 Okay, well thank you. Welcome everyone. We love seeing the chats come through letting us know who you are. We have a ton of content to cover today, so I'm going to just jump right in. So welcome again to the Give Big St. Croix Valley webinar all about strategy. Thanks for taking the time out of your day to be here. So my name is Sarah and I'll be leading you through today's presentation. Just real quick housekeeping items to note the webinar will be recorded and it'll be posted in the Mighty Cause Toolkit on the Give Big St. Croix Valley site under the resources tab. And then of course at any point during the webinar if you want to type in your questions, Lisa is going to be helping kind of facilitate those. But then of course at the end we're also going to have a Q&A moment so you can always type those in then as well. So I'm with Sarah. I'm Sarah. I'm with Mighty Cause. We're the platform provider for Give Big St. Croix Valley. We also have Lisa joining us today from the United Way St. Croix Valley. So I'm going to pass the mic over you to Lisa so you can say a few words. Sorry if I can unmute. Hi, welcome everyone. Thank you so much for being here today. I'm really excited to see so many people in this webinar. We have about 61 organizations registered for Give Big already this year so we're really excited and looking forward to working with you all. And I just wanted to mention too that Erin Coughlin is our Give Big program manager and she is not able to join us for this webinar today. But please do continue to reach out to Erin with questions, concerns. She and I are both here to help you. Awesome. So we are really excited to be here with you all for Give Big this year. A quick intro to Mighty Cause which we always love to tell you who we are. But we're a fully functional organization fundraising suite and nonprofits can use our platform year round to raise money for their causes. We were around since 2006 and we were one of the first to actually start hosting giving days so we're just super excited to be involved with Give Big again this year. So we're going to jump into our agenda. We're going to go over the basics for the giving day and just as a reminder in case you're new. And then we're going to talk through some of the strategies you can use to help make your campaign a huge success. We'll do a Q&A at the end as well. So if you have a question while I'm presenting, you can just click the little Q&A button on your screen to send those over to us. Briefly, Lisa, if you also want to go over a couple of the basics for the event. I think many of you have participated in Give Big before so I'll just keep this brief for anybody that's new to the event. Give Big is a 24 hour online giving day that takes place the last Tuesday of April each year. This year it will happen on April 26. It is a program of United Way St. Croix Valley. It's fully virtual program takes place all the action kind of takes place at GiveBigSEV.org and Give Big is open to all local nonprofits serving Pierce, Polk, St. Croix and Burnett counties. In order to participate you do need to pay $100 registration fee and register online. And just a little bit about what's in it for the participants and some of the benefits of participating and Give Big aside from just the ability to raise dollars for your mission and for your programs. There is a chance to win prizes and incentives during Give Big. We have hourly golden ticket drawings, power hours and cash prizes for most unique donors. And those prizes we are actively recruiting sponsors for the event right now. And we'll be making an announcement soon about what our specific prizes will be this year in 2022. We also receive a lot of promotion of your organization. So United Way St. Croix Valley provides promotion of the giving day and promotion of the event of the actual organizations that are participating in a variety of formats, both online and through print media. And it's just a great opportunity to tell your story to raise awareness about your mission and to get in front of potential new donors and people that might not have heard of your organization before but want to learn more about you. And I'll turn it back over to Sarah. Awesome, thank you. Okay, so you're registered, which is the first steps and you're ready to go and you're wondering what to do next. So first you're going to want to customize your organization profile. So again, this one is pretty much all about strategy. So if you haven't watched our first webinar, it's all about getting started. That one really focuses on all the nuts and bolts of how to navigate the Mighty Cause platform. And it has just a ton of getting started information on how to customize your profile so I don't want to repeat too much of that here. But do be sure to check out that webinar. It's available for on-demand viewing whenever you can. The slides are also there and it's all under the resources tab on the Give Big site. Okay, so once your page is customized and filled out, you're going to want to start really thinking about communication strategies for the Giving Day. And really just the different outlets that are available to reach your donors. You want to start really thinking about the goals you have for your actual organization during the Give Big Giving Day. You're going to want to really start thinking about securing matching grants to entice donors and start thinking about how to engage your community and your team of supporters or what we call ambassadors of your organization to help with peer-to-peer fundraising for the Big Day. And this is honestly just really a great time to get creative and excited about your Give Big campaign and plan how you want to really connect with and make the appeal to your donors. Okay, so our toolkit resources. So these are really great tools available to you as you get ready for the event and that's the non-profit toolkit. It's filled with a ton of different tips and tricks and FAQs and walkthroughs, including support articles that you can use for email and social media to help you get inspired and just really figure out how to promote your campaign. And this is of course also where you'll find today's training with the slides as well. So definitely check out the toolkit and all that's in there and of course refer back to it while you're planning your campaign. All right, let's get into some strategy. So since Give Big is a 24-hour event, the trick to really making the most out of your day is to really sustain your fundraising momentum. And just one way to do that and make sure your campaign is on track is to set these mini goals