 Good afternoon everyone, thanks for joining us today. I think we have a few people still signing on so we are going to go ahead and get started in just a moment here. I am going to go ahead and share my screen with the deck and then if I could get just a few people to type into the zoom control panel on the bottom of your screen right into that chat. Just let me know if you can hear me okay and if you can see the screen with the community thrives fundraising strategy deck up great thanks I appreciate that. Thanks for letting me know. Just to let you know also this presentation is being recorded so recording will be made available will send the recording to everybody who registered. And it will also be posted on the a community thrives website in the nonprofit toolkit so you will have access to a recording after this presentation is over. I also wanted to call out before I get started the Q amp a tab in that same zoom control panel at the bottom of your screen. If you do have questions throughout the presentation please feel free to type them in that Q amp a we will leave some time at the end to cover questions we'll get through as many questions as we are able to get to on the webinar and if we aren't able to get to your question, we can follow up after so please do feel free to type in a question at any time as we move forward. So with that, I will go ahead and get started, we are here to talk about the a community thrive campaign, specifically focused today on fundraising strategy. So, for those of you that haven't seen it yet we have hosted two other webinars, one was an info session that focused on all the basic information about the community thrives campaign. We also have a pre recorded webinar on getting started with a community thrives. That one is much more focused on the basics of using the platform how to add a logo where to access your donations report, etc. So if you're relatively new to the campaign to the process here. Today we're focusing a bit more on fundraising strategy will cover some of the basics but if you're looking for more depth in depth information about the basics. You can visit the nonprofit toolkit on the website, and you'll be able to access the recording of both of those previous webinars that I mentioned. All right. So, my name is Bethany I'm the director of our community team here, I partner with Sue Madden over at the Connect Foundation, who is the host of this event. A quick overview of the agenda that will be covering as I mentioned, we will spend just a few minutes on the challenge basics, but if you're looking for more in depth, go to that nonprofit toolkit and you can rewatch, or watch for the first time. We'll be recording of our previous webinars. We will go over grants and bonuses. This is something that has also been covered in the other webinars but it's very important and such a key piece of this challenge that we want to make sure everyone understands what those grants and bonuses are all about. And then we'll really spend most of the time today talking about campaign strategy, how you can pull your fundraising campaign together to raise funds during this fundraising portion of the challenge to ensure that you're meeting your minimum and therefore becoming eligible for all the other wonderful grants that are available from the Connect Foundation. And then we'll end with key reminders. And as I mentioned some Q&A so feel free to type any questions in that Q&A panel. As we go throughout and I will address questions at the end. So to start here with some of the basics. And most important thing to know is that the application closes tomorrow, June 30 at 9 o'clock PM Eastern. So the majority of you on today's webinar have likely completed your application you've submitted and you've received an approval, but if anybody is joining today or watching this that hasn't yet completed that application. This is your last call reminder that that application will close tomorrow at 9pm Eastern. And then complete applications are accepted no late submissions. So make sure if you've started your application but haven't finished it yet. Go back into that red application form, log into the account you created the first time and complete that form. If you hit that submit button at the bottom receive a confirmation on screen and an email that you've submitted your application, then you're not fully in. Once all applications are submitted, the next stage is approval but make sure that your application is submitted by tomorrow at 9pm Eastern. So there, we have a few weeks, where really the goal is for your nonprofit to focus on building out your strategy, building out your fundraising plan for the campaign, starting July 19 Monday July 19 that noon, the fundraising portion of this challenge it will run through Friday, August 13 also at noon. During that window of time, there is $200,000 in incentive grants that are available to all fundraising participating fundraising organizations will cover the details of these later. But there's top fundraiser grants that the organizations in each tier that raise the most throughout the entire challenge will win. And then there's also challenges each week. So each week a new bonus opportunity becomes available and different nonprofits have the opportunity to win each of these weekly challenges as a part of this overall campaign and again will cover the details of exactly what those challenges are, how much you can win, and what's the criteria to make yourself eligible for those bonuses a little bit later in the webinar. And outside of the fundraising grants the incentive grants that I was just talking about, there is $2 million in grants that are available from the Gannett Foundation. To be eligible to be considered for those grants, your organization must fundraise a minimum in the fundraising portion of the challenge. So the groups of nonprofits participating are separated into two tiers. Tier one is organizations that have a budget of under 500,000. This is pulled from the information that you submit in your application process. So tier one organizations, those that fall under that 500k threshold, they must raise $3,000 in the full length of the online challenge. Tier two organizations, those at $500,000 and above must raise $6,000. And so this is something that you'll want to make sure you're paying attention to as you move throughout the challenge. Make sure that you are making it to that minimum threshold so that you become eligible for grant consideration. So these grants, not the incentive grants but this additional pool of grants, talk more about in a moment. Those will be announced in late September, early October. But just to make sure everyone's aware, anything that you raise online during the challenge, you will keep, whether you meet the minimum or not, whether you earn any of these incentive grants, whether you become selected for any grant, if your organization raises $50, $250, $650, whatever you raise online through the platform, your organization will absolutely keep and that will be dispersed directly to your organization. So just at a very high level, wanted to start here with quick steps to make sure everyone's on the same page about what exactly your nonprofit needs to do to participate. The very first is apply. So again, most people on today's webinar