 Okay. Well, hi. Thanks for joining us today for TechSoup Connect Flora Monthly Events. I really appreciate you being here. My name is Aretha Simons. I'm from Orlando, Florida, and I'll be your host today. In the chat room, you feel free to continue to chat with each other as you're coming in. Let us know where you're from so we can see who's here. If you'd like to put your nonprofit, feel free to do that. As I said, I'm Aretha Simons. I'm the webinar producer of TechSoup, but also TechSoup Connect Community Flora Organizer now. I say that because we are a community that really needs your help. And we welcome everybody in this community. When I say community, I'm talking about TechSoup Connect community. We put the community first, so we're here to support each other. That's why we invite people from the community to come and share their talents and talk about, you know, their expertise. We try to build stronger, non-topists. And technology is one of our tools that we do that with. And when I say technology, people are thinking about real technology. But this is one technology. Zoom is a form of technology, right? So this is one of the ways we do it. We invite you to participate. So everyone has something to learn, to add to the conversation. So when we're talking in the chat room or communicating with each other, we will not try. We will treat each other with kindness. Kindness goes a long way. Kindness and respect. Now, for those of you who are new to TechSoup, if you've never heard of TechSoup, TechSoup is a global organization. As you can see, we're in over 41 countries and we have over 121 cities that have a TechSoup Connect global community where we have these events. So make sure, I don't know if you're in Texas, you might have one there in Texas, but I still want you to be a part of TechSoup Connect Florida. So stay with us, sign up. And as you learn from all of them, I would love for you to volunteer. This is a volunteer role for me. I'm actually volunteering and we need your help. We ask for your help for you to be event producers for marketing, sharing this event out and even as we were preparing for other events, sharing those events, we would love a chat room host, somebody to be in the chat room moderating because sometimes I'm here and people ask questions, you can just answer their questions. And we need speakers. I would love it if you have an expertise in any area that will help a nonprofit, whether it's for development, fundraising or anything, and especially when it comes to technology. Why don't you let me know in the chat room, I'll reach out to you or you can email me at asymons at techsoup.org and I would love to have you on. So now that I got that covered, a little bit more about TechSoup. We are a global network bridging tech solutions and services for good. Some of you may know about TechSoup. We have a lot of software, but people think of us as a company that gives hardware out, computers, but we're much more than that. We provide hardware, software, training. A lot of the training is free. A lot of the webinars that we, all the webinars we do are free. We have much more content, the blogs, I'm saying blogs, the blogs, the forums, the public good apps for food insecurity and so much more. So we would love if you know of any companies that would love to be a resource partner with us, let us know. You can feel free to email me and I'll send it to the right department. Now, as I said that we have all types of services, the tech services, the courses, the customer service, excuse me, I don't know why my mind is going blank customer service, but there's something here for everybody. So there's no reason that a nonprofit should not know about TechSoup. And if you know about a nonprofit that's never heard of TechSoup, please let them know that we exist at TechSoup.org. Now, I talked about all those products and softwares because I mentioned the software that we get. I didn't mention everything, but I want to give you just an idea. But what if you can apply for a grant all at once? You know, most of the times we're applying for different grants and with TechSoup, all you have to do is have your 501c3. Fill out your account. It's free to join, sign up, upload your 501c3, and then you will have access to we have over 100 partners. This is just a view of a few of our partners, Microsoft, Dell, Google, DocuSign. Go on TechSoup.org and you will see the partners from A to C that use technology to create and grow impact within kind donation programs. So check it out. Just to give you an idea of the savings, typically an average nonprofit saves $17,000 worth of software and hardware in, you know, over their lifetime with having an account in with TechSoup. So please just an idea of what that is. This is just a view of with TechSoup, a nonprofit with 10 staff or less. This is what they can save. You go on, you know, other sites, you might pay $2,000 or more with TechSoup because of the discount or sometimes free products, you can save $200. I mean, you're saving, you're only spending $200. So just to give you an idea. So enough about that. Let's talk about TechSoup Connect. Just to give you an idea, I want you to sign up for our next event. The next one is what makes a great board memory? That's going to be on September, excuse me, October 10th, not September. September 21st is going to be a where to find grants. So I've done enough talking. I want to introduce you to our speaker. This is really why you're here today to hear her and to hear all about how you can have fundraising success. So Shanika Alan Lane, she's the founder of Catalyst Event Consulting LLC. She's an event coach and a consultant. She combines her love for events and education to power others with