just wanted to just go to a non-profit and just make a donation and they'll struggle through a donation process, just whatever it takes they just wanted to give. Now folks have more constrained budgets and what they really value is just disability of ease of use. And what's really interesting too is that 75% of donors are more likely to donate through a branded donation page. So this is a donation page that has your organization's message, your logo, your look and feel, but it's pixel perfect branded to your organization's story. So what I'm just talking about just a logo on a page and call it a day is something that provides a very cohesive experience similar to the experience that they would get when they're shopping online at Target or Amazon or whatever your favorite stores they shop at. And when you look at the segment of donors, the donors who prioritize branding and experience, they are 45% more likely to donate for over five years. So these are going to be your top donors that you retain easily that are going to donate year after year and increase their giving year after year. So there's a few kind of interesting nuggets that came from this when it comes to donor aspect of how they want to give, but also something that was really interesting for me when I looked into data was that the donors are actually eager to be active. They're not just wanting to just respond to your fundraising appeal or respond to your giving Tuesday campaign by making a donation. They actually want to participate in specifically fundraising activities. 71% of donors express willingness to assist in fundraising activities. So yes, folks and volunteer, a volunteer for as part of the programs that you have, but a lot of folks are really interested in actually participating in helping your organization fundraise. That being said, there's a few different trends that I found really interesting. Just in summary, donors really want to shift how they give by participating. They also want to shift how easy it is for them to make a donation. And also, especially for high earners, they really value this branding and experience aspect of making a donation. So in light of this, I was really interested. I wanted to ask Jenna, so in light of this kind of trends, what can organizations actually technically do different when it comes to fundraising this year? Yeah, thanks for this great intro. I actually just pasted in the link for that COSBOX giving study in case anybody wanted to review more of the data that we collected. But in terms of changing up the style, there are three key areas that you can start with to evolve along with your donors. You want to craft compelling stories. And what we mean by that is to develop a storyline or a vision beyond just the numbers, beyond just the finances, because everyone loves a great story and that's how you can help donors to connect empathetically with you and your vision. So express gratitude in that, highlight contribution options. And also in this storytelling process, figure out how your donors like to be communicated with, like which channels, and we're going to dive into that a little bit later. But this kind of, all of those points come around crafting your compelling story. Secondly, you want to know your donors. Get to know them. There is an evolving landscape in philanthropy and so there are some uncertainties, maybe economic uncertainties that your donors might be facing right now. Maybe it's their, the way they prefer to donate to your organization, different philanthropic goals and aspirations or any other challenges that they might be experiencing. So instead of just pushing your agenda necessarily, maybe kind of try to check in with them somehow and that can be through surveys or one-on-one time, just opening up communication with them so that you can get their feedback. And then finally you want to streamline your donations. And this part is sort of a two-step, two ideas in this one part. You want to give your donors an unforgettable donor experience by giving a more digitally automated donation process that's very streamlined and super easy for them. And then at the same time, make sure that process is different in the sense that you offer multiple payment methods so that you are touching back to their donor preferences. So it's a two-part way to streamline the process and set yourself apart for success. So here are just two examples of some outdated approaches to online donations that you may or may not right now have on your website. You know, we have the one on the left which is a long sort of dinosauric, prehistoric, clunky, like how many questions do I have to answer before I get to give you my money? I don't know, but it's probably not the most enticing option. The second option on the right is your standard like very iconic yellow PayPal button. However, this does not allow for the same branding that Rob was talking about earlier. So the PayPal button does not, it actually directs the user off of your website and gives them a less ideal experience. So instead we would recommend sort of embracing this donor-centric model that we talk a lot about now. It's allowing the form to be very streamlined and fewer questions and to be directly embedded on your website. So the donor gets to actually process the transaction without going to any second or I guess it would be like third party site. It's direct and it looks really nice, just completely