for your organization to really help generate buzz and build excitement throughout the day. So setting mini goals for certain hours of the day is a really good idea so you can really keep people excited about your own goals for your organization and continue working towards the top prizes for Give Big. So setting mini goals really helps sustain your fundraising momentum and get people excited about helping you reach your goals. So when you're considering setting mini goals, you're going to want to think about your overall fundraising goal. And if you don't have one, you should think about one, like what you need to raise, how many donors you want to get each hour or a section of the day to reach your goal or to work towards a certain prize. So make sure to definitely keep in mind when your donors are most active and you're going to want to adjust your hourly or section goals accordingly. So if you know there are certain times of the day that are super slow for you, maybe you want to boost that time period by using a matching grant, which can really help shake things up for your campaign and get some momentum going in like a slower part of your day. So something else you can do to get your campaign really rolling is asking for seed donations. So I'm not sure if you've heard of seed donations, if you're new to the giving event world but these are donations from people in your organizations in our circle that basically break the ice with donors. So they're the first ones that you might kind of ask for a donation to help to really help get the ball rolling. So people will see donations because they help the number of donations grow. They're really helpful too because when people can see people have already started donating sometimes it's hard for someone to be the first to donate so it's nice to have a little money in the bank already that you can talk about promote and really keep the momentum going. So people to ask for seed donations are definitely your board members, some staff, especially just those who are directors or higher level leaders at your organization. Of course your organization's volunteers, or just really anyone at your organization who is super engaged in your work. And also a reminder for seed donations, they really don't have to be huge donations. They can be small, they can be a couple dollars, just a little bit in the bank is really great to help kind of tap into your inner circle and really get your campaign moving forward and get some donations coming in. A really great strategy for giving for just driving donations on your giving day is securing matching grant. So matching grant is essentially just a really large donation that your organization uses to bring in other smaller donations by offering it up as a match. For instance, if you have someone willing to give you like $1,000 on the giving day instead of just putting that money as a donation right into the bank calling it a day, that would be a really good thing to use as a matching grant. So you could take that $1,000 donation and see your followers, you know, between this hour and this hour donations that will be made or matched up to $1,000 which basically allows these donors to double their donation and this can really drive a lot more donations. So I'm going to touch a bit on the Mighty Cause Matches tool, which I do show in the first webinar kind of explaining different tools, so be sure to check that out. But there's a lot you can do within the Mighty Cause Matches tool, you can set a cap for donation matching. So say $200 so someone doesn't come along and make a huge donation, eat up your entire match. So it's a cool tool, it really allows you to do a lot with your matching grant, and especially on a giving day, matching grants can be a super powerful way to drive extra donations. Since a matching grant is ultimately just a really large donation, you're going to want to follow the same process you would when you secure a major gift. You're going to prospect, you're going to cultivate, you're going to ask people to consider as prospects for matching grant are your board members, of course, first and foremost, sometimes an individual board member would be happy to provide you a matching grant. But one thing you can also consider is asking your entire board to kind of work together to provide the match. So if they all want to donate, you know, $50, $100 if you have, you know, 10, 15 people on your board, that can add up pretty quickly to a nice size match. So of course, consider that. And then also if your board still has to pay dues, you could potentially use that and turn it into a large matching grant as well. But for matching grants, you also want to consider your major gift donors who have given large donations to your organization previously. So these are really great prospects. And for large, you know, larger donors providing a matching grant to them to be, you know, the provider of is a really fun way to really liven up their donation. So a lot of them just writing you a check, they know you can talk to them about how they're helping your organization grow and drive other donations. And of course, you can also if the donor would like it, you can give them extra recognition on the site when you're promoting the match. So major gift donors who love, you know, the little bit of shout out are even better grant prospects because you know, you can, you can give them a shout out when you build the matching grant. Corporate sponsors are also really great prospects. Matches are really fun just proactive way for them to get involved in a very public way if they choose to really draw attention to their philanthropy so definitely consider corporate sponsors for matches as well. But at this stage in the kind of in the planning for the event, you're going to want to start making phone calls, setting up emails, starting to cultivate the prospects for your matching grant by letting them know what you're doing and seeing how warm they might be to the idea of getting involved and helping you kind of put together a matching grant. So then, once you've done that in the coming weeks you can start to really make your ask and just shore up any details that you need for the match. And just for your information you can also have more than one match running at the same time on the money plus platform. So, if you do get a lot of really great responses you know you have your board wants to do a match you have a large donor who wants to do a match you've got a corporate match things are looking good. Don't feel like you have to pick and choose just one you can cue them all