the knowledge of effective event management. She was introduced to the event industry over 15 years ago through a non-profit organization and now holds a certified meeting professional destination. So CMP, Certified Meeting Professional Destination, for expertise is empowering organizations to execute events at an intersection of purpose and profit. Get that purpose and profit because if you have a non-profit, you need to have profit in order to fulfill your purpose. So without further ado, I'm going to introduce our speaker, Shanika Alan Lane. Welcome, Shanika. Thank you so much. That's the awesome introduction. I don't even have to do that in my presentation, so that's great. So we will jump right in. We are talking about fundraising and event planning success today. And so before we jump all the way in, I want to say that for some of you, this approach may be a little bit untraditional. You may not have heard some of these ideas quite this way before. So I want to go ahead and hope that you have an open mind going into it. So we're going to first talk about fundraising and see here. So some guidelines that I usually suggest to non-profits as they're planning fundraising events. So that's what I'm going to be talking about today. Just know and understand that obviously fundraising doesn't always have to be events. There are other ways that you can do fundraisers, but we're going to focus on fundraising events today. So before I give you these guidelines, I do want to just kind of, I guess, set the mood for you very quickly. And it's something that always comes up in my mind because it happened in my household. So as an example, many non-profits do partnerships where they have a fundraiser and they're selling a product. And with the product, they get a portion of those proceeds that go back to the organization, right? And so with COVID, being a thing that is very real to us, that's been happening this past year, it has limit the options for the traditional fundraisers that most non-profits have done. So a lot of them have gone to the idea of these different products that they're utilizing. So I'm going to use my husband's examples just to kind of set the mood so you guys know where I'm coming from. So he purchased this product from someone that he knew supporting another profit organization. And immediately after his purchase, I decided to go and ask him a ton of questions. I wanted to use it as a case study. And so essentially I said, well, how much did you purchase? Like, what did you purchase? How much did you spend? So he told me that he purchased about $60 worth of this particular product. And I was like, OK, great. If they came to you directly and said, we're looking for donations for this particular non-profit for this reason, is that what you would have provided to them? Would it have been $60? And he said, no, I would have given 40. So I said, OK, so you gave him 20 extra dollars because they had a product. He said, absolutely. So I said, OK, well, let's just do the math at $60 and half of it going back to the organization. That means the organization would receive $30. But you just told me that if they just told you what they needed that you would have given them 40. So they left $10 on the table. So they're missing out on $10. How many other individuals supported this same as that fundraiser where they left $10 on the table? So I just want to kind of stick that up to let you understand that I'm talking about events here and I do believe heavily in events. But just like these products, there is a cost that comes with it. So understand what that cost is and how to minimize it as we go through some of these guidelines that I'm going to provide to you. So number one is be specific. Many times we see that people are doing a fundraiser and you see the organization behind the fundraiser, but you don't understand what those specific dollars are going towards. And so that's what I'm referring to here. Let them know what that money is going towards. Is it a scholarship? Is it for food purposes or your food pantry? What exactly are those dollars going towards the more specific you are in regard to this, the more likely people are willing to spend the money with you because they feel like it's clear. Number two, be transparent. So that sounds very similar to me, and it does go hand in hand. But what I mean by transparency here as well is that if there are other things that need to take place in your spending, you want to be clear about that. So for instance, it may be you need to raise some funds for administrative costs. That may be part of the deal. But if that is a part of the deal, you want to be transparent about that and what exactly that looks like. So you want to paint that picture. You want to let them know that you may need to bring in people with a specific skill set to come in to actually facilitate whatever it is for this service that you're providing. And this is what that cost looks like. And you show them what impact your organization typically makes for whatever it is that you're doing in the community and bringing in that service helps you with that impact and you want to put that cost on it. So be transparent about that because we all know too many times we've seen some of the big nonprofit organizations that ask for a donation and people are hesitant to give it because they're not clear exactly where it's going. And so if we're in a natural disaster or something like that, folks will like, oh, no, I want to just give the product. They want to give something else rather than just give the dollars because they're not sure where it's going. So you want to be clear with these two items because that'll help alleviate some of that and build a little bit more