integrated within your website. And then secondly, you're able to add multiple mobile wallets. So on Kozaks, for example, we've included five different mobile wallet options, including PayPal, Venmo, Credit and Debit, Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH, Bank Transfer and these different mobile wallet options and mobile payment options are definitely prioritized by your higher earners, higher earner donors. So it's a way to just make it easy and convenient for everybody to give what they want to give. Yeah, that's great, thank you. So in light of that, we talked a little bit about changing things up, but what are some tried and true fundraising tactics that will still make a difference this year, Rob? I call this the three S's. So it's really cliche, but the first S is to be specific. So before we do that, I'm going to give our amazing fundraisers and nonprofits a lesson in physics. So you thought that this is a giving Tuesday webinar, but it's actually a physics webinar just for a hot second at least. So we're going to talk about vectors. So a vector is a lot more better term, a straight line. But if you have many vectors going in different directions, it actually decreases your force, your power, as well as your momentum and impact of the work that you do. So the whole goal is to align different vectors together so you can get maximum force. And once you have maximum force, you get maximum impact and results. So with that being said, the first S that I have over here is to set specific goals. All right. So when we talk about goals, a lot of folks are not as specific as they need to be. And then, or they're really thinking about just a segment of what they're trying to solve. So when you think about giving Tuesday and your fundraising goals, a lot of it's just financial, whereas, okay, I want to raise $20,000 or $50,000. But then these financial goals are never tied to the impact of your programs. So one of the things I encourage our audience to do is figure out what your, either your program goals are, and then work towards a financial goal, or start with a financial goal, and then really bubble it down into specific points of impact. This way, you can actually tie together the donor dollar to some type of program impact or program line item. And then you can connect that into your story to you provide something a little more compelling for donors to take action. The second thing is to be transparent. So especially through the cosmos giving study that I referenced before, and one of the data points is that the more specific you are in your storytelling, for example, being very transparent with how the funds will be used, then that's the number one tactic that donors actually want in order to make a contribution. All right. The second S is securing a matching gift. So secure. So matching gifts perform really well when it comes to giving to use a campaign as well as their end. A lot of times folks use matching gifts as a way to announce to your broader mass donors that there's going to be a one for one match or a 2x match based on for the whole campaign or in a period of time. For example, for some campaigns that we see there are quite large, they'll line up several matching gifts. So for somebody that gives on one day, then all the funds get matched to the next week, there'll be another matching gift incentive in the final week, there'll be another matching gift incentive. So they ladder up these matching give opportunities to continue to momentum on their fundraising. Matching gifts can come from your existing donors, such as a major donor, or they can be come from a corporation or a company sponsor. So year-end fundraising is a great opportunity to re-engage with some of your this year's corporate sponsors as well as last year's to see if they want to make a year-end gift as a match. And then that allows that corporate sponsor to not only engage their employees, but also gain visibility to your donor base. So the third S I have is another secure. This is probably the world's worst three S's, but since the last two S's are the same. So the last S is secure major gifts. So major gifts are transformative to your campaign. It's very difficult to raise any type of significant amount of money if you're asking for market donations. I know there was a chat in here that was saying, hey, $1, $2 donations. I think that's great if you have a really big base. But then what you're doing is really leaving a lot of money on the table. So for example, the average donation on Cosbox is around $75. So if you make the ask way below the average amount, then there's a lot of funds that are just basically leaving on a table without optimizing for proper donation value. So when it comes to major gifts at least, it's a lot easier to get to your fundraising goal when you have a handful of major donors. So one of the things to look out of here is to create a gift pyramid. So let's say you're trying to, this is a huge goal. This is a bad example for our talk today. But this is just from one of our partners, Capital Campaign Pro. But essentially, this is more of a capital campaign, but you can use the same charts and the same idea behind a Giving Tuesday campaign. And let's say you're raising 10% of this, which is $1.25 million as your goal. What you can do is you can determine the different gift sizes as different rows. And then you can figure out a number of gifts that you need to get