 And I want to welcome you to TechSoup. My name is Danita Pimienta. I'm the executive director for CARE, which is a nonprofit youth development organization. We hail in Central Florida, serve the Central Florida community. And so we are so happy to be a part of TechSoup on this morning. And we want to extend the opportunity for all of you to join us, either as an event producer, a speaker, doing marketing or answering, who are absolutely more welcome to join us on this journey. But enough about TechSoup. You are here because you are going to hear from a wonderful speaker. She's Aretha Simons. And ordinarily, she's our compadre in all of this. She goes ahead and she is the co-host as well for TechSoup Florida events. And today she's going to be presenting on pieces and parts. I have the opportunity to hear from her on that because she utilizes all of the gifts and helps us multiply all of our talents as we go on this journey. What I want you guys to do is take a copy of this screenshot with your phone, grab your phone, take a screenshot because you're going to see my five points that I'm going to talk about today. Today I'm going to be talking about fundraising plan. Pieces and parts to include in your fundraising plan. Melanie was supposed to be here to teach this, but she is not feeling well today. So you have me. So before I get started though, I want to find out how many of you have a fundraiser plan? Just put a one in the chat room if you do, put a two in the chat room if you don't. Most people don't like plans. We don't like the right business plans. We don't like the right strategic plans. And now you're talking about a nonprofit plan. What is this? Oh, yes, I see some twos in the chat room. I love it. I love it. I love it. So this is good. This is good because fundraising is really how most nonprofits generate their income. Grants are great, but they're not the total picture. They're not 80% of where you get your income because sometimes you have to wait on grant. And so we always have to have a fundraising plan. Am I right? Yes, I see some nods. We always have to have a fundraising plan. And that fundraising can include your board members helping you with fundraising, your board members giving, you going to your local community, local corporations within your community. So let me talk about this fundraising plan. Some of the things you should have in it. Step one is to definitely always reflect on your past. If something worked good in the past, do it. I had a young lady who was on my conference calls. I do free conference calls every Monday for nonprofits. I'm having one at night. I'll put the link in the chat room. But she said that they went to a skater ring. They didn't have to show up. They went to a skater ring and talked to the owner. And he said, okay, on this night, everybody that comes in, I'm going to give you a portion of the money that we make. They made $400 without even being there. That's a part of the fundraiser plan. If you can build a relationship with businesses that want to give back, trust me, you think you're the only one with a heart in the nonprofit sector? Everybody wants to give. They just want to make sure that they're giving to somebody who's doing something that's making a difference in the community. So think of your past fundraising events. Would you type in the chat room some of your past fundraising ideas? I know that we've gone both virtually. I just was a part of a fundraising event online with one of the nonprofits that I normally get to. And they did an online virtual event. They had raffle prizes. And the way they did it was so unique. And they said they raised over $10,000. That's virtually now. So you can do that. And they made it fun too. They had a DJ. And the DJ was not in person. He was online playing music. So they just did a whole bunch of, I love that. Delana did an online virtual auction. I love that. I bought a couple of things from a virtual auction from a girl in Texas. And I was like, I love this. So Delana, would you share with me some of the virtual auctions, how you guys did it? Because I don't want you guys just to hear me talk. This is interactive. This is not just seminar style. So would you all meet yourself and tell us about your virtual auction? How did that work? What did you do to get your auction items? You're still muted. Go ahead. We were launching a new community website, partnership for our county. And every little area, our county's very diverse. And every person on the steering committee was responsible for reaching out to local vendors in their area and getting donations that represented their area. And then the people that were building the website have done online auctions before. They gathered them all. They hosted this auction, put all that we took pictures, sent pictures in, and there was stuff. We're in Oregon. We had stuff from Sisters Oregon. We had stuff from Portland area down to Medford, down to the Redwoods, over to Crater Lake Port. So there were everything from gaming. People donated Dungeons and Dragons. They had the value on there. People did local visits to the coffee shop to custom made earrings to Wild Life Safari, which is an attraction here. Wine tasting tours. Just pretty much anything that our county is known for was featured. And so people that were planning trips this way, it got those little known to the outside of our county people, that platform, the people that hosted it did great, got it out there. And we were sold out. The auction ran for two weeks. And we were sold out two days before and raised, I think they said $5,000 more than anticipated. Wow. So, yeah, it paid for all of that website for a year. I love that. Yeah, I love that. Thank you for sharing that. I hope you guys are writing notes down, because that's something that you all could do. You can have your board members, your volunteers, get donated items. It could be from where they work. Or it could be from where they network. So I love that. And