trust. So the third item is you want to tie it to the mission. So for me, this is really important with me having my start of events based around the nonprofit industry, mission driven, anything I feel is what you should be doing. So even in your fundraising, a lot of times people veer from it. They want to do something they consider fun or whatever else. But you want to try to your mission as much as possible because what's going to happen in this case is it's a program. And that's what we want. That's what's key in the nonprofit world. You want to keep as much as possible in line with your programs. And that's going to do a lot for you, even from corporate partnerships to grant opportunities. So you want to always keep that front and center. And then last but most certainly not least is you want to use your resources. So you want to use your board as directors, any talent that you have on that board. You also want to use your organizational resources. So some of you because of the work that you do may have access to some resources. So if you do, you want to leverage those resources. So for instance, like Aretha just mentioned, there are tons of things in the tech world that software and things like that that TechSoup has the opportunity for you to utilize. So you want to leverage those things. So if you're doing something that will require some tech based things, you can go ahead and utilize that for something such as this to keep your costs down as well as with your board of directors. You also want to look at what they bring to the table. So hopefully your board of directors is a fairly diversified group of people. And so with that, if they have a certain talent for instance, I'm an event. So if I'm sitting on your board of director, you have someone that has a bit background sitting on your board, they may know people in the industry that are vendors that will provide discounts because of their personal relationships. So you want to think about things like this to go ahead and leverage your opportunities for your fundraising because this is what's going to help keep your costs down. So if you're doing all four of these things in my mind, what I say here is that it's basically an event that is not easily duplicated. And that's what you want. You want something that's not easily duplicated and you want something that's hopefully synonymous with your organization. And so essentially when they think of this event, they want to automatically think of your organization is associated with it. So that's the kind of quick rundown of what I'm proposing with these fundraising events. I do want to take a pause here because I'm going to start going into more of what we're going to do with some things on the event side. So if anyone has questions about these guidelines, please go ahead and unmute yourself and ask that. Okay, looks like we may be good. All right. So five tips for fundraising events. So first thing is you want to look at your goals and objectives, make sure that they're clear. You want to determine the purpose of your event. And so obviously, we're talking about fundraising. So that's number one, but it doesn't have to be your only purpose. You can have multiple purposes for your event. So if you also want to raise awareness, if you want to have a celebration, whatever that looks like. And you guys know, I said, one of the most important things to me is serving your organization purpose. So that to me should always kind of go together with your fundraising. If you can make that happen. And then number two is volunteers. This a lot of times is what trip up a lot of organizations, they give a lot of heartache. So with that, you want to know your roles and how many you need for volunteers. So one of the first areas I say is for onsite and preparation of volunteers, you want to consider things like registration, you want to make sure that that is covered. You want to designate volunteers for any of your special guests. And so you want to make sure you're not just putting anybody in those places. And you want to schedule more than what you need. It is a volunteer situation. Most people aren't obligated to do it. So things come up naturally as well. So you want to have more than what you actually need to make sure that you're covered. And then you want to provide a schedule and your expectations for those volunteers. And so you want to pre qualify. And what I mean by that is one is it is a role that has a specific set of skills that might be needed. You want to make sure that volunteer does actually have the skills that are needed, as well as they're interested in those things. Sometimes we get volunteers and we put them in a space that they may not be interested in, despite whether they can do it in that. And they're just not going to have the same energy in that role. And you want to make sure that you give a orientation of both the organization as well as the event. So they need to know what the organization represents, what they're looking to do at this specific event as well. And you want to do training for that role. So even if it is an individual that has a role that they have a skill set for, but you may have specific things that you're looking for for this event, you want to go ahead and train them around that piece as well. And then last but not least, you always want to actually express gratitude to your volunteers. A lot of times we forget that part. I feel like all these main three things are necessary because what you want to build is a volunteer base that you can count on. And you can have to keep coming back because when you're training them for roles, you won't have to do as much of that. You won't have to do as much time in that orientation and training. You have