in order to get to that specific goal. You can also add in additional kind of scenario analysis. For example, the prospect multiplier on the right. What that really does is that tells you that you may not close every single major donor that you talk to. So you might need to talk to, for example, two folks at the $500 dollar level in order to close one of them as a gift. So that being said, this is a great exercise. If you're able to look at your donor data from this past year and past three years, create a segment of donors that have high affinity to give to your organization and then as well as a high capacity. And these folks would be a great opportunity for you to have one-on-one conversations with, in order to secure them as a donor for your year in fundraising or your Giving Tuesday campaign. One of the things that we're working on over here at Cosbox is just making the pipeline a little bit easier to track. So we have a functionality coming up that just helps you basically organize all of these donor prospects and kind of move them through different pipelines in order to see how much you're closing when it comes to major donors. All right. So again, the three S's are to be specific. And the last two S's are to be to secure a matching gift as well as a major gift. All right. So now that we have kind of some of the ideas when it comes to the fundraising tactics, I want to ask you, Jenna, what are the components of a great fundraising appeal? So you have tactics here and how can you really write an appeal on your Giving Tuesday page or campaign site or donation page in order to make a difference? Sure. Yeah. This is huge because this is where your storytelling comes in. So, yeah, on the next slide, I sort of just broke down this, I guess, the strategies into four categories. The first category would be, again, to know your audience. You'll notice this is sort of a theme with my slides. Please know everybody very well. But know who you're talking to and try to personalize your story to that audience. So understanding your donor demographics is key. And having some feedback as well in order to provide the best narrative that most closely aligns with their goals and aspirations is important. So crafting those empathetic stories that resonate with your target audience is key. Secondly, you'll want to really drive home your goals, impact and urgency. So first of all, of course, you're going to define your campaign objectives and showcase the tangible impact that they're making. And this can be, you know, you can demonstrate this through visuals and video examples and such. But you want to make sure that you touch on the type of impact that you're making. You want to put a why to your fundraising. Why are we doing this and what is the outcome as a result of our work? So definitely showcase that. Showcase the progress that you make again. Okay, this is sort of along the lines of the results. And then you can bring in any statistics that will help to prove or support as evidence base your progress in your work. You'll want to highlight your needs. And again, utilize the statistics and stories to back those needs. And then inspire a sense of responsibility. You know, put it put put it on the donor to see how how their participation can be used to also make an impact. So that's for the goal impact and urgency category. And then you'll want to use high impact visuals to go along and kind of communicate these as well. So you can you can definitely leverage high impact visuals and storytelling through videos, you know, kind of think multi media. So you have text, you have video, perhaps a short two minute video link with an engaging hook. And you have images, graphics, photos, any any photo or video proof of the work that you're doing. And or having testimonials alongside that can be really helpful. And then finally, having clear calls to actions or CTAs. In fundraising, you know, I guess in general, when you want somebody to to make a decision to do something, they have to have a clear directive. Right, we, you'll want to make sure that you have one clear directive so that it's very easy for the donor to understand what their next step is going to be in participating in your campaign. So if it's to donate, make sure that donation button is clear and visually represented very clearly. And, and also the text is very clear. And then highlight the benefits and outcomes of their decision of their action. So on the next slide, I think I put just a quick example of what a the visual aspect right the high impact visual and storytelling aspect of what a campaign can look like. So you'll have a teaser video read a two minute intro video, and then put put something that shows shows your organization on the ground working with with the people who you are helping and the recipients of your work. And that can really be very compelling to a donor. So going going alongside of, you know, sort of what we've been talking about, we, we need people right to share our message and to partner with us. So, Rob, how can organizations use influencers to share fundraising appeals? That's a good question. So influencers are hot. Not only because social media is hot and everybody wants to be influencers these days, instead of, you know, working in traditional jobs. But we're not talking about those kind of influencers, because those kind of influencers are great for kind of mass advertising. But when it comes