up, they can happen at the same time, which is really great. So, let's see okay so you are going to now promote your match so at the end of the day, a matching grant is really just a big marketing tool so in order to make the most of your matching grant. You are going to need to promote it so the first step is going to the matching grant tool on your give big profile. And you're going to want to add your match there so this is pretty much what it's going to look like when you log in so you'll have your match manager, your matching grants under fundraising tools. There's a little button that says creates, and it's going to create this little pop up window where you can queue up your match. So, you'll go to the tool you'll add it there. There's marketing tools built into the platform for your matching grant you can put a sticker on your donate button which is showed right here. So donors can see when the grant is active. Let's see and then you can also add you know if you've got a corporate sponsor you can add a logo to their match. So there's a lot of capabilities this is a really great tool. If you've never done a match, just kind of go in and take a look and see what's here and it really will get you kind of thinking about the different capabilities and different matches you can do. Of course, once you have a match you're going to want to add some info to your story on your about page so on the main page of your site, especially if it's a big match. And of course promote it on your social media channels, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, wherever you are. Send out an email to your donors as well and let them know that you have a match that there is a match on the day of a countdown is also a really great kind of thing to add this adds a ton of urgency. So counting down sharing your progress letting people know how much of the matches left can really get people excited and urge them to kind of take a minute stop what they're doing and make a donation because a match is a limited time frame, you know, to really get them involved. Okay, so shifting from matches. We're going to talk about ambassadors ambassadors are people who are in your organization in our circle, who can help boost your campaign. So this is definitely your board members your volunteers, especially anyone who is highly engaged staff members and so on. Utilizing your ambassadors can help you break out of your list of existing supporters and engage new people so people that you would not otherwise have access to an ambassador can help you they can simply share a link to your page. And with their social circle to ask them to donate and help boost your campaign for give big, or if you have a board member for instance, who is super connected. This can also be a really great boost for your organization. Or they can help by getting involved and peer to peer fundraising. So, Laura, cute little graphic over here, you can see how if you're the one shouting the word, you know you're going to get so many donations, but if you're shouting the word and then also having people peer to peer fundraisers or ambassadors, they're able to reach further in their networks so you're even, you know, furthering the reach that you would have otherwise had without your ambassadors working to help you. Okay, so peer to peer fundraising is a fundraising technique it's where you basically are going to use your supporters your ambassadors to help fund raise on your behalf. So the mighty cost platform is actually set up for super easy fundraising for peer to peers. It's a great way to shake up your campaign to acquire new donors. So if you want to try peer to peer. You would basically start by asking your ambassadors to set up a fundraising page for your organization on mighty cause for the gift big event might sound like a really big ask. So often just a super, you know, kind of quick easy fun way to engage your biggest supporters and allow them to tell and share their own story about your organization. So to do that you would go to your organization page here's a little snapshot of many cause. And there is a fundraise button. So your ambassadors will go here they'll click fundraise, they'll be prompted, whoops, they'll be prompted with a little window that says create a fundraiser. And they can click get started. And that is going to be our peer to peer page and they can fill this out. So that page, you know, can be have your logo on it and everything so all they're really going to need to do is pretty much fill out the about them so talk about how they came to work with you why your work is important to them. And it really doesn't distract or draw away from your actual campaign on the day because these people are operating alongside your campaign for the event. They're reaching out to people that they know people that aren't typically in your organization circle. So really, it's a really great way to also build your donor base and reach more people. So for people like your board, they can easily create peer to peer pages, you could have volunteers create peer to peer pages staff page. And it's just a really great way for them to get involved. Without just asking them directly for a donation or for money. So this is a really meaningful kind of way for them to make a donation. Share their link. And it's also just a really great part of your student process to really help and build and sustain a relationship with those supporters. And we've also seen organizations get some really great peer to peer action by just inviting people on social media so you could, you know, copy that fundraise button link. Send it in emails to people, add it to you know your Instagram bio fundraise for us, you know, add the link for young people who are super into social networks to talk all of that. If you're comfortable online that they might not have a lot of cash to give this is a really excellent way for them to help out if they really you know care about your organization and they want to make a contribution that's not cash. To help make things really easy for them, you can set up a fundraising template within your organization's account. You can pre fill images, text facts, your logos. And if you have the capacity, you could just offer to help, you know, set up a page for them. It's really, it really comes down to what you, what amount of time you have to give. Definitely organizations that utilize peer to peer fundraising really tend to, you know, raise a lot more money on giving days, just because their reach is even further. So it's definitely something worth talking about and thinking about how