I hope that you guys will continue doing that, because there are some people who still want to do a virtual. I don't want to go to live events. Some people are still that mindset. So if you do a live auction, you should also do a virtual. I think virtual is going to be here forever. So think about those. Anybody else want to share your past events? That was awesome. Thank you for sharing that. OK, so the next thing to do is identify existing resources. I think that just now, we were talking about our board members. Your board members, put them to work. I know if you're here, you're probably executive director. You're probably the founder. You're probably a person that's wearing multiple hats. Put your board members to work. But also think about your existing resources within your community. Like I said, every business is going to be taxed on their products. So they usually want to donate it so they can write it off. And everyone wants to give. I have walked into Office Depot when it's time for school and say, hey, just with a simple donation letter, we want to get some donated items. And the manager went to the back. And they had boxes of things. Maybe people opened or maybe returned it or whatever. Marked down, didn't sell. He gave me boxes of things. And I was like, do you need tax right off? He said, no, I've got to give you this donation letter. And he took the letter. I don't know what he did with it. But they were just happy to give. So think about businesses within a five mile radius of where your nonprofit is, or where the community that you reside in. I know we just can't walk into Walmart. Like we used to be able to have a relationship with that Walmart or Target Manager. Now everything is online. But find out if there's a process online. But there are a lot of individual businesses that or franchises that the owner is right there in your community. So anybody else want to share some of your existing resources that now if I went around and asked you, like one existing resource, people would just come up with all kinds of names. And I do this so that we can get ideas from each other. Because that's what today is about. It's not about me just sharing with you. I want you to share with each other. So the next thing I want you to think about is listing activities to or renew or upgrade your donors. Now, going back to that, that silent auction or the virtual auction. So you may have donors who may say, I'm not going to bid on anything too much. I might pay $100 for a ticket. But see if you can upgrade, build some relationship with some car dealers. Yes, some car dealers. There's a, I've been trying to win a BMW every year. There's a nonprofit here. They get a new BMW donated to them every year. And I buy that ticket. I haven't won yet, but I'm so happy for the people that do. But they have a relationship with BMW. They donate a BMW. I'm like, who does that? Guess what? The answer will always be no to you if you don't ask. So ask, ask someone, hey, we want to do a live auction or a silent auction and we have some high profile donors. They like these autograph things from Shaquille O'Neill. They like these type of things. They like professional golf clubs signed by Tiger Woods. Just when I say upgrade your donors. Also ask for higher donors. Reach out to those people there. Somebody, if you don't know a high profile person, somebody in your circle is connected to one. I was at an event the other day I did a session and there was two women in the room and they were just so quiet and they were there to learn about grant writing and come to find out their son's a professional football player. And he told them, hey, I want to start this nonprofit. And they're like, we're doing it because he's not and we don't know what we're doing. So that's why they were there. But guess what? He's connected to all those friends and don't know what everybody was trying to build a relationship with them by the time they left. But it's really about building relationships. So can you tell me, somebody in the chat room, some of the activities that you've done or things that you've done to attract new donors? It could just be online, asking people online. It could be one of those GoFundMe pages. Anybody want to share? I see somebody type in a chat room. Oh, thank you, Denita. Reach out to local business with a five mile radius. Yes. Okay, Ava, I see your hand raised. You're still muted. Are you ever going to mute yourself? Okay, there we go. One of the things I want to share that I believe is going to work out for my nonprofit, which is Life Skills of America now. We had a recent name change from Life Skills Service Center, yay. So what we have recently found out, as Aretha knows that Life Skills Thrift Store is in Citrus County, Inverness to be exact. And we're planning a benefit ball within this city. And we learned when we went to look at the venue from Parks and Rec that they have a grant that they give for events that you have. So we're looking forward to that and they're going to pay up to 50% of our costs. And if I can say it on this call, they even encouraged us to use the higher number. Yes. Because of the CARES Act, this particular city has money available for events. And we are going to fully take advantage of it. They have the event hall, the venue, where we're going to use, they're referring to DJ. So they even a lot of the things we would have to figure out. They already got it worked out for us. And so I'm happy about that. And another one that we use also is we call on Publix a lot. And we get gift cards. And I'm sorry, I can't think of the website right now, but it's Publix.com might be slash giving, I'm not sure. But you can play around with it. But those are some of the things that we have going on with life skills. I love it. And for those of you who don't know, Publix is a grocery store here in the Central Florida area. I don't know where they are in different places, but I want to say something and piggyback