have hopefully already completed your application, if not do so as soon as you get off this webinar so that you make sure that you are eligible. The next step is to update your mighty cause profile. And as I mentioned already, if you need help with how to update that mighty cause profile, what you can do to customize. That is information you can access in the nonprofit toolkit, you can watch the previous webinar, which walks you through all the details on how to update that profile but the goal is that profile is where you're going to send your donors to. So you want to make sure that the page is in great shape. You've added photos, videos, text, you've set a goal for your campaign, you have customized the language on the thank you page and the receipt that donors will see when they complete their donation. Once you build out that page that you'll be directing donors to the next step is to actually plan the fundraising campaign. So are you going to reach out to, how are you going to do your outreach are you going to rely mostly on emails, are you going to do social media, are you hosting any in person events. Do you have board members or other ambassadors people close to your cause that you're going to rely on to help you spread the word. Do you have anybody that you're actually going to invite to start a peer to peer fundraiser on behalf of your organization. So we're thinking through the strategy there and we'll cover as we get further into today's webinar what are some of the things that you consider, but building out that fundraising campaign so that come July 19 when the fundraising portion begins, you're able to press go on all of the strategies you've outlined all the emails the social posts that you've scheduled for example, and then the focus really becomes raising money for your cause. So if you've mentioned any dollars that you raise online through the challenge, your nonprofit will receive no matter what. But the goal is to meet the fundraising minimum for your tier, so that you become eligible for the grants offered by the platform and hopefully if you're one of the top performers in a given week or across the entire challenge, you'll have access to those additional bonus challenge and fundraiser grants as well. So, just a super quick overview of your account on the platform and kind of how you navigate through. There are other resources available for more further in depth, but when you come to the platform, sign in and access your organization's dashboard your nonprofits account. You'll see right down the left hand side of your screen, a dashboard that opens up with a number of key items that allow you to manage different aspects of your nonprofits presence on the platform. So first is the overview screen that's what you'll land on right at the top. That's going to walk you through a to do list of key items you'll want to complete on your page. Share key announcements as we go through the challenge will be posting, you know, bonus challenge to starts in an hour, for example, will be keeping you up to date there, as well as you'll see your organization's key metrics. You can customize what you see, whether you're looking at dollars raised number of donors, largest gift average gift size there's there's lots of flexibility and you can determine what metrics are important for you to be tracking during this campaign. Next down the list is your organization page this is that profile page that I just mentioned a few moments ago. That's really the page that you'll want to customize for this campaign. That's where you'll send your donors. That's where they can come and make their donations so you want to customize that page and make sure it looks looks professional polished and shares the story of your organization what you're raising funds for and why you're encouraging donors to make their gift. You'll also have a fundraising tools folder on your dashboard. This is where you can view and manage campaigns. So as I mentioned, you might choose to have individuals start peer to peer fundraisers for your organization. Any funds raised by a peer to peer fundraiser will roll up into the total that your organization is raising for the challenge. So if you have three peer to peer fundraisers that each raise $500 on their own unique pages. That all rolls up so that your organization is getting credit for that $1500. So that's a great way to ensure that you're meeting your minimum and put you in even better shape for some of those incentive grants is by getting individuals peer to peer fundraisers to help help spread the word help bring in donations. That's an optional tool you don't have to use it, but we definitely recommend it we'll talk a little bit more about the strategy behind that in a moment. On this fundraising tools folder this is also the same place you would set up a matching grant for your campaign. Something we'll talk more about in a bit but is a key strategy that we encourage you to consider as a part of helping your campaign stand out. Next item down you'll see is your reports. This is going to give you your full online donations report offline donations report if you are posting in a tier page recurring donations report if you have any individuals that set up a recurring donation to your organization. And this is also where you'll access a disbursement report so after the challenge is complete, you will receive your disbursement via check or electronic funds transfer if you sign up which we encourage all organizations to sign up for electronic funds transfer. Either way you'll receive a disbursement and there will be a corresponding disbursement report that you have access to in your dashboard to reconcile the amount that you receive with what donations were associated. You can customize your checkout that's the next item down on the dashboard. This is where you can complete the thank you page, thank you receipt, as I mentioned already. And the other item that you can do here is to set up suggested donation levels for your donation page so for example, $25 buys one week of meals for a family. So it will have slightly different variations on that what the dollar amounts are, but customizing those levels and adding a description is a really nice way to add tangible connection for your donors to the gift that they're making. And the final item on the dashboard is your settings tab so this is where you're going to be able to add new administrators to your account, you can set up and manage that electronic funds transfer disbursement. You can edit update any of your organization's information whether it's your display name on the platform or if your name has changed legally address has changed legally. We have a process through the platform through that settings tab, where you can get that information updated. So we've talked a little bit about the profile key things that you'll want to do. So customize the look and feel add your logo choose a background image. Really customize the look and feel to make sure that it's, it's promoting the brand of your nonprofit and sharing a powerful story about the project that you're trying to fund in particular through this campaign. Check out flow. I'm just showing you a quick example of the things that we've talked about before but setting up those custom donation suggestions, building the