people that you can count on, maybe even have them to train others for you. So you want to continue to have that cycle put in place. And so some of the things here that I like to talk about with volunteers because as a knowing profit, especially when you're starting out, you want to have volunteers for everything. That's our aim because we want to keep our costs down. But I'm going to caution that there are some places where we have to look at it as an investment and know that maybe some dollars need to be spent or we need to spend some time to find a way to get the cost down. So here you want to see and consider if it's the area that actually will matter later. And so I'm going to give you a few areas of what I mean by that. So a photographer, a videographer, those are two main areas where you want to document what you're doing as an organization. You want to document your programs. And if you're fundraising is a program, even more so, you want to document that. And then when you have areas like AD technicians and entertainment, that's going to actually affect your attendees experience. And so that's another area that you don't want to shortchange because if you are shortchanging that area, it's not likely that they will return for events later. So you want to make sure that those areas are covered. But when I say upgrade to a professional, that doesn't necessarily mean that you always have to hire this person. This person can still be a volunteer. So if you're lucky enough to have a year volunteer base and see that they have some skill set that your organization can use, just reach out to that person. Ask them if they're willing to donate their time as an end time service to your organization. And what you can do when you're doing something like that. And even if they haven't volunteered themselves, you can seek people out and let them know what the organization is about, what you're trying to do, and ask them what they'd be willing to donate their time, or even provide some level of a discount to you. And so essentially what you can do is build a team for long term relationships. So as I mentioned, building a team earlier with those volunteers that are coming back continuously, as well as those that are considered professionals, I do know organizations that they may use a photographer or a videographer that they use every single time they have an event. As long as they have their schedule available, they're able to call them and they had that discount cost locked in. And guys, some of these are steals. I'm like, you got a photographer, how much you got to bear? What? So just be open to that and look out for people that are willing to support your cause already. If they have a natural attraction to you, then they may be willing to do something like this. Number three, you want to understand your venue's role and contract. And so when I say venue, obviously we're talking about fundraising events. Sometimes it's outdoors, even if it's a park is still considered a venue in this case. But you don't want to assume what comes with the price that is paid. You want to always look at your contract to see exactly what is outlined on the contract that comes with the any time frames that are listed there. And be mindful that liability could restrict the venue or your team's role. So a lot of times you may come in and you have an idea for how you want your setup to be. But there may be limitations in their contract around liability that says that either they can't touch it and only you can set it up or vice versa where only their team can do something. So just think of this is simple. When you go to a hotel, there are times where they have a bill card that you can get and use on your own. And then there are times that only development can actually move and facilitate the bill card. So it's a similar concept, but I want to kind of provide an example that most people are familiar with. And then you want to make sure that your decor and agenda should always be discussed with the venue. And this doesn't have to be a big discussion. This could be something simple as a document that you have outlined. But you want to share this information because a lot of times people have things on their agenda that they think are great ideas and they probably are. But it's around the core or something else that they're looking to do, not realizing that there is an issue with liability or coding or just anything else that could go along with that. So if you're sharing that information, as soon as you have the information, a lot of times you can actually plan around these things so that it can still happen or you can have some type of resolution to provide the experience that you're looking to provide to your attendees. And number four, you want to create a run of show. So let me take a little time to give an explanation of what run of show is for those that may not know. Run of show is basically the full timeline of what you're looking to do for that day. So not just your agenda. If you are waking up at six o'clock and that's when you have vendors starting to come into play, that's when your run of show actually begins. So you want to list everything that's happening that day, all those moving parts. And you want to share with individuals that it makes sense to share it with so that everybody knows what's going on. And in some cases, it may actually start even the day before. So be mindful of that. It doesn't have to be restricted to just the day that you're doing that event. And so you never want to leave this to be a last minute task because you might obviously forget something to place on there. And then you want to outline or overview as a quick way to start. So just get started. You're going to build