you can incorporate it into your campaign strategy. I don't know Lisa if you have anything you want to add about peer to peer fundraising just anything you've seen. Yeah, definitely Sarah, I was going, you know, I would like to add that with with give big, we haven't seen a lot of people using peer to peer I mean they're definitely have been but you know when we have conversations at the leadership team level, people talk about that's been a tough, tough to get people that are willing to create a page but I do have a suggestion for kind of an in between options. I think it's great if somebody is tech savvy and comfortable on social media and comfortable asking wants to do that peer to peer fundraising that's awesome. But I've had a little bit of luck with people that are comfortable with that but are willing to share an email template with you know send to all of their contacts or to share the post that you're putting up on social media and I know Sarah is going to talk about social media and email in a minute. But there can be a way you know so if you're looking if you're out there looking at this and thinking of this is this is too much and I'm not going to be able to get anyone to do this. Think about if there's a if there are some board members volunteers or staff members that would be willing to send out if you provide them with all of the language for an email, or a social media post or a text if they would be willing to send it out to their friends family professional networks, share it on their LinkedIn and Facebook. That's where we've seen more luck at United Way during give bags because it kind of I think depends on who's in your circle of supporters and whether or not they're comfortable actually being a fundraiser but just a suggestion for you if you're, you know, looking for people to engage your board and know that they won't. They don't want to do peer to peer. Yeah, that's a really good point. So the links that you'll share with people are super effective like we have direct donate link that you can share, you can share you know your organization page. So yeah really engaging kind of who your supporters are and what strategy is going to work best for them. That's a super. Yeah, that's a very good point. I want to touch on. So peer to peer fundraising is definitely like you know your base level, how to get people involved to create a campaign if they're willing to. But if you also want to take it a step further, like if you are interested in trying out peer to peer fundraising for the first time. We also offer team fundraising, and I'm not going to get to into the weeds with this I'll have the slide available and then of course if you're super curious you can always reach out to our support team they have a ton of great, you know, articles and things like that for you. But if your board, you know wants to work together to raise a bunch of money, you can create a team for your board. And then they can have individual pages so it really depends on what capacity you have, like how much, you know, you want to try to do peer to peer fundraising or team fundraising, but I'm going to kind of go through the side pretty And then if there's questions at the end if you want to talk more about peer to peer fundraising but I think I want to get more into email strategy right now. Because there is a lot to touch on there. So, email strategy, your email list is definitely going to be pretty much the most important tool during give big. So emails are really a direct link to your supporters so unlike social media you don't have to worry about algorithms if people are seeing your posts or your messaging. Like, unless someone's unsubscribe for your emails, this is going to pop up in their inbox and some of the notification likely on their phone. So you're going to have the quickest cleanest route to your donors. So I want to talk a lot about email strategy because that's going to be the most important. So first of all, just for email strategy or want to keep it super short, simple and just really skimmable. Most people are reading their email on their phones. So you want to be able to keep it easy, clean. They can scroll through their email and really get to the point of what you're asking from them. People are more likely to read emails that pertain directly to them. So part of your email strategy we highly recommend is segmenting your email list which basically means sorting your donors into a few key groups. So you might have a group that is donors who have given a lot on a regular basis or one time donors or people who have utilized kind of your service but never donated. We can go on and on about how you can segment this list but those are kind of the key ones. And this is going to come in handy because you don't want to craft entirely new messages to each group. But you are going to want to tweak things in your email messaging based on the group you send it to. And also help make it way more personal. So for instance, if you have an email that is going about out to all your volunteers, you want to definitely acknowledge them and how they already help your organization. You don't want to just, you know, shoot off an email, asking for a major gift and not acknowledge what they already do for your organization. You're going to want to kind of speak to them in a different way than someone who, you know, donates to you annually during Give Big. So Beth, definitely like first identify your key segments, whatever those will be, and then figure out how to tailor your message to them. So I mean, when your email is really tailored to the recipient and the relationship you have with that person or corporation or group or whoever you're talking to, they're much more likely to read it and take action on it. But how you segment depends on the program you're using most services, if you have constant contact or MailChimp are going to use tags to segment groups of people on your email list. One thing to pay attention is to the timing of your emails. So we recommend really taking the time to pre schedule as much emails as you can before the event starts. And then to have a template email ready for things on the day of that you might need to send out. You're going to get an e-blast asking people to help you get your campaign goal during a certain hour or if you want, you know, to get most donors or however the prizes are going to work out this year. You're going to want to kind of cater these more spontaneous emails. So create kind of a template to help you have a really effective kind of clean email process for the day of and then of course, you