thank you page in the custom receipt, but also you'll have the ability to preview the donation experience here. In this checkout flow, you'll be able to see exactly what it looks like for the donor start to finish in their donation process. And we always encourage nonprofits to go through this process and know exactly what the donation flow will look like for donors before the campaign begins on the 19th The donation, just a couple more pieces of information here. Anybody who's an administrator for your organization will receive an email notification when a donation is made. You can certainly turn that off if you'd like each individual admin can manage their notifications, but by default an email will be sent. The donations report that you have access to will be a real time report. So you'll see in real time as donors are making their gifts throughout the campaign, the ability to come to your reports tab and see key information right on the screen. You can also download the full details as a CSV report so that you can import into whatever external programs you might be using for your CRM, etc. Before we do have an offline donations report you do have the ability to add an offline donation to your page totals if you'd like. A key thing to note is that for this challenge offline donations do not count towards meeting your minimum. So if somebody gives you a check for $2,000 and you add that as an offline gift to your page. You will display on your page totals that $2,000, but that will not be eligible for the minimum amount. The minimum amount must be raised through online gifts. And just final note only donations made online and during the challenge window July 19 that noon to August 13 at noon will count if somebody makes a donation 10 minutes before 10 minutes after the challenge it does not count as a part of meeting the minimum or your challenge totals. I already mentioned that organizations have the ability to either accept donation or disbursements by a check or electronic funds transfer. Our recommendation is electronic funds transfer. It allows us to send the funds on a twice monthly basis. You can avoid issues like a check getting lost in the mail so you get your funds more quickly there's no fee to sign up for EFT. We send funds twice a month so any donations received from the first to the 15th of a month will be sent on the 25th of that same month, any donations from the 16th of the month through the end of the month will be sent on the 10th of the month. If you do opt to not sign up for direct deposit that is okay and that is certainly your choice. We will send a check once a month so all donations received in the month of July, for example will be sent by a check on August 10. There is a $5 paper check fee that will be applied to check should you choose to receive that. And as I mentioned before there will always be a disbursement report corresponding in your dashboard where you can access the full details what donations were included in any disbursement that you receive. So again, that was just a super quick highlight of platform basics. If you're looking for more information if you have more questions. First step is visit the nonprofit toolkit take advantage of the resources there. Second step if you're still having questions is to reach out to support at mighty cause calm. I'll share that information again at the end how you can contact customer support. And now we're going to transition into talking about the grants and the bonuses so I've outlined some of this information earlier, but again wanted to get into more detail to make sure everyone's aware of really what the opportunities are. I think one of the things that's really most exciting about this challenge is that there are pretty amazing opportunities for participating nonprofits to walk away with considerable amounts of funds to support their efforts. So, the very first piece of this is the top fundraiser grants. So this is going to run the full length of the challenge so starting Monday, July 19 at noon all the way through Friday, August 13 also at noon. The organizations the three organizations in both tiers so the smaller and the larger tier of nonprofits. The top three organizations that raise the most dollars online during the challenge will win first prize is $25,000 second 15,000 third 10,000. So, again, you know you're competing against friendly competition of course but you're competing against organizations that are of a similar size to your nonprofit. And winners will be selected recipients selected in both of those tiers. Please note that an organization must have a minimum of 10 unique donors to be eligible. So, you couldn't, for example, have one donor make a $300,000 donation through the platform and win first prize just because of that donor. So the goal is of course most dollars raised, but we're also encouraging to make sure that participating nonprofits have a representation of unique donors that give to their campaign so organizations recipients selected must have 10 unique donors, given to their campaign throughout the entire challenge window to be selected as the top fundraiser grant. Aside from the top fundraiser grant which lasts the entire challenge as I mentioned, there are specific bonus challenges available each week as we move throughout the challenge. So for the very first week, the first challenge starting again right when the campaign kicks off July 19. At noon through the next Monday at 1159 59 so exactly one full week minus one second, the top four charities to in each tier so top two in tier one top two in tier two that have the most unique donors, give to their organization will win will be $5,000 so unique donors will talk more about this in a moment isn't unique individual making a gift to your page. If one of your donors john Smith makes 25 donations to your campaign in that first challenge window. He only counts as one unique donor, even though he's made 25 separate gifts. So the first week is really all about grassroots reaching out to as many unique donors as possible. The first donation counts from five to 25 to 35 to 105 any donation counts as long as it's from a unique donor. In the second week. So, July 26 that noon to August 2 at 1159 the second full week of the challenge, the top four organizations in each tier that raise the most dollars will each receive $3,000. So, the focus shifts slightly from bonus challenge one we're focused on getting unique individuals to give bonus challenge to great week if you have a major donor that's planning to make their gift during the campaign. You'll want to encourage them to give during that bonus challenge to making you eligible for that most dollars raised. The cycle repeats for bonus challenge three and four. So week three bonus challenge three again focuses on most unique donors, the top three organizations in each tier will receive $4,000. And then the final week bonus challenge number four, again, reverts back to most dollars raised the top four organizations in each tier. All this information is available on the community thrives website there is a there is a page that details all the rules we encourage you to review them. There's also a page that details all the challenges the bonus challenges and grants available so you can confirm how many winners what the total amount