to small medium sized nonprofits, which a lot of us are here today, what really works is looking at your own donor base, who are the influencers in our donor base, who has connections, and who has the ability to really promote our campaign and our costs. So to answer that, the best way is actually peer-to-peer fundraising for a lot of our organizations today. So peer-to-peer fundraising is a way for you to leverage authentic storytelling, the storytelling of your donors, of your supporters, of anyone who is associated with your organization, such as board members, volunteers, just general supporters. That's a great way to reach new donors. So if you look at and think about your individual giving program, which is how you attract individual donors, if you look at it as a funnel, as a way to, as a funnel, which is a way where you have a lot of people at the top, and then some of them filter and become actual donors and returning donors. If you look at a way as a funnel kind of method, then what you want to do really is to try to fill the top of the funnel with it as many people as possible. So one of the best ways is just to leverage your existing network of donors. And these are people that can bring a more authentic storytelling to how their, their friends and family would connect with your organization. And it's a great way just to attract new donors. So then you can take those new donors and your contacts and cultivate and steward them throughout the year and convert them into returning donors. So how peer-to-peer fundraising really works is that when you're giving a Tuesday campaign or your year in fundraising, instead of just directing folks to your general, PayPal button or donate button on your website, which is actually not very attractable and people don't know what's going on, actually build like a specific page for your Giving Tuesday campaign or your year in fundraising campaign where you can have a fundraising thermometer as well as a way for folks to create these personal fundraising pages or team fundraising pages on your campaign's behalf. So this is one of one of the recent ones on Cosmox called Tech Tackles Cancer. And essentially they created a campaign site using our platform and individuals like Patrick over here, he was able to go in there, create his own personal fundraising page, set a fundraising goal and send it out to his friends and family. The, the financial impact of this is great. You know, for example, Patrick has raised close to $5,000, but I do think the long-term aspect of this is that he's able to bring in 27 donors to this organization. And this organization has the contact info that email address as well as the postal address of these donors. So you can add them on to your communications and stewardship plan throughout the year in order to drive more and more donors. So Peter Perfon is in the best way in order to leverage influencers to share your campaign. Awesome. So going right along with storytelling, can you talk more about the data behind what, what we're talking about storytelling, Rob? Yeah, so just very quickly through the Cosmox giving study, which Jenna put in into the chat a few minutes ago, one of the questions that we asked donors is that, you know, what kind of fundraising tactics drive donations. So a lot of times we think that it's the personal relationship that drives the donation. And a lot of us trip, you know, 70% of donors are more likely to donate when there is some type of personal relationship, either with a staff member or with a peer-to-peer fundraiser. So, which is pretty amazing. But the fundraising tactic that was really interesting over here is that the top four that I highlighted, these really revolve around, well, the top three really revolve around storytelling, which is just regular updates on how the funds are used, kind of real-life testimonials of how the funds have benefited certain groups of people. And then just clear visuals of that, like photos, pictures, videos. So these are very simple communications tactics. It's essentially saying if a donor gives you money, then just show them what their money has been used for. And if you want a donor to give you money, then showcase some of the potential impact that that donor can have. So storytelling really doesn't have to be grand. It doesn't have to be a whole Marvel movie or a whole production. It just has to be authentic. And then if you stick to the basics, it will yield great results. The other thing that was really interesting here alongside of kind of the storytelling piece of it is around just easy and convenient donation methods. So just to kind of reiterate this theme is that donors really want easy ways to pay. Just like as you, as an individual, you want an easy way to purchase whatever you want to purchase for Cyber Tuesday or for your holiday gifts. Donors want the same thing too. They just want an easy way to make a contribution to your fundraising campaigns. So that being said, I was curious, Jenna, what are some of the ways organizations should leverage different communication channels, especially because storytelling is so important. Yeah, definitely. So I think I mentioned earlier that there are a lot of different ways to communicate to your participants. And I think it's pretty essential to use a combination of these. So the first one is very standard, your email campaign. This is, I think, the most yield for the way that you