on what you said, Avon, because when she had her grant opening, she invited, want to say her grant open to her thrift store, which I also want to talk about. That's a part of fundraising. She invited, the mayor came and there were so many other dignitaries at her thrift store. How many of you are still letting people know and delaying up, you hit the nail on the head that you exist in your communities called local entities, called your legislators, they need to know you exist because guess what? They fight for funding for you to come and they fight for funding from the federal level to come in their city to work for you. But if you don't tell them you exist, that money's gonna go to somebody else. So thank you for sharing that. Talking about upgrading donors, those are the people we need to attract, yes. I can share one other thing that we're doing also. We are planning a conference, it's called Reinvent Yourself. And we're gonna be inviting, we want at least 50 women, which is our women department. And we want 50 young ladies between the age of 15 and 19 because that's what we do, we cater to at risk girls, 15 and 19 years old. And so we are planning this Reinvent Yourself conference. And so we call on the late dean United Methodist Church who is going to allow us to use their location. We have actually two choices, churches and all they're gonna want from us is to pay for a staff person to be on hand while we are there. So they're donating their space to us. It's just, as Aretha said, when you don't ask, the answer is no. And when you just begin to ask even through a letter or an email, they want to help. I'm finding out they want these partnerships. So we've got several irons in the fire that we're working in terms of major fundraisers for life skills. Love it. Thank you for sharing. Sandra, I see you unmuted. Did you wanna share? Okay, so this is great. And I wanna also say fundraising, have you guys noticed, I don't know everybody live in different areas, but Goodwill is now adding another part of fundraising. We think of Goodwill, everybody knows Goodwill, no matter where you live in the world. We know them for the first store, right? But they created ways to generate funds by getting government grants to have courses to do job training. And now one of our local food banks, excuse me, not food banks, Goodwill has a food bank. That's what I was gonna say. So that's another way to generate income. So every time we do things, it doesn't have to be for free. And you know that, okay, you're thinking of food, they're giving it away, but they have to make money to even give it away. So they're getting funding to hire people, to help people during crisis situations. And you have to buy food. Every food bank doesn't get food, donates them. A lot of times they're buying food. So think of other fundraising ideas. And I use that as an example, because I know we all can relate or picture a thrift store or Goodwill, but what about in your areas, what other things can you do to generate income for your nonprofit? So the fourth thing I wanna talk about is creating goals for each activity. Now, we talked about, you have a couple of people share their ideas, their options, even if you have an event, you have to create a goal. What's the budget for that goal? Because every time you create an event, you have to spend money, right? So what's the budget you're gonna spend? What do you anticipate bringing in? What revenue you anticipate generating? Also, who's gonna be in charge of that activity? And if there's a project that has to be finished, give a deadline to it. So that's the very important that when you set up your fundraising plan that you create goals for each activity, not just for the entire plan for each activity. If it's going to buy water, I'm telling you, we'll say, okay, Aretha, you gonna make sure we have 12 cases of water by tomorrow. Everything should be in writing so that everybody knows the pieces and the parts that they have to do when it comes to that fundraising plan. And I cannot say this enough, and then I'm gonna open the floor and let you speak and let you ask questions. Put your plan on your calendar. I know that sounds simple, but right now, we are in such a digital age, we get so distracted. We click on Instagram, we click on Facebook, and then we forget what we were supposed to do. I don't know about you, but I have to put alarms on my phone. I have to put plans on my phone, I have to put ideas. You wake up in the middle of the night with an idea. Put it on your phone, put it on your calendar so that what is, what's supposed to happen, what's next? And then add all these things into your nonprofit's plan so that you can have a successful fundraising plan. Now I told you I wasn't gonna do a lot of talking. I'm gonna open up the floor. Donita, if you could stop sharing the screen so I can see everybody's faces and hear from everybody else. So Delana says, has anyone, see, ever had a budget for an event go out of control? Ooh, what a good one. What a good one. Is that anybody? Have you had an event and you had a budget set for, and it just went out of control? I can speak for myself, out of control in my mind, but at the end we broke even. So that was my case. Anybody else wanna share? I see Carmen shaking her head, yes. That was a rush. I was shaking my head because I was kinda like you. I thought I was way out of control, but there was, there was reserves just sitting there and I didn't realize that it was for events. So I was able to use a tad bit of it, but either wasn't that out of control, but you're right, when I subtracted the expenses from the revenue, what we earned, we were good. That's good to hear. I see Tori and you put yes, did you wanna share? Sorry about that, hello. I was typing in the chat, yes. And that's because the expenses and the numbers increased, but like y'all, I had an emergency, I keep an emergency revenue fund for everything I do. I don't care if it's $500, $750, I keep