is and the dates for each one so definitely encourage you to visit that for more clarity. And then plan out your strategy accordingly. So I mentioned the full rules are available on the site, but to confirm for every single one of those challenges whether it's the top fundraiser grants or those weekly bonus challenges. Organizations will be grouped by the tier that they are in so tier one organizations that have that minimum of raising $3,000. Organizations with a budget of under $500,000. Those will all be grouped together so bonus challenge one, there will be winners in tier one, and winners in tier two, for example. So unique donors we've mentioned briefly already, but that is a unique individual so that's kind of all all the explanation needed there but a unique individual counts as a unique donor on the platform proxy donations. This is something that is not allowed. Your nonprofit can't choose to make a donation with your own organizations credit card to boost your boost your funding amounts. We do review all donations post campaign to make sure that all the donations that were received for nonprofit are eligible. That's why we encourage all organizations to read through the rules. It is a lot to read through, but it's very helpful information and really will guide your organization into what's the right way to approach this campaign what strategies are allowed what may not be allowed. So definitely encourage you take time to read through the rules, especially the piece on eligible donations and ineligible donations. I just wanted to call out a few common questions that we get related to the rules here. So, aside from the fundraising grants which we've talked about so far, all organizations that meet their minimum for their tier are eligible for these other grants. National project grants there are 16 total grants selected from the applicants that meet their minimum. Organizations will receive $100,000 grant, five organizations will receive a $50,000 grant and six organizations will receive a $25,000 grant. So this is completely separate from any funds you raise online in the challenge and any bonus challenge or top funders or grants that you that you might receive during the challenge. So aside from that, there's also local operating grants that will be selected so these are, you know, the minimum grant amount is $2,500, but there's no maximum. So there's really lots of opportunity, tons of opportunity for all participating nonprofits to be eligible for all these kinds of grants. So again, check out the rules that are posted on the website for more detail on the selection criteria on the national project and local operating grants and make sure that as you go through the challenge, you're keenly paying attention to that minimum for your tier, so that you're making sure that you're eligible. A couple more details on the rules. An organization cannot win more than two bonus challenges. So, if the same nonprofit is at the top of the leaderboard all four weeks, they won't be eligible for all four of those bonus challenges. So it's an opportunity to spread the love among multiple participating nonprofits, and also note that the organization that wins the top fundraiser grant cannot win bonus challenge for as well. So since that final bonus challenge is based on dollars raised. If somebody gets a handful of really large gifts in bonus challenge for that brings them to the top of that top fundraiser grant leaderboard. It's great, and they will be eligible for that top fundraiser grant, but again in an effort to spread the love and make sure that as many organizations as possible or having a chance to walk away with some of this grant funding bonus challenge for will be only organizations that didn't also win the top fundraiser grant. When it comes to the unique donor. The unique donor requirement those unique donor challenges. And we do review donations post event for authenticity making sure that organizations are following the rules and any, you know, efforts to abuse or mask or create fake email addresses to increase your donation count. We do review and and those organizations are often disqualified so. The spirit of the challenge is either to encourage, you know, dollars raised for your organization or unique donors to give to your organization. So keep the spirit of the challenge in mind and again be sure to review those official rules. So when it comes to strategy we've talked a little bit about some of the strategy for these bonus challenges already. So if you want to take time in advance of the challenge look at what the bonus challenges are for each week and make a plan. As you know, organizations cannot win all four bonus challenges. And so if you don't have a specific effort a specific goal in mind and you just are pushing your campaign throughout the entire four weeks in the same way. Perform well each week but not perform amazingly well one week to put yourself in the running to win one of the bonus challenges. So we always encourage organizations to pick one or two bonuses that you really want to go after. That's when you're going to hit your audience the hardest. That's when you're going to line up your major donors. That's when you're going to time email social media, you know, getting ambassadors and board members to help spread the word, etc. For each bonus challenge, there are leaderboards that are updating in real time on the community thrives website so you can see halfway through the week. How do you stand compared to other organizations in your tier for that week's bonus challenge. So you have visibility to know great we're in first we're in third we're in fifth we're really close. Use that information to encourage yourself and your staff internally on their efforts, but also feel free to share that information with donors, let donors know how close you are to the opportunity for this grant funding. Make sure donors know that these bonus challenges are available. Donors always love the ability to know that their donations are going to go further. And so even if you don't think you have a great chance of winning one of the bonus challenges. Make sure donors are aware and not can help act as a little bit of an extra incentive to get that donor to make their gift right now today, rather than waiting and hope they come back some time to learn the challenge. So again, I encourage you to look at the website and go through the details of the bonus challenges, when they're happening and make up, make the plan in particular for how you're going to which bonus challenges you want to tackle and how you're going to go after that. So now we're going to sort of switch into more general campaign strategy, of course, these strategies, if done well can help you put put you into a better position to be eligible for those bonus challenges, but every organization can benefit from these strategies that we're going to talk about here, whether you are going specifically after a bonus challenge or not. The first idea to keep in mind is to map your campaign out ahead of time with many goals. Many partners on our platform will host 24 hour challenges, multi day or week long challenges. These challenges for four week challenge. That's a long fundraising effort that's a lot of time that you are going to be communicating engaging your donors. And