communicate with people. They're most likely to open an email, right? But you got to make sure it's compelling enough to have them open and respond to. But it's the number one marketing technique is to create really compelling email campaigns. So you'll want to segment your audience, segment your donor list, and customize and personalize the message that is going to each donor group. So, you know, you're like your highest level donors, mid-level ones that maybe have lapsed and try to target messages related to each audience as you're approaching the holidays. So you'll want to work on crafting compelling subject lines and then work on the content, the body of the email to be concise and also impactful with, again, clear calls to action. And I think, you know, Rob, I think Rob like did a couple, at least one webinar or two using like AI tools to really help in the crafting of content. That can really be a nice tool to sort of speed up your process, give you some basic foundational content, and then you can sort of tweak things. But yeah, your email is going to be a very strong marketing tool. Secondly, online peer-to-peer fundraising, which Rob just talked about. This is incredible to empower your supporters to fundraise. Essentially, they become your marketers. So if you can equip them really well at the beginning, then they are more able to be set up for greater success in their fundraising efforts reaching out to their own networks. And then when it comes to events, direct mail, phone and public relations, this is sort of the more of the event-based, but you can sort of like pepper in these tactics as well, hosting those in-person events for more personal one-on-one connections with donors. Using direct mail can be nice because I don't know how many people get snail mail, personalized letters from people these days, but I always love receiving thank you notes and just quick thinking of you notes in the mail. It just makes me think that the person took some time and effort to think of me. And I think when the donors are valued in that way, then they're more likely to stay connected to you and your organization. So yeah, it helps strengthen relationships along with that would be phone calls, taking the time out. They can see that you're putting an effort, taking the time to build a relationship with them. And at the same time, you get the chance to amplify your message. And then finally our emerging channels, what we would call emerging channels here with social media. We've got TikTok, Instagram threads and X. I don't know if anybody remembers X anymore these days. It's turned into X from Twitter. But so we want to make sure, yeah, using social media platforms can be a really great place to spread your message. It doesn't have to be the end all be all, but I think it's definitely it still holds a place in sharing and promoting. So there are different, there are different demographics of donors in each space. And so if you want to start building a younger donor base, I think utilizing some of the social media platforms is a really great strategy. So this is just a quick visual explanation of your peer to peer option and how really nice and easy it would be for something like Giving Tuesday to showcase both personal fundraising pages and organizational based fundraising pages. So if you have, whether it's people, right, like groups of your staff, your board, your volunteers, or even some committed donors, they can, all of those people could create personal pages. And if, and then they can form teams, you know, with peer to peer. And even if you have partnering organizations or other local organizations that you want to partner with for something like Giving Tuesday or another Giving Day or holiday promotional campaign, anybody can go online, especially with Causevox peer to peer and create their own personal page and share their message about why, why people should support you and actually, you know, support the work that you're doing. So yeah, we have seen organizations raise even over twice the amount of funds that they set up for their goal. So definitely something to check out. Yeah. So you talk about kind of like a different communication channel. And then one of the things I just put into the chat as well is that when I was running the high earner webinar that is so I did a webinar yesterday talking about how you can use high earner and affluent donors, how you can capture them for fundraising. One of the interesting things is that the data says that email is the number one communication channel that affluent high earner donors want to be communicated with. And these are folks who donate 20 to $34,000 a year in their philanthropy. So I thought that was really interesting. So in terms of kind of communications, now that there's kind of different channels that you went over, I'm kind of curious, so what is the best way to kind of lay out like a suggested timeline or how communication should be organized? Yeah. So for where we are in the season now, you'll want to plan in advance. So I mean, now is still a great time to start planning. I think if, you know, looking up to next year, like 2024, you can start preparing for Giving Tuesday and the holiday season even back in September. So the sooner you start planning, the better. But we would recommend, you know, giving yourself some advanced time to plan and then actually create a structured plan. And included in that plan would