know, another email idea is to, of course, announce that you want to prize. It's a great way to kind of keep momentum, keep the donors updated because these are the people who are really helping you reach these goals. So you're going to want to let them know when you do reach a goal or a prize. As we talked about before, most people are on their phones. So make sure that you're choosing mobile friendly templates. Really test out the emails beforehand as well. So, you know, two weeks out, whatever you're capable of, you know, template out these emails, send them to yourself, try them on your iPhone, your friends, Android, so on. Just make sure it really looks the way you want it to. So you can keep the attention of the person who's reading it. One other thing I do want to also mention, and Lisa's going to talk a little bit about this, but one really great email that might be cause puts together on behalf of give big is our give again email, which goes out to the previous donors for the event from last year. So this is just something that might be cause sets up where we are going to pull the information from the donor history for last year's event. And then we are able to send an email to these donors with a link to pre filled carts kind of style check out flow, which includes all the donations that they made for last year's event. So they have the option when they click on that link to add to their cart to modify to update and adjust, you know, increase donation amounts. And then Lisa, do you want to talk a little bit about what you saw when you use this last year. Yeah, so we send two of these give again emails last year we sent one early in the morning on the day of give big and then we sent another one at 6pm. And both we saw a big increase in giving coming from those emails and we have the ability to track actually who clicked through and gave through those emails and they were very successful so they made a big difference for the organizations, and it's just something that will continue to use so this will not be branded to your particular organization, it is, it has the email comes with give big branding and it's just really generically about today's the give big day. You know, come come back and join us again this year and then that link is where they will see who they gave to the previous year. And that is a really important part of the day and something that you know what we just want you to be aware of that donors will be sent and will once we schedule the exact times that those are going to go out. All of the registrants will receive that information so that if you want to make sure that you schedule your emails to your donor list and your contacts, not right at that exact time that that would be great. I'm kind of staggering how often and how much and kind of planning around what emails are going out. I want to also take a moment so in case you're you know not new to email strategy you were doing give big last year. So I want to also address the people who might want you know the next level of email. So if you do have capacity leading up to then we do recommend doing a be testing. So basically, this means, you know, trying out different to the same email but two different kind of styles to see what hits and drives the most opens for emails. So, basically what this means is, if you're wondering what the heck is a be testing. It's basically splitting up your email half and half and testing a variable. So, say, you know you have some time before the event you want to test if a certain color works better for people to click on is green, a really great color for people to click on, or is a calming blue a really good color to click on. So you can segment your list you half of your list will get you know the green button and half will get the blue button. And that also applies with like subject lines. Are you you wanting to test how you ask someone to do something in a subject line. So basically, you can pull data to see how many people are opening and doing the thing you want them to do which ideally is clicking, you know, on some type of call to action like donate or visit our websites. So then you can pull that information you can review it and you can kind of use that data to make sure you are sending the most powerful emails on the day of give big because you've taken the time, you know what works. You know, the colors that are going to resonate with your donors, you know the language that's going to really click with them. If you send an email and it's you know two paragraphs long about a story. Does that really resonate with your donors doesn't make them want to do and click and donate, or is a quick brief quote from somebody a more successful kind of path for you to take in your email world for your donors. So if you have time that's a really great thing to kind of work on. If you're kind of new, you maybe don't have, you know, the space. Don't worry about AB testing this year but it's definitely something you want to keep on your radar to definitely improve your marketing and take your emails to the next level. Okay, so we're going to switch into social media strategy which is complicated and always fun. So give big is a high stakes day. We do recommend staying in your comfort zone when it comes to social media and really going where your audience is social media is complicated. It's challenging. We don't want you to feel like you have to start, you know, building out a tick tock page when you know the bulk of your followers are on maybe Instagram, but you know, their love scene what you do and that's where they live. So you really want to put in the effort and the time into something that is already kind of working to your favor. Yeah really put your efforts into the platform where you're most likely to reach the most people and have the biggest impact. Again, a lot of this strategy is always going to come back to pre scheduling. So we're going to constantly talk about pre scheduling, you know, your Instagram posts your Twitter posts your Instagram posts as much as you can. And at a time to just save yourself on the date of it's going to be chaotic and fun and you don't want to be overloaded with you know, sending out an email or making a post on a story and a live stream like you want to pre schedule as much as you can, so that you know, you kind of have to sit back and just kind of watch it come in and keep everyone updated. You can get your key content scheduled with Facebook's you know publishing tools or creator studio, you can pre schedule your tweets. And then on the day of if you're, you know, if you have someone who's