so you'll want to make sure that you've got a general plan in place of how you're going to move through the strategy to hit your overall goal. So whatever your goal is at the end of the challenge raising $25,000, you know, earning the top fundraiser grant for example. Break that down into what needs to happen each week to put you on track for that. By doing that, it'll help keep you on track internally but also gives you more to talk about with your donors. You know, keep the message slightly unique, interesting, refreshing as you go through the challenge. Obviously you want consistency in your message. But having some kind of unique mini goal or mini focus of each week is going to allow you to build excitement as you move through the challenge and keep your donors interested and engaged as you move throughout the process. So maybe the first week you want to raise $1,000. Maybe by the end of bonus challenge to you want to make sure that you've hit your fundraising minimum because you know that is a key part in being eligible for those fundraiser grants. And you want to make very sure that within, you know, before the challenge is even halfway over, you have hit that threshold. So just a couple of ideas, every nonprofit is of course going to have a unique set of mini goals that go along with the unique goals that that nonprofit has for their campaign. Asking for seed donations is a very critical way to get your campaign off the ground. We have a couple of different groups of people internally. Every nonprofit's audience will be slightly different, of course, but most nonprofits will have a couple of these potential audiences, your board members. We're going to talk about board members, at least a few times as we continue to move through today's webinar, board members are such a key part of your organization success in this campaign. There's lots of different ways that you can use them. You can use them multiple ways, but make sure that you are absolutely involved in your board as a critical piece of your fundraising campaign. Make sure they know what's at stake for this campaign if you meet the minimum, what types of grant opportunities are available, and then get them on board. Maybe a couple of your board members can make a donation right there as the challenge kicks off on that first day or in that first week, so that they help kind of break the ice and get the momentum going for the rest of your donors. You can look at internal staff, director, higher level staff, of course, but you can look at all staff members. The minimum donation amount is $5, so anybody within your staff can be encouraged to make a gift. Volunteers, anybody in your nonprofits inner circle. As I mentioned, this audience might look slightly different for each nonprofit, but think about who you might have that you can talk to in advance line up so that when the challenge begins, you know they're going to be one of those first few people out of the gate to donate to your nonprofit and get your campaign up and running. Securing a matching gift, another opportunity for your board members to come out to support you, but you can also look beyond your board, maybe a major donor that always gives a large gift each year, maybe a corporate partner that has supported you with, maybe an event that you have hosted in the past that maybe you're not hosting this year. Maybe there's a local business that you are just developing a relationship with lots of different opportunities. So take some time to do some prospecting of your internal list and see who might be a good fit to offer a matching grant for your campaign. If you have any personal prospects, learn about what matters to them. Of course, the interest of a major donor are not going to align directly with the interests of a corporate partner. Corporate partner might care about where their logo is going to be shared and how you're going to talk about the partnership or if they have any ways to engage their employees in the match opportunity. So a major donor as a major donor might actually prefer anonymity. They may not want their name shared. You know, of course, each donor is going to be different but understanding the goals of each potential prospect will help you make an ask that makes sense to them. So develop what the ask really feels right for these different prospects. And the goal is to identify at least one, but perhaps multiple matching grants that you can add into your fundraising campaign. So again, this is another way to keep interest going through a four week challenge. You can offer a matching grant that's only available during bonus challenge to, for example, that is a way to add something new and different happening in the second week of the challenge. It's also a way to incentivize donors to make their gifts during that second week if that's a challenge that you're focused on. You can have your matching grant run the full length of the challenge. That's absolutely an opportunity. You can have multiple matches. You can have a match for each week. You can have a match. You can have cute matches. So your second matching grant only unlocked when you've met the first match. There's lots of different options in terms of how you want to set up the match. And really the goal is just to build that into your campaign so that you can keep it exciting and interesting for your donors. So once you secure the match, you have the option to add that match right into your page on the platform. So as we were talking about earlier, you'd find this opportunity in your fundraising tools folder on your dashboard, the ability to create a matching grant. The matching grants can be the actual match itself. Let's say you get a donor that gives a $5,000 match that donor can choose whether they want to donate that $5,000 match amount online through the platform, or if they prefer to just send a check directly to your nonprofit. That is between you and the matching donor to decide what is the right process that works for that donor. Like we mentioned with offline gifts, only gifts made through the platform will count towards your minimum. So if that $5,000 match just comes into your organization via check and doesn't get posted through the platform. That $5,000 match amount would not be counted toward your minimum. Any funds that you raised online to meet that match and or if that match is actually paid online through the platform, then that would count towards your challenge minimum. So again, it's completely up to you and your matching donor to decide what you all are comfortable with what you prefer. The key goal of this tool is to allow you to promote that matching grant to your donors. So you can add a name you can choose to keep the donor anonymous if you'd like you can add a logo. If you do have a corporate partner that offers the match you can add their logo to promote that partner right within the match. You can set up different types of matching grants it can be dollar for dollar so you know if you raise $5,000 online you unlock a $5,000 match, you can do a two to one match three to one match 50% match. You can set up a match that you only unlock the $5,000 match if you have 50 donations made to your page or 50 unique donors give to your page. So again, when you're thinking about the matching grant and working with your