be for you to identify just key dates of the holiday season. So, you know, considering Thanksgiving and Giving Tuesday, December holidays and New Year's Eve, and then sort of consider the communication themes every week or every month. So you're going to want to identify key dates, discover the purpose of each communication and the themes, and then of course know your audience for that specific communication. And then in that plan also, you'll want to make sure you're coming up with some compelling appeal ideas and making sure that the messaging is in line with your campaign goals and objectives. So sort of a multifaceted sort of approach to planning. But if you can break them down into those aspects, then the creation of the messages will be a lot easier, I think. And then using the timeline, again, it's, you know, starting in advance. If we're starting back in September for these, you know, Giving Tuesday and year-end campaigns, you know, you'll want to start with just creating some excitement with your donor base. And you can use September for the teaser month. You can see I just briefly broke this down into a quick suggested timeline, which you'll be able to read more in depth when you get the slide deck. But, you know, October is going to be a heavy communication month, because this is when you're unveiling your campaign theme, probably teasing out some success stories, asking your supporters to help with the campaign. This is when you're, you want to get people on board for your Giving Tuesday and year-end campaigns. And then in November, you're going to actually launch the site. So that email will be all about launching live your, either your Giving Tuesday or your year-end campaign. And then heavily promoting that one week ahead for Giving Tuesday, for example. And then in December, you're going to be really just celebrating all of the great, all of the great fundraising you've been doing in November and the impact that you're being able to make and then showing that impact to donors in December. You can also tie in your Giving Tuesday campaign that happened in November and tie it into your year-end appeal and your greater year-end fundraising goal. It sort of gives it like a springboard. Your year-end fundraising will have a springboard. You can sort of continue the tally with however much you've raised already for Giving Tuesday. And I think it helps to provide a sense of urgency in helping you to complete your greater year-end goal. And here in December, you also have a really great opportunity to cultivate new donor relationships. So definitely be sure to continue and follow up with the donors after December and year-end to thank them. Yeah. I love that aspect of stewardship. So kind of completing a cycle of campaign communications, donation, and stewardship afterwards. So when it's applied directly to Giving Tuesday then, I'm kind of curious, we talk about like communications channels. And then we're talking about the timeline. I want to come see the fundraising appeal itself. I was curious maybe if you have some examples of Giving Tuesday appeals that you've seen that were beneficial. Yeah. I like the show and tell idea. I can actually share my screen for this part real quick. And then we're going to use one of our Giving Tuesday campaign examples. This is our organization-based peer-to-peer fundraising. So I picked out just a few. We have Arts for the Aging. You can see they put up a quick explanation about their organization here at the top. But I really want to focus on their storytelling because we're talking about storytelling today. And what I loved about this organization is that they textually, I don't know if that's a word, but they highlighted it with a bold face font here. But basically each of these paragraphs starts with a compelling sentence. After an isolating health pandemic, it matters. Well, what matters? I don't know what happened. It makes me curious. And then they supported that with some statistics. So they're saying here that isolation for the elderly or older adults is similar to them smoking 15 cigarettes per day. They have the same impact on their health. This kind of statistic is really compelling to me. So if you can figure out a way to showcase your why and then support it with those compelling statistics, I think that is exceptional. And they continued that through each paragraph. And I just love how they did that. And then at the end here, they explained how the contribution will be put to immediate use. So we've got urgency. We have immediacy language. And so all of this combined makes me really want to give to this organization. The second example is from Free Minds Book Club and Writing Workshop. Now, I think this is also great because they start with an introductory video, which is really nice to get to know the men that are in their program. And then they go on and they story to a little here. They talk about how many incarcerated and formerly incarcerated members they've served over an additional 200 on Giving Tuesday. That's their goal. And then they talked about their results. Okay, so this is more like this is on the results-oriented side of the spectrum of storytelling. In the past year, 89% of our members were working or in a vocational program with only 3% re-entering the prison system. So this is proving that their work is fruitful, right? They have the results. They are results oriented and they are having a