able to do any live posting or live streaming or, you know, do a story for your day of that stuff is really the stuff that you know you're going to want to do on the day of like a donor updating progress, letting them know when you have reached a prize. But you can definitely template those items out. So if you have a Canada account for free you can go in and you can create little templates that you can pull from so you could create a template to thank a donor and then you could have a volunteer go in and write the donors name, and they could easily post, you know, the thankful little messages on Facebook. And then considering what you can pre plan pre schedule and kind of template so that on the day of, you know, you have everything queued up and you're feeling good. We also find it super helpful to assign someone on your team to social media for the event. So if you have a really trusted volunteer. If you have a board member who's looking to help out who can monitor your social media. It's really great you trust them they can quickly respond to comments. They can interact with your followers. Those are not something you're going to want to think about as well. If possible, we always recommend budgeting just even a little bit of money to boost some of your social posts or tweets so for 10 to 20 bucks. You can really take your ad along way. You can make sure you target your advertisement for you know, a power hour or whatever it is so you can target who you want this to reach perhaps you know you want the ad to really target people who like and follow your page. So that's something to think about. So the terms of content that does really well on social media, it really depends a little bit on the platform, but in general, photos always do well videos are doing really well right now Instagram is really pushing videos reels. You may want to consider doing something a little out of the box if you have the space, like a live stream video or a little watch party for part of your campaign. You can help generate some buzz. Some organizations like to set up little, like a little kind of zoom meeting where you can tell everyone to invite virtually or, you know, something that really connects them on socials so that they can be a part of it. Just all sorts of different things you can think about different outlets for how to spread the word. So do you have anything any social media tips tricks strategies that work well for you all. I don't think anything to add from what you have here. I do encourage people to really think about where they, where they're going to best reach their supporters. As you said, I just would echo that. Where do you get the most engagement, where do you have the most followers because this all, you know, for many of the organizations and have small teams and or maybe new to give big this year or in the last couple of years and it can seem like a lot to put this all together I think that's just one of my top pieces of advice is to really focus your efforts you know your donors you know your organization best, and you'll know best how to reach the people that are that are most likely to come on and support you during give big. I think a little bit of investment in a small boosting for the day can go a long way to getting things out there and and having them seen, and as much as possible if you can encourage volunteers or staff members or other supporters to provide any kind of support for your organization. So if you have any emails or be willing to do I've seen some organizations do little videos or Facebook live the day of give big just get on there and talk candidly about why they support your organization that is that that can be huge just to hear from a person and it can set you apart a bit from other organizations, but I love seeing what all of the organizations do through their social media leading up to give big and on the day of, and I think the ones that are most successful with their social media get creative and do something that shows the people that they serve and is really about their organization so I guess my last takeaway would be make it your own. I don't want to call on anyone specifically but I have a couple of ideas that are floating to mind and those of you that have participated in the past you might have seen some organizations just do a great job of getting their story out there and and getting creative the day up and I think it really engages new people. Also, I don't know if you mentioned to use the give big hashtag so it's give big SCV. I really encourage people to use that on all of their posts, because that helps us to share things or to monitor what's going on. We promote that hashtag a lot so I still I think it's kind of nice to be able to see what people are doing and if you're looking for ideas, you can go to search that hashtag and Facebook and you'll see a bunch of stuff from last year come up, and that can just help be inspiring to to see some of the cool things that people did to engage their supporters through social media. I love the idea of videos so that's something that can definitely be like pre scheduled, considering like what your goals are what messaging you want to kind of send out to donors on the day of. So all of that can be, you know, pre recorded you can, you know, interview your volunteers. Canva lets you create little videos as well so that's something you can keep an eye on. But also media social media strategy isn't just the day I want to mention, like you want to be building up to the day of so figure out when you really want to start the push is it you know, a month out like, is it a month out whatever it is, and then really start to kind of cast the line out to get some bites. You're going to see a lot more kind of results, when people start seeing stuff on their feeds a bit more and more and more until the big day they're like oh yeah I heard about this I saw this you know two weeks ago. Instead of just suddenly seeing it and saying oh what's going on today. So that's something that you can really start to actually start to kind of post about as well. So I want to talk about a question here Sarah that I would address it says do you recommend we start highlighting give big on for one then how frequently should we be, should we keep highlighting the give big day. I wouldn't say that that varies by organization, we definitely start, we start promoting before for one and I would encourage you to put a save the data out there and even, you know, just just kind of start dropping little hints to your, your community that that you're going to be participating and give big