potential matching grant donor, keep in mind what your goals are and what those bonus challenges are available. You can set up a match for example and you're trying to incentivize the most number of unique donors to give to your campaign in that bonus challenge one or bonus challenge three. That might be a good opportunity to set up a matching grant that's based on achieving a certain number of unique donors that way, you're kind of your your strategy is working together so that you're both unlocking your potential matching and putting your organization in a good position to be eligible for the bonus challenge of the week. When you post the matching grant on your page. It's going to add what we call a matching grant tile right onto your profile page that is visible to donors visiting your page. They can see that you have a $5,000 match. They can see how close you are to meeting that. They can see that you're in real time to both the end time of the match, as well as the, you know, actually securing the match if you've received 400, $4,500 online and you only have $500 left and donations that will show right on that match. You've done that and as you're going through the campaign, you'll want to make sure that you're incorporating this match into your communications as much as possible, reminding donors just like we want to remind donors about the bonus challenges. We want to remind donors about the matching grants that you have available, because different than a bonus challenge where only the top, you know, two, three or four organizations in a given week will become a recipient. If you secure a match directly for your organization, you are in direct control of your ability to unlock that match and receive those matching funds. So it's just another way to kind of help guarantee the success of your organization in this campaign. So moving beyond matching grants, we're going to transition to talk a little bit about ambassadors and ambassadors is a is a broad term it can mean any number of things it can mean an individual that's going to help share your campaign on social media. An individual that's going to send an email to their friends and family asking them to donate, or in this particular case that we're talking about it here, an individual that's going to create a peer to peer fundraiser for your organization. And so I already mentioned that this can be managed through the campaigns tab in the fundraising tools section of your dashboard. You can create a team or event fundraiser which I'll talk more about in a moment to allow a number of individuals to create peer to peer fundraisers, or an individual can just start a fundraiser completely on their own. And the real goal, the reason that we encourage organizations to focus on peer to peer fundraising is it is such a great way to reach and acquire new donors. You know in this graphic really represents it. Best of all, you have your own existing database of donors that you can email to have make a donation to your campaign. You only have an existing universe of so many email addresses that you can connect to. If you engage at other individuals, individuals close to you and individuals that love your cause for them to reach out to their projects, you're automatically amplifying the voice of your campaign, reaching new people that you just wouldn't have the ability to reach yourself. Of course, well planned fundraising campaign is going to combine the two, your nonprofit of course needs to have your own more traditional strategies of email outreach and engaging your donor base. This engaging peer to peer fundraisers allows for an additional level of amplification. Again, another way to help ensure your organization success as a part of this campaign. So as I mentioned, any dollars raised or unique donors that come in from a peer to peer fundraiser will roll up into your organization's total. So that counts for both weekly bonus challenges as well as the overall top fundraiser grant throughout the range. Any unique individuals that give to a peer to peer fundraisers page and any dollars raised on a fundraiser page, all roll up and help put you in a better position to both meet your minimum and be eligible for those challenges. And the other side of it that is less focused on the challenge and the dollars raised. It's a great opportunity to cultivate a stronger relationship with some of your supporters. So, as you think about kind of the donor pipeline and how you move an individual from showing your organization along this journey of becoming more and more involved and more and more committed. An individual that creates a peer to peer fundraiser for your organization has a much higher level of engagement and connection to your nonprofit that somebody that has just made a gift once or twice. So it's a great way to continue building a relationship with the actual fundraiser itself. And it has the added benefit of sharing and kind of developing your library of personal stories about the impact of your nonprofit. So if a volunteer, for example, starts a peer to peer fundraiser for your nonprofit, as they fill out their peer to peer fundraising page, they're encouraged to add content and messaging about why are they fundraising for this organization. Why do they love your organization? How has your organization made an impact on their lives? You then have access to these stories that are now being shared and promoted. You can help amplify those stories, but it also gives a somewhat different perspective on the key message that you'll be sharing of your nonprofit stories from other perspectives about the value of your nonprofit. So there's really endless benefits that come with peer to peer fundraising, and that's why we really encourage nonprofits to consider that as a key part of their strategy. And one of the easiest ways to do that is by creating a team fundraiser. So, in this case, you can create a team fundraiser, whether it's for, you know, all of your board of directors together again I'm coming back to that board as I mentioned because they are a key piece of making your organization's campaign successful. So that's one example you don't have to do it with your board, it could be a group of individuals, volunteers, alumni of your program, staff of your organization. You know lots of different avenues depending on what makes sense for each organization, but creating a team fundraising page really just allows you to have a group setting that makes peer to peer fundraising more accessible for each of the individuals. So maybe one of your board members is feeling kind of hesitant they haven't done a lot of direct fundraising before they're not really sure what to do, or saying with your volunteer staff, you know, they may feel a little hesitant to fundraise on their own, but if they're fundraising as a part of this group initiative. They're kind of part of something bigger they can work with talk to, you know, have friendly competition with other fundraisers whatever works for the group of people but it gives them more of a structure to do their fundraising. You have the ability to do things like create a template for them a page template so it's really easy for them to create and publish their page. You can create resources for them you know draft a sample email that they can copy and paste