success. They have lots of success in their program. So there's more reason to give to have more and more successes. And then I really love this quote from one of their members because part of it, you know, it's just this little language, you know, I mean, it's synergized, energized, you name it however you want to put it. There are just so many resources going on in this program. I mean, wow. And so if you have a really wow testimony, use that. It's really incredible. But yeah, I just had a couple of those because, you know, you can have any kind of quote, but it has to be a compelling quote. So these are just some things to keep in mind. I have some other examples here, but it's really just reiterating the same idea of, you know, stating having a story, maybe somebody's personal story and then backing it up with statistics and results. Yeah. And then Jenna, what you can do is you can kind of just add in those links into the chat and folks kind of browse on their own. We've kind of gone over the specific kind of presentation time that we've allocated. So why don't we jump forward to this last question here, where can our audience find additional resources such as a toolkit? Yeah. So if you want to see more about, you know, just giving Tuesday and your end fundraising, you can check out our toolkit. So I don't know if Rob's posting it in the chat. I can also paste it in the chat. But yeah, it's really easy to use. We created it. We have three components of the toolkit. So you'll want to go to that website. It's just on our blog and it's a 2023 year end giving Tuesday fundraising toolkit. But the three parts, we have a comprehensive year-end fundraising plan for you, which will help you set up your goals and create a communications calendar and also have a really strong donor experience. It has a Giving Tuesday campaign plan. So that's comprehensive to help you craft your campaign along with your integrated donation form and peer-to-peer. And we also included some free marketing and communications templates so that you don't have to start writing your appeals from scratch. You have a template to start from as a first draft. All right. Thank you, Jenna. So again, the link is in the chat. Feel free to click on that. It's a free three-part toolkit that you can download anytime and you can share that with your colleagues. So it's going to be super helpful for your Giving Tuesday campaign, as well as your year-end fundraising. Now, before we go into the Q&A time of our webinar today, feel free to put it into the chat or the Q&A section. I know a bunch of you have put in a lot of questions, which we're happy to get to. So that's Giving Tuesday Guide, as well as the webinar today is brought to you by, again, Cosmox. We help you unlock modern fundraising. So you're looking for a way to do your Giving Tuesday campaign or enhance your donation page, or even just to run something with peer-to-peer fundraising that's tied directly into modern payment methods and mobile wallets. Feel free to check us out Cosmox.com. We'll be happy to have a book meeting with you or have a one-on-one discussion. We also are on the TechSoup catalog. So you do get a huge discount through TechSoup. So feel free to check it out on TechSoup.org. All right. Why don't we jump to questions? Excellent. Thank you so much, Rob and Jenna. That was incredibly informative. I don't know how much you were able to track while you were doing your presentation, but there were some great lots of great questions coming up and some really great back and forth with attendees. Thank you, everybody, for the participation. We have so many questions that we are not going to be able to get to all of them, unfortunately, but we will be following up afterwards as best we can to make sure we can answer your questions. And we are almost at time. So we're going to go ahead and just select a couple of questions now. So why don't we just jump in? First question. And this is either for Rob or Jenna. How can we get donors who are tech-scared to switch to Cosvox? Tech-scared to switch to Cosvox. That's a great question. The best thing that I love to recommend, now there's a lot of different approaches, but the first one is if they're scared because of just they don't know the potential outcomes like the success or that they may get, then run a small pilot. It run an event that you already do and then you can switch it to Cosvox or you can create something new like, oh, let's say you're trying to do a specific Giving Tuesday campaign and you don't use a platform for that. You can try it out on Cosvox. That's one way. Another way to do it is to run something that's more segmented towards a specific audience. So if you don't target your audience specifically, if what you do is typically just mass like the same same appeal for everybody, you can segment out a portion of your donors and run a fundraising campaign against them to see how it performs. The other thing too, if it's more about budgets, then we do have discounted plans to TechSoup as well as we do have some other pricing and plans that are super competitive, platform-free, on our website as well. Fantastic. Thank you. Next question. For an organization that is just starting fundraising and does not have existing donors yet, how do we request or secure matches or identify donors who would be willing to match? Oh, that's really hard. If you have no donors, then you have to do the basics first