and start building that excitement, and then early giving starts on the first and so even before that I usually would put I would start putting some post up that you know early giving starts on for one keep you know save the date and then that day definitely schedule a post saying that you have biggest open, you can encourage people to go and start giving there are some prizes that are that are available for early giving so you still can win golden ticket, things like that. If people donate to you before. And last year I don't know what the reason for this was but last year we saw a huge jump in early giving. So there were a lot of people that came in and gave before the giving day so definitely encourage the day of give big so I'd say the day, the day before, and the day of its multiple posts a day promoting give big from in our strategy and that's why I see a lot of people doing the week before, it might be a daily post counting down or telling each day or giving you know seven reasons to give to us during give big and having one each day there's a lot of different. No ideas that people people use but I think what we want to see give big is that the week before and especially the day of social media feeds in our communities are just flooded with give big messaging. And that really comes from all of the organizations participating as well. So if you if you do go back and look at that hashtag and I'll put that in the. I see that somebody else was asking for that hashtag that will give you some ideas, and you also could look at some of those organizations and see what what their posting schedule was to. Yeah, that's a really good point kind of reviewing what last year looked like. And Sarah I know I just have a couple of other comments to about email or other communication strategies if you want me to share those before we move. Yeah, please. To the follow up just a couple of things that came to mind with email. If you're sending out any newsletters between now and give big I would definitely include it in printed or in digital newsletters you can include the give big logo. All of the give big logo formats are available in the toolkit, the nonprofit toolkit on the under the resources tab. And if you have any trouble finding that please feel free to reach out to Aaron or to me. And then you have some little things that people do that seem to be effective. It's updating your email signature line so you know once it gets starts getting closer to give big I'll add something to my email signature and ask the staff to do something as well it can be something as simple as, you know, can we count on your support for give big Sinclair Valley on April 26, no plan on rallying your friends and supporting us at and give the link directly to your giving page. You can create news canva or any other kind of program that you use to create a little graphic or just include the give big logo, but really just a little bit of text can go a long way. And remember that your fundraising page has its own link. And so when you're sending people your supporters to your give big page you want to make sure that you're providing your link and not just give big SCV.org because that's just going to bring them to the main page. And so as much as possible getting your link out there and sending people directly to your page. I usually do send out an email as well at the beginning of the month with save the date for give big and an early, an announcement that early giving is open. I think it's nice to just to get it in people's minds. And one last thing about emails. If you have somebody that is available during the day or even a number of staff people that could break up the day during give big on on, you know, as donations are coming in that day. I really like to send people thank yous immediately, just from my from my email address so whatever I see something come through you'll get an automatic email whoever set up as an admin. You'll get a notification that so and so just donated this amount to your organization and you will have an email address right there. And I just, you know, it's a lot of work. But all day long I just continue to send a little thank yous I have some template language that I would use for people that I don't know but it's, it's a really great way to that when you're seeing names of people that you recognize that you can thank them in real time. And a lot of times you'll see people give multiple times throughout the day because they're trying to help you win prizes so I think it's just a good way to show that you're paying attention, and that you're grateful for their support. Okay. That leads me into giving day follow up. So just as Lisa was saying, follow up is super important to keep in mind and coming up with a plan. So how you want to reach out to those who are helping make, you know, your goals and achieving your prizes and everything possible. So when you're planning you know all this social media content all this email content you're going to want to also plan how you're thinking your donors, something like making a video or sharing a photo of your staff that you stick into an email can be super helpful with also just like making kind of a connection with the donors. It's not like the impact of the funds you raised once you know the event is over and really close the loop on the campaign that you were you were promoting. So if that means like if you're raising for fundraising for something super specific like a new piece of equipment or improvements to your building or just really anything that you were fundraising for, you're going to want to really update everyone who you know donated to you and just let them know about, you know, your progress and how everything worked out and just really thanking them for giving the time, the attention to your campaign. And then of course, keep in mind you're going to want to kind of have an onboarding plan in place because you're probably going to reach a few new donors, if not a lot of new donors on the day. And you're going to want to hope that they come back and donate again so if you collect email addresses or physical addresses mailing them like a welcome packet is a cute kind of way to say hello and thank them for their time. And a really cool way to get them kind of onboarded so to speak to your organization. You can also create like an automated email journey where they can get more information after they donate about what to do next. You know, give them a call to action to go somewhere else after the event to really keep us like kind of talking about and supporting your work. So as we wrap