into their Gmail inbox to send their fundraising link out to their friends and family. And, and once you create this team. It's really becomes, you know, yes of course peer to peer fundraising we hear sometimes it's a lot to manage you know now we have to manage fundraisers as well as our campaign. So getting that out ahead of time, come up with, you know what's an email that you might send each week to the people that are fundraising for your organization. Maybe you can appoint somebody internally on your staff that's going to be the key point person for these peer to peer fundraisers. Answer questions for them provide these resources your logo etc send them emails to keep them engaged. A lot of those tools are built in through the platform and then create their page for them you can send emails right through the platform. So it's really about deciding what kind of structure what kind of grouping is going to really work best for your organization. And just coming back to the board one final time, you know, it's key, of course, as a part of the board members and average board members responsibility to help a nonprofit fund raise, but sometimes throughout the year it can be hard to identify key opportunities that they can take direct action when it relates to fundraising. This is a really good opportunity to allow each of your board members to become engaged, you give them very specific instructions. It's a very key set of goals, you help them makes it really tangible, and in some respects, easy for them to complete this part of their, you know, goal of helping the organization fundraise. So if you want to email strategy, of course, across a four week campaign, you'll want to take time ahead of time to plan out what does your email strategy look like, so that you aren't in a case where you're in the middle of the challenge you're not where you want to be with your goals and all of a sudden you're like wait, who cannot email what should I send I've got to build it I've got to send it. I'm ahead of that now and saying okay what email do I want to send on the first day of the challenge to let my donors know the challenge is open please make your gift. When else do I want to send emails throughout the challenge, am I going for a specific bonus challenge do I have a specific matching grant, and then you can set up the schedule as it goes along with that. It gives you the opportunity to look at past emails and and understand okay, we usually have the best engagement from our donors on emails if we send them. You know at six o'clock at night, or at noon, or Tuesdays or Thursdays you look back at your email history and see what seems to really work for your audience, and then time your emails accordingly so that you make sure you're having the best possible return. I always encourage making sure that your emails are mobile friendly and you do testing and previewing of those emails course the donation page on the platform, your profile page is all mobile friendly, but most donors will start from an email that they received from your organization, so you want to make sure that that email is also mobile friendly the donate button is big and clear and obvious on the email. Keeping it short and sweet, you know, donors don't need quite as much information about the program about your organization to be to be willing to make their gift. While internally your organization may have all this really great information about the outcomes of the program and who served and who benefits in your history, all that's great information. But the key is to find a way to translate that into something that is short, simple and consistent. But what's really going to resonate with your donors what matters to donors, and oftentimes that's going to be personal stories, not always statistics. You know, but how, how are you going to allow the individual donors that you're reaching out to to relate directly with the importance of the program or the project that you're trying to fund. When it comes to social media strategy, a lot of similar ideas here, scheduling ahead of time is going to be really key because that's going to allow you to actually interact with your audience on social media during the challenge. So if you set ahead of time using, you know, tool like Hootsuite or maybe another tool that you're using you can schedule your posts in advance. So you can make sure that you have a minimum baseline of social activity happening posting once each week. You know, mentioning the bonus challenges the opportunities for grants match and grants you have etc. That allows you a little bit more space so that while the challenge is actually active. You can respond to comments that people are making you can share posts that people are sharing on their pages about your nonprofit. You can also be more reactive with what's going on. You can post a progress update halfway through with where you are in terms of totals raised. You can post an update on your matching grant. If you win one of the bonus challenges you can post on that. But having a baseline of posts already scheduled and planned and approved internally in advance will just give you more space your staff more space during the challenge itself to to be more strategic and responsive. Also, take some time right now just like with email, evaluate your different social media channels and where is your audience most engaged with you where are they most responsive. If that happens on Facebook, you can focus your energy on Facebook if it happens on Twitter focus there. If it happens everywhere across a lot of different channels that's great and you can come up with a strategy that works for all of them. But don't feel like you need to post on every single social media channel, just because the channel exists. Of course we know nonprofits are always strapped for time and bandwidth so take a look at really where you're going to, where your posts are going to have the most impact and focus your energy there. Consider whether you want to have a budget aside for boosted posts of course Facebook is always changing their algorithm and limiting what gets seen in people's news feeds and unfortunately rewarding advertising paid advertising so boosted up posts. This could be a campaign where you decide it's worth putting together a small budget and boosting a few posts to increase the potential reach of donors seeing that content. And finally when it comes to content, keep it exciting and engaging just like with email, you know, take the time to think about what really matters to your donors, what are donors really going to respond to on social media it's going to be much photo video image driven, but still at the end of the day it comes back to stories stories that are going to capture attention stories that donors are going to be able to relate to a challenge follow up after the challenge is over. There are tools built into the platform to send an automatic thank you receipt to the donor. But we invite you to go beyond that you know prompt personal thank yous close the loop, you know one to two months after the campaign. Whether you received a grant for from Gannett Foundation or not follow up to let donors know this project that you were trying to fund, did you fully fund it, have you started any of the implementation. Giving that opportunity