to the side just in case I call it my miscellaneous fund in case something goes wrong. So that helped. That's, thank you for sharing that. And let me ask you both, Karen and I think I've said your name, Tori and. When you, when your plan was going out of control, is it because you kept adding things because you didn't stick to the plan or you thought the things that you added needed to be there to make that event successful? For me, it was things that were needed for the event to be successful. That was not, in that particular situation, it was kind of a lot of unexpected variables. And so I just had to adapt, but I am a strict person when it comes to my budget and funds and especially other people's money. So I like to be to the penny, but it just didn't happen out of time. And for me, it was other people saying, we need to do this, we need to do that. They were a part of the team, but a lot of that stuff we didn't need to do, but we did anyway. They're pretty good. Yeah. And I'm glad you shared that. That's why we have to have a plan and everybody who's a part of that need to know the plan. Like, we don't need to change the color of our t-shirts. We'd say we're gonna use white t-shirts, let's use white t-shirts. Yeah, we know blue would look better, but stick to the plan. It's those little things. But that was a great question, Delana. Thanks for asking. Anybody else wanna share? Okay, I'm not gonna keep you past your time. Go ahead, Denita. Were you gonna share something? No, no. I just was putting in there how awesome it is. And I apologize, because I am on my phone and the computer. That's how technologically challenged I am this morning. But I was just going to share that the overarching pieces and parts that you were talking about are so incredibly important, especially after you've already established your nonprofit, because people think we have to have, like Ms. Torian said, this emergency fund in the beginning, in the beginning almost everything is an emergency, right? You've got all your filing fees, you've got so much going on, you gotta find an account, you've gotta find all this stuff. So everything seems to be an emergency in the beginning. But then as you're established, even in the first year or two or five, 10, that having an emergency fund is a really brilliant idea to have some reserves left over. And when you budget for an event, for example, I was thinking about taking just a little bit, if you have, if you've raised $10,000, there in your goal was only $8,000. What's the harm in putting those other couple thousand towards the next event that you're going to have? Because then those funds will be just taking that sweat off of the brow for you as you're going forward. So I love, I really do, I picked up a lot of pieces and parts to put in with some of the fundraising ideas that we have. And I hope the same for everyone. So this has been a great discussion and I love the tidbits there, Ms. Delana. She says, I'm not the one in control of the budget, but deal with grants and there was not a plan. And now I'm getting asked what grants we can pull from to make up the deficit. And that, Ms. Delana, can happen when we don't have that emergency funding or those extra reserves off to the side. And I know how challenging that is for you. Our hearts go out to you because you're not the one in control of the money and how it flows, but you're having to come back in and see if you can make some adjustments there. So prayerfully that will get some resolution quickly. So I just didn't want to comment on everybody. That's my takeaway for it all. So it's a little ramp up. Yeah, this is a great discussion. We hope that all of you feel the same. So Mo, when I see your hand raised, go ahead. Yes, thank you so much. But I wanted to ask you, you mentioned earlier that you have a open session. I think it's today you said, and you're going to put your link in the chat. Could you please? I did, yes. Thank you so much for reminding me, I forgot. So if you want on that, you'll get the link to the call and you'll get a reminder when we get ready to start. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. That was a wonderful conversation. I hope you got some tidbits from it. I never like to leave you hanging. So if anybody have any questions, please feel free to ask. Go on once, go on twice. Okay, I hope you will join us for our next event. It is with the president of Grant Station. If you're not a member of Grant Station, Texas was going to have a wonderful sale on Grant Station next month, $99. How many are you using Grant Station to find your grant? Yeah, three of us out of several. So you may want to check that out, but this is going to not be on a Monday, it's going to be on a Wednesday, I believe, and it's 10 a.m. Pacific time, 1 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. So I hope you'll join us and get some top 10 tips for grant writing from that session. Danita, I'm going to turn it over to you to say goodbye to everybody. Listen, I couldn't thank everyone enough for coming to join us today. You have a number of things that you could be doing with your time and chose to spend it with us. And so our hearts are just full of gratitude for that. So thank you very much. Please make sure that you are connected to TechSoup events for Florida. So you can keep up with what we're doing. We have another one coming up next month as well. And so we want to make sure that you are a part of it. As Ms. Aretha said, and then again, if there's any questions or what have you, you feel free to reach out to myself or Ms. Aretha and we'd be happy to answer those for you. And if you decide that you want to join us on this journey, please do so because that's always a thing is just having more people on board. So thanks again. This has been another TechSoup event for Florida and we are delighted that you were able to join us. Stay tuned for more that we have coming up. So we appreciate you all. You have a blessed day.