before you're ready to use the tactic of a matching gift. Of course, you can always just be the one who is doing the match. If you're on the founding team, then the founding team can be the match and then you can reach out to friends and family to get those initial contributions to your organization. But by and large, I will focus on the basics for your organizations first. Start to build up a donor list, start to really cultivate that list and the key goal really is to build that donor list as big as you can. Once you get to volume, which is around a thousand donors, then you begin to segment out those donors to figure out, okay, who are my mass donors, who are my mid-level donors, and who are my potential major donors for my organization? And then you can begin to cultivate those three audiences differently and begin to grow them until you do have more and more donors as part of your organization. Excellent. Thank you. And then actually the last question we're going to take to you just because of the timing. Again, we hope to follow up as part of the follow-up information to the session. And quick note, several people have asked if you're beginning a recording and yes, you will, along with any, again, follow-up on any questions we haven't been able to get to. So our final formal question for today. We are trying to decide between a Giving Tuesday and a birthday fundraiser, the organization's birthday. Both are happening this fall. The birthday fundraiser is in early December and has more authentic and effective storytelling behind it. Our concern is that we'll miss out because of people who give their capacity at Giving Tuesday. Thoughts? Well, Giving Tuesday is one of those giving days. So what that really means, what I'm trying to communicate is that it's an event that has been organized in order to facilitate donations on that specific day. Now, if you have a better idea than Giving Tuesday, which I think you do, the birthday of the organization where you can feature more authentic storytelling where folks are really connected to the organization or there's something important for the organization and what they do, then I would lean in heavily on focusing your efforts on the birthday fundraiser in early December. I think you can use Giving Tuesday as a kickoff. So it's a soft kickoff saying, okay, a birthday fundraiser is coming up. We're just going to do a soft kickoff right now for Giving Tuesday as a teaser, and then you can begin to see that campaign with some initial contributions. I kind of like using it as a public silent face almost in a sense for your campaign. You can be fruitful where you don't feel like you're missing out on contributions for folks who do want to donate as initial culture readers in early Giving that they can do that, and then you do the bulk of your organization's communications on the birthday fundraiser, or for the birthday fundraiser, since you have more effective storytelling that way. Fantastic. Thank you so much. Again, we have had amazing questions come up today, and some great conversation in the chat, and thank you everybody for your participation. It's fantastic to see so much engagement. We are going to start to wrap up, but before we get to some of the final wrap up comments, we wanted to reveal today's winners. So unofficial drum roll. The best fundraising idea, and actually I think it's ideas plural technically, the award goes to Rochelle Hood. Congratulations. Well done. Our team I think has already been in touch with you about follow-up, and that will happen after today's session. Thank you so much for your participation. The second prize in the most engaged category goes to Paulette Darling. Thank you so much Paulette, and also I believe our team has been in touch, and we will follow up with the official awards. So it was just a quick side note. It was hard to choose. There were so many great ideas, and the chat was really lively today, and so much sharing of information back and forth between participants. We'd love to see that, and I hope it was also really valuable for you. It certainly looked like it, so thank you. So finally, just to wrap up today, if you can, feel free to share something in chat today about something that you learned, and we'd be happy to share that out today. Actually, also just a quick note, I want to echo Paulette's comment in chat, which is that we are all winners, and there was something that behind the scene staff and I were talking about, like there was so much great communication today, and you were all winners today. So if there's something you wanted to highlight that you shared specifically, we'd be happy to share that with you today, with the group today. And also, if you enjoyed today's session and are interested in supporting these kinds of events going forward via TechSoup, we'd love to showcase really great technology tools for the nonprofit sector and for social good. Consider becoming a sponsor. Drop an email if you are interested in talking about becoming a sponsor to Susan Tenby. Her email is stenby at TechSoup. Love to chat anytime. And then also, thank you so much for attending, and thank you to the folks attending, and thank you so much for our panelists. And please, please, please do not forget to complete our post-event survey. We really find your feedback to be incredibly helpful. Thank you so much. And that's all we got for today. Thank you for joining. Take care. Bye-bye.