for donors to really see beyond just the immediacy of I made a gift I got a thank you, understanding the impact of that gift on your nonprofit. And of course, giving special attention to first time donors donors that come in through peer to peer fundraising, and what does that year round stewardship look like. And that's of course something that exists beyond the scope of this campaign that's a part of your annual fundraising plan and strategy. But of course your ups year round stewardship is critical to building relationships with donors that you're able to get to make their gift during this challenge. And just a few minutes left wanted to close with some key reminders. We've mentioned it a few times before but it bears repeating the challenge begins Monday July 19 at noon, and it ends August 13 Friday August 13 also at noon. Access the nonprofit toolkit on the website as we've mentioned go to a community thrives dot mighty cause calm, you'll see a number of nonprofit resources available. This recording will be posted there after today's training. Other trainings are available there there are logos available other templates that you can use when you plan out your campaign. So that you're not starting from scratch you're not creating this camp pain completely in a vacuum. We invite you to take advantage of the resources available. And finally customer support I mentioned it earlier, the mighty cause team is here to help your organization with any questions that you have about building out your page where do you access information how do you add a matching grant to your page. We're also here to help your peer to peer fundraisers so if a peer to peer fundraiser set up a page for your organization and they have questions, you're of course welcome to help them as you support them. They can also contact our customer support team, as well, if they need help so we're here here to support here to help. We have a direct email that you can reach out to we also have a full library of resources available for more self help tools. If you want to, you know, see some screenshots of what it looks like when you add a matching grant to your page, for example, that's all available through our help library. And now that we're just about out of time I'm going to take a quick scan on questions for anyone that can stay on for a few more minutes. And like I said earlier, for anybody that I'm not able to answer your question on today's webinar since we sort of run out of time here, we will send a follow up to get your question answered for you. Let's see. The goal of the fundraising drive need to be exactly the same as the goal of the grant application. The answer is no. The grant application is, you know, the goal for, you know, the full funding the full project, you can have a distinct goal of what you're trying to raise in this online fundraising portion of the challenge, totally up to you. To be able to generate qr codes to easily connect people to your fundraiser. Yes, there are qr code generators generators available it's not built in through the platform, but they're there are qr code generators out there that you can insert any link into that will help create a qr code for you. Moving through one or two more minutes it looks like a few other people have stayed on so thanks for those being patient. Just to clarify is the peer to peer fundraiser like an individual page is it used to help folks see what they have individually raised. Yes, a peer to peer fundraiser is an individual fundraising page so you know john smith who's a volunteer for your organization they can create their peer to peer fundraiser. They can add content to their page to explain why they're fundraising they send that direct link to their friends and family, and they can see through their unique page. They've had five donors give to them for $550. Again, that information the donor information and the totals raised all rolls up to your organization's account and and campaign for the challenge, but they have their own unique page where they can see what they've raised they can see who's given for them. Next question, can we collect offline donations and have it considered for the total raised the answer to that is no only donations made online during the challenge are eligible to count for the minimum or towards bonus challenges and top fundraiser grants and really for fairness to all participants. There's, there's no way to verify the validity of those offline donations so, of course, if a donor wants to give to you offline donations are donations and it can help fund your project, but only donations made online during the platform will count towards the challenge minimum. Next question. When do we get access to our dashboard. So as soon as you, your organization is approved to participate in the fundraising challenge, you should also be getting access to your dashboard. So you should get an email saying that you've been granted access to your administrator, your nonprofits account on the platform. If you don't have access to your nonprofits page, I encourage you to reach out to our customer support team to make sure that we can help get you access so that you can begin doing all this other great work to get access to to create your campaign. So are the bonuses for your agency state or overall agencies across the country. I'm not entirely sure how to answer that question. So, maybe you can follow up with our customer support team or you can also email at that USA today network.com so that we can get that answer. Okay, one or two more questions and then I'm going to have to cut the rest. For a matching grant can you have multiple people contribute to a match on the platform, ie three board members go together to provide a match. Yes, absolutely that's a great strategy to consider. So if you have maybe a couple of people that want to make smaller gifts, and you want to combine them to be a larger more impactful matching grant, you can absolutely choose to combine them together. So you can either combine them all into one larger grant, or depending you can set them up as three unique smaller matches, totally what works for you. But you have flexibility in the platform to, you know, you can display the label the title of the matching grant you can list multiple names in the actual, you know, grant or name. So you have flexibility there on how you want to set that up. Okay, last question that I'm going to cover here today is how do we access this video. We will send a copy of the recording to everybody that registered for today's webinar so you will get a copy in your email. It will also be posted on the nonprofit toolkit. So that you can go there and watch this recording, as well as the other recordings. So I know that there were a couple of questions that we didn't get to apologies for those that we didn't get to your question. We will follow up after to make sure that you get it answered. And then again, if you are still having any questions that you haven't gotten answered here, feel free to email support at mighty cause calm and you will be happy to get your question answered. Thank you again for your time today everyone good luck in the fundraising challenge. And again, you haven't submitted your application yet. Make sure to do so by tomorrow, June 30 at 9pm Eastern. Thanks everyone.