on that list as you go along. As you get vendors wrapped up, as you work with other individuals, as you work out what's on your agenda because something may be on your agenda. Your agenda may be a two hour long thing, but it may take all day to facilitate what's going on. And you may have moving parts once your agenda starts that needs to go into that run of show. And if it's an event that requires an agenda like a conference or a workshop, you want to go ahead and post that for your attendees as well. So I kind of group this together with this because not having that information could affect your attendance for any of your education based learning. A lot of people want to know what they're investing in before they sign up just saying that we're going to have a great workshop isn't enough for a lot of people they may have someone else paying for and they just want to know what that return of investment will look like. And then you want to communicate any timelines and timeframes in advance to your team. So I just gave examples of people up under your team. It could be expensive upon this. It could be your vendors as well, but your program participants, so your speakers, people like that, that it would be important to share it with your volunteers and your staff. And then leave appropriate time for anything from logistics to speakers. Just leave that buffer time, make sure that everything is actually accounted for. Don't just assume what that timeframe looks like and just leave it as a rough set of time in the agenda. You want to go ahead and build in a little bit of time because we all know we run behind an event. So give that opportunity for yourself, especially because some of these vendors, they are exact with their time. So if you don't give yourself buffer time, you will find yourself short at some times and you're like, ooh, we would have had 20 more minutes, so 30 more minutes. So go ahead and build that in. And then number five, for your event sponsors and packets, this is important as well because this is a fundraising event. So you want to make sure that you have this together. You want to think of these individuals or organizations as partners. So be mindful of that as you're putting this together. You want to designate an onsite team that is trained to interact with them. You don't want just anybody working with them because whenever you have sponsors or partners onsite, they are asking questions as they're walking around. Sometimes they're getting ideas. Sometimes they think they have a better idea and you need someone that is not going to destroy the organization's relationship by saying something that they're not sure about. They don't know. So you want to have those individuals trained. So you want to have your season people there. You want to make sure that you deliver on anything that is promised. You don't want to low ball your budget amounts that determine sponsorship. So a lot of times people forget about things that are built in like if they're purchasing a product for you and they forget about shipping. So you want to make sure that you build in all of those costs that's associated with it and make sure you have a little bit of wiggle room in that as well. So don't low ball those amounts. Consider their physical year. So if you have a big partner or if you're targeting a big partner response so you want to try to look up what their physical year looks like and you want to plan things around that in terms of contacting them. So some people do the beginning of the actual calendar year as a physical year. Some people just started a physical year. So that could vary depending on the organization. So you want to go ahead and get that research information for each one of those major partners that you're looking to go after and see when it is a good time to reach out to them about your event. So that they're aware and they can hopefully place it in their budget. You want to communicate a deadline for specific items. So if I use the example again about a product that needs to be purchased in ship you want to be mindful of that. If they're printing something on that product as well that's another edit amount of time. So you want to be mindful of all of these times that will go into that so that you have time to receive it for your actual event itself and you're not in a rush for those things or nervous that it's not going to get there. And you want to make sure that it is a desirable package for them. That they are seeing a return on investment. That's what the ROI stands for. And so as a recap again you want to set clear goals and objectives. You want to select qualify volunteers understand the venues role and contract create the run of show and determine your event sponsorship packet. And before I go to the next slide I did give an example earlier. I was going so quickly I didn't give an example earlier of when you're acting inside of those four things I mentioned for fundraising. When I was talking about be clear be specific transparent. Take advantage of your board and its resources as well as acting your purpose. So an example around that is a financial literacy organization that target market is to use. And so with that target market because that's their wheelhouse and they offer services around financial literacy they actually do fundraising events for adults but is for financial literacy again. And so in this case this is something that they're known for the organization people or individuals are reaching out to the organization because that's their wheelhouse. Some of them may not even be interested in donating to the organization but they're interested in the service itself. So that's another opportunity for them that they may not have picked up those