up just making sure that you have all the contact info here for you to refer to our mighty cost support team is a really great resource before and during the event for anything campaign related. If you're curious and you want to kind of dive deeper and appear to peer fundraising or team fundraising. If you want to kind of dip your toes on there. So that's our support team and we can help you kind of figure out how to get that all set up and kind of lead you in the right direction to different support articles and stuff like that. If your donor means a receipt recent you can reach out as well we get a lot of emails about that. But yeah, so I think that is it for me. So there was a lot of info. I appreciate you all sticking around with us. Thank you Lisa. If anyone has any other questions you want to pass them through now. I got any new ones. I do see there's a question there Sarah from Trudy how important is it to have a campaign goal in a dollar amount. I wonder what your thoughts are about that Sarah. We have always used a goal, but I, you know I never quite know how to answer that question. Yeah, I think it really comes down to what your goals are for the event. Like the thermometer that shows up on your page is a good visual, but really keeping in mind what your call to actions are on the day of. I'm really thinking about like if you if you want to raise you know save $10,000 for a new piece of equipment and that's your goal. Then promoting that and having a thermometer that shows that is really helpful. But if your goal is really really comes down to like what messaging you want to give kind of what strategy you have in place. I think, you know, thermometers are a good thing to look out visually but if your call is, you know, kind of geared towards sending people to know if you have a donor goal or something like that like a unique donors or something like that. I mean, it really, it depends. I don't think there's a straightforward answer people love seeing thermometers so I think it's always something you should definitely kind of utilize it definitely drives excitement. I kind of recommend sometimes doing a lower goal. So you can hit that goal, achieve it and then you can, you know, raise your goal because you can definitely go in and change the amount on your thermometer as well. Right if you meet your goal halfway through the day and you want to increase it that's completely fine. And I do that is the one thing that I do always tell people is set a realistic goal so that it doesn't seem completely unachievable because that can be off putting a little bit from a donor perspective. So really think about. Yeah, what what it's likely for you to raise during that day and know that you can adjust throughout the days if you need to. It's not like it's set in stone. Yep. We have another Q&A. What is a unique donor? A unique donor is like just usually it's tied to an email address. So the person is unique if they're not like, you know, multiple donors so like if there's a like, most unique donors in the hour, you know, if someone donates five times they're not a unique donor five times they're one donor. So we have prizes that are based on unique donors and and so it's not like a person can go and give the $5 minimum 10 times and then be counted as 10 different donors. It really, you know, I think of unique donor as an individual person. So you might give to your organization or organization of your choice and maybe trying to help them win a golden ticket so you're giving us a smaller gift every hour versus giving a larger gift one time, but you're only counted as one unique donor. If that makes sense. Any other ones coming through? Any other questions or things that we could answer? Oh, last piece of advice. I was just looking at my notes here. Reminder just to make sure that you email your team, your board, your volunteers, whoever you're keeping it in the loop about give big the day up and remind them that it's that day. I think that's just always a good. Even if you've been telling them all about it just that little reminder in the morning to build excitement and encourage them to watch you on the leaderboard throughout the day and keep track of how you're doing that that can just be fun you know give big the I guess last thing it's it there's a lot and a lot of this that we've shared today is optional I mean you don't have to find a matching grant you don't have to find peer to peer fundraisers all those. So don't just help but many organizations, majority will not have these things. So don't, you know, don't feel like you have to do all of this at once. And remember to have fun with it it really I think the day is actually fun it's always kind of a whirlwind, but it is one of those days where you really see excitement build in the community, you see people really coming together around a cause and it just I think the gift big donors have a lot of fun trying to win prizes for their organization and cheer their organization on. And don't lose sight of that in your planning, because it can be, especially if you're new to this I really do understand if you're feeling like, like this is a lot right now. And, and that's okay and just remember you pick up the things that are going to be most impactful for you and start there and build from that. That's really good. Next steps for everyone if you're like, you know, looking at this webinar and being like okay well what do I do next. I recommend just everyone kind of go to the nonprofit toolkit on the gift big site. We have five steps for fundraising success in there. We have a bunch of different links and really just like sitting down with a piece of paper and just kind of planning your goals for the event is a really great next step if you haven't already done so like what do you want to get out of gives big this year. And then as soon as you have those goals, you can really start to kind of create a timeline and a strategy of how to achieve that those goals. That's my suggestion. Yeah, that's very good. Well, thank you everyone I don't see any other questions coming through. Thank you Lisa and to give big St. Croix Valley team we're really excited for this year. I'm going to upload this video to the toolkit, as well as the slides so you're welcome to download the slides and kind of look through the content that we've covered. So just remember you can always reach out to our support team, you can email them support on many cause calm if you need absolutely anything. And thanks again everyone, and we're looking forward to give big this year so happy fundraising. Thank you all for being here.