same individuals sometimes it may have been the parents of the individuals that are inside of their programs they saw what it was doing for the youth that are in the program and so now they're also wanting to utilize it. And so that's just a basic example of what you can do that's operating inside of your purpose that still kind of goes in line with those four guidelines that I mentioned. So I just wanted to make sure I gave an example because I didn't earlier. And then here I just included my structural framework. This is something that if you're interested in having you can email me I can send that over to you. And basically this is almost like a checklist of all of the things related to events. And so I have it broken down. I used five pillars in my framework. Some of them you saw inside of the presentation all of them are related still for the tips that I mentioned but this would take a lot longer to go over so I didn't go over this today but goals and objectives is number one. We mentioned that earlier. Financial management and everything included behind that logistics the actual execution of the event and then evaluation. And so these are things that you want to make sure that you're planning your event around so that you can actually improve upon it each year. And if you would like to have some information around that structural framework you can email me. I have a document that I can send out to you which is essentially more of a checklist to make sure that you cover all of those areas. And I want to open up the floor for any questions. Shemika leave your contact information on the screen. Great presentation by the way. Great, excellent. There were so many nuggets I was typing in chatroom so I know there are some questions. Yeah. Yeah, lots of thank yous. And I realized that I wasn't sharing my screen earlier so I apologize y'all. I was not sharing my screen so y'all saw me talking I wasn't sharing my screen when I was doing but it's all good you got you got it right? Yes. So any questions for Shemika? Everybody came on this webinar today because you were interested in learning about fundraising or event planning so there has to be some questions. Hi Shemika this is Dominique Jordan on behalf of a nonprofit organization One Albany. Just wanted to say amazing presentation and I did have a question. Just from your professional experience when planning an event especially when vendors are going to be considered what would you say the average timeframe would be to kind of contact vendors and start really that planning like what what on average and I know that time would probably vary of course per event but what would your outlook be on when you should actually start planning for an event how far in advance before the date of the event. So for clarification are you speaking of hiring a vendor or are you speaking of if you're trying to ask and solicit this vendor to be a potential sponsor or in-kind donor? Yes the latter if I was interested in having people participate in my event and be a vendor and kind of set up during my event how much advance notice should I start reaching out to those vendors for for their participation. So I'll answer this a couple of ways one I think you should always give a month for anything like that's the bare minimum time and that's even for those that are traditional vendors that you're hiring you want to try to give a month as much as possible because they give you a chance to work around any logistics because a lot of times there are unknown logistics that come up that people don't recognize especially if you're doing a different type of event that you've never done if you're doing it in a different setting for instance when you're doing outdoor events there's a whole another set of things that come into play so I would never go shorter than the month but that's like the tightest and so if you're soliciting for someone I would say you want to solicit about 90 days out that's that's more of an ideal time frame obviously it is going to vary depending on events the type of event that it is but 90 days is a good sweet spot. Okay thank you you always you also want to find out what their criteria is you're reaching out to you know public for example they say you know deadline to apply is six months for sponsorships or by September they some of them have months and dates on their calendar when there's deadlines so find out what their criteria is as well. Absolutely now regular sponsorship I always say six months is usually what you want to strive for when you're especially if you're having a large scale event you want to do about six months minimum for sponsorships for regular vendors that you're hiring you can have a little bit more lead time but when it's like a partner or a sponsor you always want to have more time and Aretha it's exactly right they usually have a time frame this is why I also mentioned inside the presentation it's known when their physical year is happening because if you can get on top of that that helps you tremendously of when to do your ask and you have to time your ask just right you can't do it too far ahead of time you can't do it too far behind because they're making commitments along the way and they have so much of a percentage allocated for certain types of groups and everything so you want to get it in that sweet spot for that time frame. Yeah that was a great question anybody else feel free to unmute yourself. I just want to say thank you this is like oh my goodness awesome information I literally just finished obtaining well school with Georgetown University non-profit a certificate program and so the nuggets that you dropped today honey okay look hey this is this is the juice as they say the tea the coffee and then some I have to I have to turn it up a not just to thank you so very much because I I mean OMG this is the this is what I'll be doing hands on you know what I mean like the book stuff is great but what when I'm front and center on the line needs to go you know so this is great OMG I have a question recently the non-profit that I am with did a annual had a annual gala and before me there was no fundraiser committee or chair I was just literally voted in so who was having that before was the executive director she did a great job the pressure I can't even you know imagine what that was like hands full but now that I have this hat to wear I look forward to succeeding above as red sections for sure however I was not 100% satisfied with some of the stuff and one of those things being the gift bags that were given out at the end I work the one the typical hour of the day with a public relations firm and so branding and marketing is important you know what I mean so I see why I had an issue with it but then I'm talking to other friends like wait okay we gotta that's like the one on my list of fits but to get to my question how can I make up for that past era because I'm still stuck on it I mean it's just me but it's like you know well that's what I was gonna ask is it something that is it's bothering you or have you have feedback that other individuals like attendees or sponsors have been affected by it so I haven't received anything as far as sponsors but I wouldn't get it most likely the executive director would get it now the other board members have all said great job great job you know but honestly I think we're all just so happy to get back together in person you know that's like one thing but you know how things are supposed to just go you know and it was a couple of hiccups that I just was not like too impressed with but that gitty that giveaway bag you know that's everything and I know for for sure I'm moving forward but that won't happen again as long as I would be a part of the committee but I want to know like should I send something out just as oh thank you for joining you know what I mean like just the somewhat pick up so I don't think you have to recover from that so let me say that I don't think you have to recover from that because that just may be your expectation with a lot of these non-profit events people understand they're non-profit events and they're not always professionals in every lane to do everything and so people a lot of times are forgiving it doesn't mean that you can't do better and should strive to do better but I would say that I don't think you have to apologize for this if you haven't received your feedback or any indication that it was a turnoff for your attendees for your sponsors but what I will say is it is important to maintain your relationships so if you want to utilize this as an opportunity to still reach out to those attendees to make them a part of the process that you're getting excited for the next big event that's happening and just kind of reaching out and doing some rapport with them you can't absolutely do that and you know just go ahead and get your notes for next year so you can start your planning because that's the thing if you notice something like that that you know in your mind that can be better and you know a plan for it to be better start the planning of it it's going to take time to execute it especially if it's not something that the organization is used to doing so you want to go ahead and start what that looks like plan out those time frames so that you can get people marching orders it could be something that even volunteers can be brought in for in advance but they need to know exactly what they're doing and the time frame that needs to be done in okay thank you so much great job I'm looking at chat let me see if there's any other questions feel free to unmute yourself well I want to say I want to just call out some of these nuggets some of these tips if you think of event sponsors as partners that was a good one I mean because they really are your partners understand your venue role and your contract create a run of a show that means a full timeline for the day and make sure that your volunteer has the skills and are interested in the role that was a good one and you can go without expressing gratitude for your volunteers for sure I'm going to go back to the beginning some of the nuggets that I wrote down the tips the first one be specific be transparent have your event tied to the mission use your board of directors and organizational resources those were like diamonds and this is being recorded I do want to write this is being recorded so you'll get the recording because I believe you have to listen to this several times just to pick up the jewels that she was giving us I mean all the seeds she was planning you got some diamonds over here you got some pearls of wisdom over here you have to listen to this over and over again and then have your notebook with you because it was it was awesome Shemeke you did a great job and I really appreciate you I thank you for being here no other questions I'm going to give you 60 seconds okay well this has been great look I'm going to give you back your your 10 minutes of time so you could do something else today Shemeke again I cannot thank you enough thank you for being a yes for volunteering to do this I would love to have you future events and again if you're interested in volunteering help me out being in the chat room chat type in those notes or just being a speaker email me at asymonds at tetsu.org and while I always tell nonprofits this as you're busy take care of everybody else in the community make sure that you take care of yourself all right I have a good night bye